Over the course of the next few months, LinkeDrive will be publishing a series of blogs, focused on the drivers we work with everyday. Our goal is to share a little bit about these individuals, highlighting in some cases the teams and managers they work with, and their overall pursuit of excellence.
To launch this series, we wanted to start with our first customer, Arrow Paper, based out of Wilmington, Massachusetts. Founded in 1952, Arrow Paper provides a wide range of food service products, hotel amenities, and office supplies all across New England. Arrow Paper selected LinkeDrive’s PedalCoach over 5 years ago, to leverage our technology to implement a fair pay-for-performance plan, based on good driving behaviors for their Teamster drivers. Arrow Paper’s program has evolved over time, where it’s current focus is now heavily weighted on Safety, but also incorporates the three other core areas of LinkeDrive’s Driver Performance Management (DPM) product – Fuel, Efficiency, and Productivity. Arrow’s Director of Operations and Logistics, Joe Calerese shares that “LinkeDrive’s DPM has allowed us to quickly understand the overall performance of our drivers, and not only tune the program to our organizational goals, but also make these programs engaging and rewarding for everyone. We’re seeing the positive effects of tuning our program for Safety, and now making further adjustments for the summer months to reap additional gains in this area.”
Over the past 6 months, we’ve observed two veteran drivers battling to be the #1 ranked driver – William Turner and Michael Scammon. While both drivers have a long tenure at Arrow, their daily responsibilities are very different.
William Turner, who is now in his 18th year of driving at Arrow, spends the majority of his time right in the heart of city, with lots of traffic lights and stop and go, an extremely stressful and heavily congested environment. “Driving in the heart of Boston can be very taxing on a driver,” states Turner. “You have to really work on your forward awareness, planning for what’s ahead, because you never know what you’ll encounter!”
Mike Scammon, who is now in his 12th year at Arrow, spends the majority of his time on and off the major arteries in the greater Boston area – 93, 95, and the Mass Pike… also all very challenging environments for drivers. “The traffic in an around the city is extremely demanding… you have to be focused and bring your a-game every day. Our Customers are our top priority, and to ensure we are exceeding their expectations, as drivers we have to be the best we can be to help ensure that happens.”
“When we initially tuned our program to be more heavily weighted to Safety, many drivers thought individuals that spent more time on the highway would have an advantage,” says Calerese. “LinkeDrive’s DPM normalizes all data, including Safety metrics, putting everyone on an even playing field, which has really been eye opening for everyone. What it’s shown is that even drivers right in the heart of a congested city can be as safe as individuals on highways, and even provides coaching tips designed for individuals in those specific environments to get better and safer at their jobs… their product has been a tremendous asset for us!”
We’re all enjoying this competition between the drivers at Arrow, and recently when onsite, we’ve been thrilled to see drivers hanging their scorecards in the break room along with the monthly driver leaderboard… just a little added competition as well as highlighting their individual performance. We love seeing our customers make gains through the use of our technologies, especially improving Safety within their organization, but seeing them having fun while doing it makes it that much more rewarding. Great job Mike, William, and all Arrow drivers… keep up the great work, and stay safe out there!