Truck Topics

Expediting - The Other Side

Over the past few months, Expediters Online.com has published a number of Driver Profiles and stories about the Owner/Operators in expediting.

Because our focus is usually on the driving side of things, we don't often have the opportunity to highlight those people working within the companies. We're proud to present a profile of someone from the “other side,” Stacey McHugh.

Stacey is an energetic, thirty-nine year old woman wearing many hats for her company, One Way Express in Bedford, OH, just outside of Cleveland. Stacey has over 20 years in the transportation industry.

Stacey begins, “My first experience with the transportation industry was as an assistant safety and compliance director associated with the railroad. Then I worked for a construction company again as a safety and compliance director, I was promoted to dispatcher for a hazardous waste hauler, then as a settlement processor for a truck transfer company.”

Since beginning with One Way Express in 1998, Stacey's duties and responsibilities have expanded. We'll start with her role as the company's safety & compliance director:

“My duties in this role are quite diversified. I handle all of the permitting for the company; PUCU, DOT, Hazardous Materials permits, IFTA, New York HUT, truck registrations, IRP renewals, State and local transport permits, the list goes on and on. I handle the Company Insurance renewals and all of the quarterly and annual tax reporting to IFTA.”

“I process all of our drivers daily logs, enter them into the computer, and process any violation reports (the ultimate goal being no violation reports). I enter the daily mileage and daily fuel purchases for each of our trucks for IFTA purposes off of the drivers' trip envelopes. I process any reimbursements for the drivers for tolls.”

Well, that accounts for the first couple of hours of the workday, now let's see what takes Stacey up to lunchtime:

“As the fleet recruiter I process applicants from the time they apply to the date they start to drive for us,” Stacey tells us. “This includes pre-employment drug screens and physicals to background and previous employment verification. For the independent contractors, this includes performing a safety inspection on their trucks prior to them driving for us.”

“As the recruiter I also perform all of the necessary training for new recruits. Once the driver steps foot in his/her truck to drive for us I then become their safety and compliance director with the understanding that if they have any human resource problems along the way that I am here to help in any way that I can. As I have mentioned before I become a liaison for the drivers.”

The independent contractors leased to One Way Express are required to turn in monthly maintenance forms for their trucks. For the company-owned fleet the job is a bit more involved. Ms. McHugh says, “It is my responsibility to schedule all preventative maintenance procedures for each unit in our fleet on a regular basis and schedule all repairs with the mechanics.”

“I am on call 24 hours a day for the company drivers should they have an “on the road” breakdown. I find a facility to perform the repairs close to where they are at the time or I arrange for a tow. The toughest part of this job for me is the actual repairs that I perform myself.”

Stacey continues, “I replace items such as headlights, marker lights, fuses, mud flaps, straps, tarps, oil and other incidental fluids to each of our units when needed. It gets a little hard to handle when I have a driver that comes into me on any given day and informs me that they have a headlight out and they won't change it themselves because it is raining outside or it is too cold. That is the only time it annoys me because I go out in the pouring rain and do it myself.”

With two decades of working with drivers in this business, Stacey has developed some guidelines in the area of Driver Relations:

“This is an area that cannot be “over-discussed” in my opinion. My responsibilities here put me in an uncomfortable position of playing the devil's advocate in many situations. Let's face facts, does anybody really like the safety and compliance director? To make this realization worse for me, I am not the type of personality that handles being ostracized very well. If someone is angry with me it affects me. Basically, I care.”

Stacey says, “We do not have any “dumb truck drivers” here. I am firm with the drivers, but I do not dictate to them with the “do what I say” attitude that many compliance directors have the tendency to portray. I make sure that the driver understands why I need the information that I am requesting. I feel that the best way to get a driver to comply is if they understand why they have to.”

“Many times I will have a driver take an attitude with me about turning in their logs for instance,” Stacey continues. “When they start rambling on about what a pain in the rear I am, I giggle and ask them if they truly believe that I am so powerful that I wrote the law. They generally back off and do what I asked for at that point.”

“Being female certainly does not help the situation at all. But I have learned to deal with that too. I have been tested and re-tested by every driver here. In the beginning they believed that there is no way that a female can know about trucks or know the law. It was my pleasure to prove them wrong. But at no time did I gloat about it.”

“I feel that you certainly do catch more flies with honey and being female actually has helped with that philosophy. I will not take the approach that many dispatchers do either, which is lie to the drivers to get them to do what you want. It has been my experience that if you treat people with respect, generally you will get respect in return.”

“I treat my drivers as people, not numbers, and when it is their birthday I always try to wish them a happy birthday. Then, I remind them that their license expired on their birthday too. It comes down to this, where would we be without the drivers?”

In the area of Customer Relations, Stacey has also found: “For the most part customers are the same everywhere and in every industry. What ever it is that they need, they needed it yesterday. It is common for our drivers to be unaware of how many times the customer called and changed the size of a load before the driver was actually dispatched on it.”

“For instance, a customer will call at 8:00 a.m. and ask for a truck to take 1 skid weighing 1,000 pounds. So, we dispatch a pick-up truck or cargo van to their location. Then the customer calls back and says that they added more to the load. Now it is 4 skids weighing #7,000."

"Well, I do not think that is going to fit on a pick-up truck. So, dispatch has to get a hold of the first driver dispatched and cancel him/her off the load and send a larger truck. Naturally the driver gets angry, never realizing what the circumstances were to begin with. How the dispatcher handles the situation will ultimately determine the outcome.”

“I just recently hired a couple of company drivers and the last O/O was a nine foot flatbed stake truck. That was the first week in January. Business started to increase in the beginning of January at a steady pace. However, today I have six of my company trucks parked.”

“This situation with our economy is so unpredictable it is not even funny. I will not hire on an O/O just because I have a couple of loads that need to move today. If I can't provide them with a steady and healthy income, I do not hire them at all. I am, however, always accepting applications.”      

On a personal note Stacey says, “Most of my hobbies and interest involve nature. I am a graduate of the Tom Brown Tracking and Survival School. I enjoy gardening and I am an herbalist. I'm also the lead singer in a rock and roll cover band, I'm into bodybuilding, sculpting and I love my cat. I'm also getting married on June 30th this year!”

Company Web Site
One Way Express, Inc.