1/13/08

Country music sucks. Yeah, I said it. So what? I'll say it again. Country music sucks. When I hit 'scan' on my radio and the damn thing keeps hitting country stations (89.9, 90.7, 91.1, 91.5, 91.9, 92.3...) that's just out of hand. You listening, Tennessee and Kentucky? Get it fixed.

There, that's better. So, I slept like a baby last night. I don't know what's up with that, but of course I was pretty tired most of today. Something is definitely wrong with me. The first step of the day was to go through Memphis. There are a series of interchanges where I-40 turns north and then back east and so forth. As I approached a spot where I was going to lose my lane, in a 55mph zone, a TMC guy came barrel-assing by and cut me off. As much as I intened to cruise at 65mph all day, I couldn't resist the urge to blow his doors off once we hit the open highway. Yeah, Mr. TMC, who has the bigger cock now? You little bitch. Okay, that's it. Starting this morning, I swear I'm going to grow up.

So I cruised along through Tennessee and got to Nashville. I-65 narrows down once you get out of town, so I needed to move over. Of course, a Swift driver had to cut me off as we went over a hill, making me ride the brakes and lose all of my momentum. I had been cruising along at 65mph all day, but screw him. Zoom... Yeah, Mr. Swiftie, who has the bigger cock now? You little bitch. Okay, that's it. Starting this afternoon, I swear I'm going to grow up.

Then on into Louisville... oh hell, you know what happened. Yeah, Mr. USA Truck, who has the bigger cock now? You little bitch. Okay, this time I mean it. Starting tomorrow, I swear I'm going to grow up.

So yeah, I rolled into Cincinnati a little while ago. No, nobody cut me off. I came in hoping that the customer would have room for me to park. Otherwise I was going to have to go hunting for a place to hide. They have plenty of room, so here I am. I'll get empty in the morning and then head up to Columbus for my next load.

I have a friend who is a financial advisor. He was technically a competitor of mine, since he worked for a different firm. Anyhow, whenever one of us had a tricky case we would bounce ideas off of each other and try to get a fresh perspective. I guess old habits die hard. I sent him the text of the post from the other day, along with the message board conversation, regarding the fuel bonus topic. He called me back and raised a couple of pretty good points. I can honestly say that both points had already crossed my mind, but they stood out to him as the two major issues that would crop up in such a system.

First was the question of whether or not a plan like that would be fair enough, or more accurately equal enough. Jeff asked, "What if a driver spends all of his time in areas with high fuel cost? Wouldn't he be unfairly penalized?" As we chatted, I added the issue of differing trucks and engines, which I guess didn't occur to a guy with no knowledge of the industry. So what about it? How do you account for inequities from one driver to the next?

On the subject of geographical inequities, I say screw 'em. If you're unlucky, you're unlucky. No program is going to be perfect. What if you run a lot of mountains and your MPG suffers? What if you live far away from any freight lanes and you get long unpaid deadheads to and from home? What if you get stuck in really hot or really cold weather for most of the year? What if you have to fuel in California and other expensive states all the time? I suppose you could come up with some bureaucratic crediting system (that nobody would understand) to try and balance the differences, but seriously. That's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Over the course of a year, I believe the vast majority of us go through a variety of weather, fuel in a variety of places, and see a variety of terrain. If you don't get much variety, there's a good chance you're on a dedicated run. Maybe missing the fuel bonus is just the trade-off you make for the other conveniences that come with running a set route. If you're below average, with a 3,000 truck sample size, tough rocks man. Better luck next year. That's what I would say. Jeff likes the crediting model, but I don't think he knows a lot of people from Missouri. (I kid because I care. No, really.)

As for the different trucks, that one is pretty interesting. Until recently, CTL had T-600's and T-2000's. Now they're introducing some T-660's and some Cascadias into the mix, with varying engines, so it's a pretty complex soup. The simple formula of (dollars/miles) could be applied to any subset, really. You could have a baseline for each type of truck and judge the driver against others in his group. I wouldn't do that, personally. For one thing, the sample size of a given subset might not reflect an accurate statistical model. Then what if a driver switches trucks halfway through the year? Do you pro-rate his performance? What if teams do better than solos (as they should)? Do you hold them to a higher standard? The idea is to simplify, so I would just stick with the company-wide baseline model. I know that the guy who trained me in 2006 got better mileage in a T-2000 than most people do in a T-600. People would either make the bonus a priority or they wouldn't, regardless of the truck. Maybe some people get a raw deal, but again - 3,000 trucks.

I found Jeff's second observation to be far more intriguing. "If the program works as intended, the company CPM would drop, eventually making even the best drivers only marginally able to beat it. What do you do then?" Good question. What do you do? If I were in the company's position, I would then be inclined to up the percentage paid back to the drivers in order to keep the bonus payouts at or near the original gross dollar amounts. If the bonus dollar amounts were sufficient to effect a change, then the company would have saved large sums of money as a result, correct? Then I would be perfectly comfortable, as a company, taking a progressively smaller cut as the overall baseline CPM dropped. In simple terms, if the company's fuel cost dropped by two cents, of which maybe three fourths of a cent was paid back to the drivers, I would up the payback to a penny. Then, if the baseline went down another quarter cent, the company would still keep the 1.25 cents in original savings, while pushing the drivers to go even lower in order to earn the bonus.

Or they could leave the percentage unchanged and let market forces do what they will. Since the bonus would affect roughly half the drivers, a shrinking differential with a constant percentage would mean progressively smaller bonuses. Eventually the incentive would become inadequate, at which time the baseline CPM would likely begin to creep back up. Then the drivers getting the bonus would see a corresponding increase in their payouts. Then the incentive would become stronger and the cycle would begin to reverse. That would be interesting to see in action, but I used to own a business. One of my overriding principles was that I would always spend a dollar to make two. Further, I always paid for the results that I wanted instead of waiting for the results, with a promise to pay later. Stepping in front and keeping the incentive strong would be my preferred approach, but then again I'm not the one writing the checks. Apparently someone in charge thought that $25 a month was a "bonus" until recently.

In any case, it would be an interesting shift from the old, "Get X MPG and we'll pay you Y dollars" model.