The other day I was listening to my favorite trucking radio show and a question came to mind. It sounds simple, but the answer is not often expressed in full: What does it mean to be a professional truck driver? To get to that answer, I could go by my own opinion and experience. I could lean on the opinions and experience of other truckers I know. But really, it’s the opinions and actions of all throughout trucking -- companies, logistics managers, driver managers, owner-operators -- that define the professional term in practice.
While trucking shorthand tends to assume all truck drivers are professionals, that of course is not always be the case. The simple fact that someone drives a truck for a living does not make a professional.
How many in trucking actually define what a professional looks like, such that when an operator is hired or leased on he/she knows exactly what is expected of them? In my own past experiences with being hired on, I’ve never known a carrier to define it.
With all the talk of late around retention of the best in trucking, it seems to me that if companies of all sorts see that as a goal, the first thing they must do is avoid treating each driver as a commodity that can be replaced by another easily. Second, they should make it clear just how they define a professional and what they expect from their professional drivers.
Too often today, professionalism seems to be an unspoken expectation tied to learned experience and integrity.
That begs another question, though: What exactly is integrity in trucking? This one will be more difficult to answer.
Some aspects of a professional definition are probably obvious and not up for debate for most owner-operators here.
