{"id":708,"date":"2020-03-11T14:52:29","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T14:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/?p=708"},"modified":"2020-03-11T16:33:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T16:33:54","slug":"taggart-keeps-you-moving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/other-news\/2020\/03\/11\/taggart-keeps-you-moving\/708\/","title":{"rendered":"Taggart keeps you moving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Al Muskewitz<br><\/strong>\u00a0<br>Like a lot of trucking companies in the United States, Taggart Transportation is always looking for a few good men (and women) to put behind the wheel of its trucks. And chances are well above the industry norm that when it finds one they\u2019ll stick around for a while.<br>\u00a0<br>It\u2019s not hyperbole. In an industry where the turnover rate pushes 90 percent, Taggart pulls in at an impressive 18 percent. When hub supervisors put teams together, like a good double-play combination in baseball, the first-time success rate of the matches is 83 percent. If a team isn\u2019t connecting and a re-pairing is necessary, the success rate swells to 90 percent.<br>\u00a0<br>The reasons abound. As one of the largest contract carriers for FedEx in the Midwest, running doubles out of three separate hubs (St. Paul, Minn.; Champaign, Ill.; and Kansas City), the work is line-haul hub-to-hub, drop-and-hook no touch, and the pay is good and steady. Some teams come already assembled, but management does a diligent job vetting potential partners when pairing single drivers together. Additionally, the carrier recently replaced its entire 55-truck fleet with 2020 Volvos.<br>\u00a0<br>\u201cObviously, we\u2019ve got a good system in place,\u201d said Grady Davolt, a co-owner and Taggart\u2019s director of recruiting. \u201cWe\u2019re big enough to have that corporate diversity and flexibility, but we\u2019re small enough to where everybody knows your name.<br>\u00a0<br>\u201cThe difference is in the mentality of the leadership and what can I do to help you succeed today. My job is to encourage, motivate and empower you to do your job. The bosses are very much in charge but they\u2019re talking with the employee, not at the employee. We want to make sure if we tell a driver something we follow up or it\u2019s the truth; we don\u2019t even want the perception of untrue. Honestly, it\u2019s just giving a damn.\u201d<br>\u00a0<br>So, if the retention rate is so high why is Taggart in the market for drivers? Simply put, you can never have enough.<br>\u00a0<br>While most of Taggart\u2019s runs are dedicated FedEx routes, the seven-year-old carrier does have other non-dedicated routes that need to be filled. Non-dedicated drivers get either straight miles on \u201cvery consistent\u201d runs or a flat-rate guaranteed pay option, both eliminating any anxiety over a weekly paycheck.<br>\u00a0<br>It\u2019s a living and a good one.<br>\u00a0<br>\u201cI remember this summer one of our assistant hub supervisors had to cover a run for one of our drivers,\u201d Davolt said. \u201cHe pulled up about 3 o\u2019clock, gets out of the truck and tells me, \u2018I don\u2019t understand why every driver in America wouldn\u2019t want this job: It pays great and it\u2019s easy and it\u2019s fun.\u2019\u201d<br>\u00a0<br><em>Al Muskewitz is Editor for Wright Media. He can be reached at\u00a0<a>musky@wrightmediacorp.com<\/a><\/em><br><br><em>Photo illustration by Alice Anne Heath<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/truck-driving-jobs\/company\/taggart-transportation\/Igg8QBXUhu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Click here for available truck driver jobs with Taggart Transportation. (opens in a new tab)\">Click here for available truck driver jobs with Taggart Transportation.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Al Muskewitz\u00a0Like a lot of trucking companies in the United States, Taggart Transportation is always looking for a few good men (and women) to put behind the wheel of its trucks. And chances are&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,224,225],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}