Smell the coffee, please!
Out of the blue, I found a lengthy message in my Linkedin inbox recently. The writer, a fleet-owning transporter (sizeable at that) based out of Gurugram, asked a pertinent question: despite being nice and good to truck drivers, why they don’t reciprocate but cheat?
This is a valid question I am confronted with regularly over the past decade of my exposure to this long-haul truck driver arena. The bonding between fleet owners and drivers in the good old times — I am talking about the pre-National Highways era and no-tolled road zamana! — was excellent. Know why?
Fleet owners, by and large, were themselves driver-turned-motormaliks. Hence, they experienced and understood the vagaries of truck driving. This awareness led to treating their employee drivers as their brethren. Yes, an extended family member. Remember Ramu kaka of Hindi filmdom, who was part and parcel of the large joint family he was serving. Truck driver of motormalik was THAT Ramu kaka!
Even in the much-debated era of the Hindu rate of growth (meaning poor), there was increased economic activity. Manufacturing was on the rise. The movement of finished goods demanded trucks, and as a corollary, the demand for trucks and drivers kept moving northwards. Inevitable, no doubt. Right, Arun Lakshman?
Contrary to popular perception, state highways and National Highways were not the brainchild of the late Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee rein during 1999–2004.
It’s time to rewind. In 1927, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood was the Viceroy of British India. We know this British Conservative politician as Lord Irwin. World War I ended ten years earlier, and Adolf Hitler would gain control of Germany in another six years. Back in India, the British rulers realized that the local governments did not have the bandwidth to develop roads, and the central government had to step in. Under the chairmanship of M R Jayakar, a committee was set up to recommend a concrete plan for national road development. Well, that’s where the concept of the National Highway sprouted.
Enough of history. Back to the new India of the sprawling National Highways, Tolled roads, corrupt RTOs, and other highway vultures waiting to bounce the hapless truck drivers to loot and plunder.
Simultaneously, the old format of driver-turned-owners metamorphosized too. A larger fleet size: more than five, to begin with. The compensation for a driving career did not match the trucking growth. Look at the wealth generated by motor maliks of the past 50-odd years. You will know what I mean! Filthy rich. At the same time, scan the rise in the living standards of truck drivers. Barring a few smart conservative saratis, most continue to be in the grip of subsistence level. The fault is theirs too. Splurging their hard-earned income on undesired areas: sex, liquor, polygamy, and whatnot.
That’s one side that should not remain unmentioned.
Never in the history of truck driving was there the concept of an employer-employee relationship? A formal one, I am talking about. No appointment letter. Everything was an oral contractual arrangement. Bharosa! As the fleet grew, owners built the bureaucracy to run their businesses for obvious reasons.
This middleman became the biggest challenge. They quietly broke the long-existing bond between the owner and drivers. The same political “high command” structure. The maliks were interested in the top and bottom lines and seldom showed interest in resuming the old bonding. Not to be forgotten is the class difference!
It is no secret in the trucking vertical of the intermediaries (transport company bureaucracy) looting drivers under one pretext or another. This needs no elaboration. Maliks were mute spectators. Chal raha hai, chal ne do! (It’s working fine for me. Why intervene?).
Under such working conditions, the trust deficit between the two sides ballooned. Even when some kind-hearted (one can count such a specie on one’s fingertips) wanted to be the epitome of a gentleman transporter — another oxymoron — the underprivileged truck drivers junked such gestures.
My unspooling of this trajectory commenced as I sat with Rajat Nagpal of PAF Logistics on a Thursday, May afternoon in a spanky, jam-packed Third Wave Coffee joint in Connaught Place to hear him out of his ordeal.
Who is Rajat? Until I met him, I knew him not. We never knew each other. He was aware of my existence, courtesy of LinkedIn, where I dialogue with the unseen audience on the trials and tribulations of truck drivers since 2010.
My recent shift to offer solutions on the driver front via the Centre For Driver Relationship Management (CDRM) to potential fleet owners instead of constant cribbing enticed the ex-Citibanker and second generation transport businessman to pour his heart out. What did he write to me?
“For drivers, we have tried to provide almost everything such as shelter, timely salaries, a good amount of pure diesel (no bio-diesel), excellent tire conditions, excellent maintenance of all vehicles, ESI/PF, etc. which is why probably most of our drivers do not leave our company once they join us. (want to expand but worried about finding good drivers!)
So, looking for your advice on how to find good drivers, where to find good drivers, and what else we can do to hire good drivers as the situation will get worse in the coming years and the road transport business will become very difficult to operate. “
Precisely, this outpouring brought us together to Connaught Place to chat and discuss the way forward over cold coffee.
I am no seer. Nor a don from the portals of IIMs or XLRI who has crunched data before offering solutions. Wonder whether these management educational institutes teach on driver relationship management as part of their supply chain and logistics and or operations management in the manufacturing arena. If a warehouse can be branded as logistics service provider why not the truck driver? If the truck driver does not fetch goods, what is there for the warehouse junior to load or unload or punch into the WMS screen?
The broken trust factor needs to be healed. The gap between the motor malik and drivers needs to be bridged. The middle management in transport bureaucracy has to be “educated” on building a decent relationship with the weakest supply chain executives: truck drivers.
Remove the drivers, the entire pen-pushing or excel-maker of 3PL CEOs, huge fleet owners, and the cash dispensers in the form of the transport bureaucracy will be jobless. Unfortunately, this reality remains clouded. It’s time for them to wake up!
While helping drivers to become smart is most desirable, it is equally vital to “reform” the fleet owners and their misbehaving middle management. Smell the coffee — hot or cold — folks! It’s NEVER too late.
