Top 5 Driver Management Tips for Last-Mile Delivery Success

Want to manage drivers along with ensuring successful last-mile deliveries? Here are 5 tips that will help you achieve just that.

Recent research from Scandit shows that most drivers (67%) have changed jobs within the last two years. Most of them must be doing it to move towards better opportunities, while others would be fed up with how businesses poorly utilise them and plan their daily schedule.

It’s no secret that last-mile delivery businesses and dispatchers constantly struggle to manage their drivers’ rosters while ensuring successful deliveries.

Poor utilisation of riders or delivery drivers makes last-mile delivery businesses helpless. As a result, they experience, poor retention of riders and a  high turnover rate which leads to an increase in:

• Recruitment cost
• Disruption in operation
• Negative customer experiences

In this article, we delve into the importance of driver retention and the top 5 tips for managing drivers in a manner that ensures their retention and a high rate of last-mile delivery success.

Let’s get into it!

Why is Driver Retention Important in Last-Mile Delivery?

Retaining drivers can save you from many unforeseen operating costs and tasteless experiences. The time-consuming processes of hiring, onboarding, and training increase long-term costs.

Beyond that, ongoing disturbances like staff turnover or the need to accommodate new driver training poorly impact your operating efficiency. Without consistent staff and performance, client satisfaction is likely to decline, which could result in fewer or poor word-of-mouth recommendations or repeat business.

Most significantly, a revolving door of riders or drivers puts your company at risk of losing knowledgeable and highly performing staff. You would lose up on your seasoned drivers who are aware of the area’s traffic patterns, and shortest routes and have an idea of how to deal with customers.

Maintaining last-mile delivery drivers in this manner encourages a positive workplace culture.

Top 5 Driver Management Tips for Last-Mile Delivery Success

Retaining talented and productive drivers/riders is essential for a successful last-mile delivery operation, and proper management is essential for that. Here are five tips for driver management.

1. Open Flow of Communication with Drivers

Regular communication with your drivers has several benefits. It reduces delivery confusion and enables drivers to report issues that impact their schedules.

You can respond quickly to safety issues and assist in difficult circumstances.

When communication lines are open, drivers feel heard and appreciated. They feel liberated to voice problems and offer ideas for changes.

They’ll be glad to have a collaborative environment and in turn, will give you superior work. Additionally, you can increase operational effectiveness and lower rider turnover.

Here are some ideas to help you communicate with your drivers effectively:

• Organise regular team meetings, workshops or one-on-one interaction.
• Give precise instructions for last-mile delivery.
• Discuss the company’s objectives and driver potential.
• Adopt an Open Door Policy to motivate drivers to contact you with inquiries, grievances, and recommendations.
• Attend to your drivers’ problems and listen intently to them.
• For smooth communication, use delivery route planner apps, corporate forums, or instant messaging services.

Pro Bono: TrackoMile, a delivery management software, offers a rider app that communicates all the essential details of the deliveries to be made. This clear communication of the delivery schedule and order details like addresses and payment modes prevents many doubts and confusion.

2. Provide Drivers with Well Optimised Routes

Sharing more optimised routes helps you keep your riders or drivers on most shortest and least traffic-prone routes. This helps keep them less frustrated and more focused.  By saving extra mileage, your drivers can easily accommodate more deliveries and earn more money. They’ll also have time to enhance their well-being and work-life balance.

Your drivers will be content, and your customers will be happy because they will receive their orders on schedule. Ultimately, this will benefit your company by boosting profitability and driver and customer retention.

TrackoMile is a tool for planning and optimising routes with an infinite number of stops. The TrackoMile route optimisation software helps you optimise multi-stop routes by taking into account traffic, weather, time frames, roadblocks, turn limits, and other limitations.

All you have to do is define certain parameters and upload the delivery addresses. Based on your entered inputs,  the platform will automatically generate the most time-efficient routes that save you more fuel. The best aspect is that creating effective routes only takes a few minutes.

You can even plan unlimited routes and schedule for months in advance.

