The answer to that question is simple. You can't afford not to pay your Driver Managers a bonus.

Keep in mind how pay for performance works. You establish goals that are higher than current performance levels, provide training that will help your employees meet those goals and then share with them a portion of the additional profits generated by their successes. They profit from their efforts, your company profits from their efforts.

Your costs are completely funded by the incentive program. Without that bonus opportunity, your DMs will have little reason or interest to increase their efforts to meet higher goals.

Typical training sessions are 3-5 hours in length depending on the scope of material covered. Driver Manager Training, in the sense discussed in this video, is designed for DMs that already have a general knowledge of the industry and working knowledge of how to dispatch drivers and use the company computer.

Driver Manager Training focuses mostly on managerial and decision making skills. Content is defined by the specific needs of the carrier and usually falls within the general subject categories of planning, coaching and cost control.

Costs vary depending on the size of the company, the time required to develop training materials and the decision to use existing staff or an outside professional to develop and administer the training. As a general rule, if you have 10 or more DMs, an outside professional will charge between $900 - -$1200 per class attendee plus travel expenses. That rate will include developing the materials and administering the training. Lower DM counts will increase the per-attendee training costs as there will be less headcount to absorb the costs of material development.

Yes. Driver Managers (DMs) make literally hundreds of decisions per week that impact revenue and cost performance. They need a solid understanding of per mile costs to ensure that they make those decisions based on which choice provides the best bottom line results.

For example, a DM with only one load to backhaul has a choice of two trucks. Truck A is 90 miles away while Truck B is 60 miles away. However, the driver of Truck A - 90 miles away - claims he needs two tires replaced. Replacing those tires at an outside shop would cost $215 more than at the terminal. Which truck should get the load?

If the DM knew that the average cost per mile was $1.40, he/she could multiply that by the 30 miles closer Truck B is to discover that it would cost $42.00 more to bring in Truck A (30 miles X $1.40) yet that would still be considerably cheaper than the $215 extra for Truck A's tires.