The transportation and logistics industry is full of revolutionaries, innovating on everything from load matching to driver wellness. Tenstreet, more than most any other company, has made a name for itself in the recruiting and retention space.
In keeping with its cutting-edge reputation, Tenstreet delved into several new offerings and announced multiple acquisitions during its recent 2022 User Conference.
Increased effectiveness of existing tools
Tenstreet has added a host of new features to its recruiting arsenal, making it easier and more effective than ever for carriers to recruit, onboard, and retain drivers.
Company scorecards are among the most popular new features. Scorecards will allow carriers to evaluate themselves — as well as individual drivers — against industry-wide best practices to illuminate both current strengths and potential areas of improvement. These scores can help guide training initiatives and make performance conversations more influential.
The company also rolled out a video feature that enables recruiters to do live video calls with drivers through Tenstreet’s Driver Pulse app. Additionally, carriers can broadcast messages to individual drivers or groups of drivers without initiating a two-way conversation.
“We see that the carriers that win at recruiting are the most successful at engaging drivers, and we think video will be a key tool in helping carriers engage with drivers as individuals,” Tenstreet CEO Tim Crawford said.
Tenstreet has also hit new milestones in terms of both usage and effectiveness with its popular Driver Pulse app.
In fact, data shows using the Driver Pulse app to recruit and hire new drivers has proven two to three times more effective than texting and four to five times more effective than email, according to Crawford.
It makes sense that drivers prefer an app-based process to more “old school” methods like texting and email. Like everyone, driver’s cellphones are often bogged down with a combination of unread promotional and personal text messages, making it easy to miss communication from a recruiter. Additionally, checking email on the road can prove difficult and time-consuming, causing missed messages and communication delays.
When drivers open the Driver Pulse app, they are less likely to miss important messages because they are not competing with other forms of communication. Drivers are also looking out for that specific type of communication while in the app, making them less likely to overlook messages or become distracted.
Acquisitions
Tenstreet recently acquired two companies — Vnomics and True Load Time — in an ongoing effort to remain innovative and continuously expand and improve its offerings.
Vnomics is focused on reducing fuel spend by providing drivers with real-time, in-cab coaching around fuel-saving driving habits. This gives carriers insight into driver performance and ultimately creates greater fuel efficiency, an important area of focus as diesel prices continue to surge across the nation.
“Drivers don’t go out and say, ‘I’m going to drive inefficiently today,’ but it is too hard sometimes,” Crawford said. “We want to make it easier for drivers to make better decisions and make it easier for carriers to do business.”
True Load Time is a startup focused on helping the industry solve the detention problem by providing an accurate, shared understanding of wait times across the industry.
“With greater transparency, carriers will be able to make more informed decisions to maximize equipment efficiency and driver revenue, improve safety and enhance driver satisfaction” with True Load Time’s help, according to a Tenstreet press release.
These moves, coupled with the company’s acquisition of Stay Metrics in 2020, will help Tenstreet continue to focus its efforts on reducing turnover costs and increasing retention for private and for-hire fleets across the country.
What’s next?
Tenstreet has come a long way over the past few years, and Crawford emphasized that the company is certainly not finished yet.
“We’re trying to be the software layer that connects carriers and drivers throughout a driver’s tenure, and we want to be useful and create value on both sides of that equation,” Crawford said.
The company is keeping the specifics of its future plans under wraps for now, but one thing is clear: Whatever comes next for Tenstreet will be aimed at helping carriers and drivers create a more connected, efficient, and responsive future.
“We focus on being practical and usable,” Crawford said. “We recently unveiled a lot of features that — in and of themselves — added efficiencies but were not a total revamp. They all are new pieces of functionality that will really make an impact on hiring and retaining drivers.”
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