JLE Industries Operating At Full Capacity By Keeping Professional Drivers Engaged

One of the fastest-growing Flatbed freight solution providers now incorporates Talent Acquisition and Driver Talent Ambassador programs into its driver-empowering DriverOS™ platform

 JLE Industries, one of the fastest-growing Flatbed freight solutions providers in North America, continues to pioneer solutions that deliver heightened supply chain resilience to shippers grappling with a shortage of professional drivers. Despite the all-time high shortfall of 80,000 drivers needed in the U.S. trucking market as estimated by the American Trucking Associations, JLE heads into the holiday season operating a fully seated Flatbed Fleet of 350 tractors with a robust wait list of safe, highly talented professional driver applicants prepared to fill the 110 tractors beginning to deliver in December. The reason: industry-best retention, an engaged and empowered professional driver workforce, and proprietary technology that connects the dots.

“The most important aspects of our strategy for successfully delivering results for our customers – attracting, engaging and retaining top-quality professional Flatbed talent – are nowhere more apparent than in our Talent Acquisition efforts,” says Evan Pohaski, Founder and CEO of JLE Industries. “Since we launched the Talent Acquisition app and incorporated our Driver Talent Ambassador (DTA) module into DriverOS™, we are witnessing tremendous interest coming from both the seasoned professional Flatbed drivers, the foundation of the industry, and the Millennial generation. With an average age of 42 years for all new hires in 2021, we see further indication that our ongoing technology investments and business model innovations will enable JLE to establish comparatively greater resiliency in our workforce. Indeed, by building upon the professionalism and tenure of our existing driver talent in creative ways, JLE is delivering more robust capacity solutions for our customers while steepening our long-term growth trajectory.”

JLE has digitized and migrated the initial steps of its hiring funnel to the cloud in its DriverOS™ enterprise-grade dispatch collaboration and workflow management platform. First, JLE recently enhanced its proprietary platform with a Talent Acquisition version of the DriverOS app, the features of which include allowing candidates to track their application status in real time, as well as navigate through the app features. Next, the company’s Driver Talent Ambassador (DTA) program was framed into the DriverOS product experience. As a result, the DTA program has quickly become JLE’s most efficient organic-growth channel and is driving the highest quality Driver talent through the front door. Overall, JLE is successfully leveraging proprietary technology in every aspect of its business, particularly the driver-interfacing systems; this addition is able to engage candidates in JLE’s technology stack earlier in the process than ever before.

“When we first conceived our unique DTA program, we did so determined to find a way to not only utilize our marketing dollars in a more efficient manner than the traditional job platforms spend, but in so doing, to aggressively reinvest back into our driving force to further reward them for being a part of the success of JLE,” said Walker Sullivan, VP of Recruiting at JLE Industries. “The success of the program being wrapped into DriverOS stems from actually providing our DTAs with training on how to share their story, tools to get their info in front of prospects, and reinforcing the prestige of being a DTA among their peers.”

“The integration of the DTA program into DriverOS enables our Professional Flatbed Talent to get the most out of their referral efforts and, as a result, create additional income streams while building connectivity and engagement with JLE. We do this through the special alchemy of: Talent Selection, Sincere Engagement, and Ongoing Investment in Education,” said Kate Speer, VP of Marketing, Engagement & Investor Relations at JLE Industries. “The trade Professional Flatbed Driver that we want is an individual that does their due diligence, weighs their options carefully, and ultimately makes a high-intent career decision grounded in the expectation that he or she will be more successful here than anywhere else. Our technology-driven approach has demonstrably increased our ability to reach, recruit and retain precisely this class of Driver Talent.” 

JLE’s investment in its Driver Talent doesn’t end with a successful recruitment, continues Kate Speer: “Our dispatch strategy, which is to have the individual driver plan themselves, thus taking part in the load value proposition, has also gone mobile via our proprietary driver facing mobile application, in keeping with our vision of scaling the freight supply and intelligently organizing and distributing the freight to our network of Professional Flatbed Talent (PFT). We have seen mass adoption of DriverOS™ within our Driver network, as seen in an over 300% increase in the Requested Loads that are ultimately accepted by the Driver, keeping control in the hands of the Professional Driver with guidance from our Support and Success Team. We continue to gather feedback from our PFT to continually improve DriverOS™.”

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