Below are several features TrackoMile’s last-mile delivery solution offers to make routing and scheduling seamless and efficient.

• This cloud-based system helps you plan, track, and manage routes anytime, anywhere.
• It has modules to set up recurring routes for daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedules.
• Geofencing routes and customer addresses.
• Assigning optimised routes that is suitable for various vehicles.
• It re-routes and displays the fastest routes in seconds without human interference.
• TrackoMile lets you add or remove stops mid-route and recalculates routes instantly.
• Its mobile app helps drivers receive optimized routes and delivery instructions on their phones.

3. Take Help from Rider Roaster

Effective rider scheduling is at the core of last-mile delivery management and driver collaboration. Dispatchers need to accurately know which drivers and driver types are available at any given time, including in-house drivers and third-party/ad-hoc drivers.

With the rider roster, delivery drivers can quickly select the shifts that suit their schedules, reserve their future work shifts, and find out what work shifts are scheduled for them.

By providing your fleet drivers with an integrated platform to manage their delivery shifts and clear communication, you can increase driver retention, performance, and attendance.

4. Prioritise Driver Safety

Safe drivers are more productive. Furthermore, drivers enjoy working with companies that value their safety. However, it goes beyond the drivers. Making driver safety a top priority benefits your company as well.

Your steadfast dedication to driving safety might enhance your brand image. It also helps lower auto repair expenses, insurance premiums, medical expenses, and possible legal actions brought about by mishaps.

Here are a few essential actions to guarantee motorist safety.

• To guarantee optimal performance and minimise failures, periodic vehicle maintenance is essential.
• Keep an eye on irresponsible driving by using a commercial GPS tracker.
• Establish a rigorous no-phones-while-driving rule.
• Give thorough instructions on safe driving practices and traffic laws.
• Give rewards to careful drivers.
• Review your safety program frequently and improve response time.

Silver Lining! The multi-stop route optimisation software from TrackoMile can potentially increase driving safety by creating routes suitable for delivery vehicles. Also, the rider app has an SOS button. Just in case the drivers are harmed or stranded, they can press the button, which immediately shares the last location with the managers, making it easy for them to send help.

5. Reward and Recognise Drivers

When you reward your drivers, they will understand that you value their association when you acknowledge and appreciate their hard work. They will be inspired to go over and above in future tasks. They will gladly put in long hours at your business, which will save you money on hiring and training.

Acknowledging good work, accomplishments, or customer-focused or driving-related behaviours will motivate your drivers to keep up the good work. This will expedite delivery and satisfy your clients as well.

The question at hand is, “How to determine who your top performers are?”

Here, the final mile delivery software from TrackoMile can be useful. With its reporting and analytics tools, you can examine important information like the number of stops made beyond the schedule, fuel costs, the amount of time spent at each stop, and more. With the use of this data, you may identify and compensate your best achievers.

Go a Step Beyond! Why not gamify your last-mile delivery operations? Adding rewards and incentives at each stop completed, goal achieved, or milestone crossed will make drivers more productive and increase retention. TrackoMile can help prove all the important and required data on the dashboard to help identify the winning drivers.

Conclusion

Driver management is as important as logistics. Respect your drivers and value their welfare and input. By implementing the driver management tips in this article, you may improve your delivery operations, lower turnover, and foster a healthy work atmosphere.

TrackoMile, a last-mile delivery software, plays a huge role in managing drivers and operations at the same time. With solutions like route optimisation, rider app, rider roster, real time tracking, you are able to gain visibility of your riders as well as of the delivery operation progress.

Intrigued? Schedule a free demo today!

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the meaning of driver management?

  Driver management refers to overseeing the activities and well-being of drivers to ensure safety, efficiency, and satisfaction. It includes route planning and scheduling, performance monitoring, offering training, and keeping drivers happy to optimize your entire operation.

• How to manage a team of drivers?

  Set clear goals, plan efficient routes, assign a balanced workload, prioritize safety, track performance, keep communication open, and reward excellence. It’s about getting the most out of your drivers while motivating them and delivering results.