Every so often in this column I reflect on the “good old days,” when I was running down to Florida every week with junk equipment, no valid credit cards, pennies left for fuel, and eating five-day-old sandwiches. (Maybe those were the not-so-good old days, to be honest.) The benefit is sharing some of the techniques-and more importantly, attitudes-I developed that made me a better trucker.

Well, over Christmas break I was cleaning out several filing cabinets at home. They contained more than 2000 pages of driver reports from fleets my company had helped over the years, back when we were jointly pioneering driver-training techniques that hadn’t previously been formalized. Twenty years ago, a driver really could benefit from some clear-headed technical instruction.

As I plowed through the papers, I couldn’t help thinking how much easier it is to properly operate a truck today, when electronic engines, superb transmissions, and gobs of torque seemingly eliminate the need for a driver to knuckle down and really learn anything. Today, even a run-of-the-mill, unmotivated trucker can still get maybe 75% of the truck’s maximum efficiency without even trying. Pre-1985, a driver without technical-driving skills could only achieve about 50% of that maximum-say, 5 mpg (Imperial) in fuel burn and 10 cents a mile in maintenance cost, against almost 10 mpg and five cents a mile for the real pros. Now owner-operators can make a living without understanding much about application of power. But don’t be fooled: real profits still depend on advanced driving skill. That’s what’ll gain you an average $35,000 more in annual net income.

While reflecting on all this, a driver from the past showed up at my brokerage, interested in getting his own operating authority, filings, and insurance. We were discussing his driving history when we both realized that he’d been in my driving program in 1983 as part of a 100-truck fleet based in Toronto. We were running advanced driver-training classes for 200 fleets or so, involving 6000 to 7000 drivers at a time. Each driver got three sessions (about 10 hours of class time), and then we evaluated his on-road performance through analysis of the daily tachograph chart. Each participant received a weekly report card that analyzed his every highway move, customized to his specific engine rpm and torque.

My new potential client ran home and came back with three years’ worth of those report cards, which he’d saved all this time. One of this fellow’s cards revealed he’d driven seven different trucks in the same week. There’s a complete technical analysis day-by-day, a road-speed analysis, a separate analysis on progressive upshifts and loaded downshifts rated by the specific engine, and useful comments by my staff member, like, “On Unit 140, shifts were too high. This unit pulls well at 1350-1400 rpm. Top shifts out should be around 1750-1800. You can do it! ” Keep in mind, this guy was rotating between old air-box pedal-to-the-metal Detroits, Cats, and 290 high-toque-rise Cummins powerplants. Every one of the 15,000 or more drivers we ran through this program basically competed against himself so he could earn a rating of “The Best.” Within 12 to 24 months, they all knew just how good-or otherwise-they really were, with the numbers to prove it.

In the good old days, it took at least 10 years to develop into even a half-assed professional trucker. Now, with the proper fleet driving program, about 10 hours of professional classroom updating per year, and an electronic engine, a driver can get to that point in five years. Today’s electronic engines automatically register real-time fuel consumption, so it’s easier to determine driver skills at tandem-tandem configurations. I feel anything under 7.5 mpg reflects minimal skills at pin-to-pin, loaded. Currently, the real pros who can gauge headwind time, empty time, and so forth are surging into the 10.6- to 11.0-mpg range (with a less-than-two-year-old tractor).

Still, our system in the old days had some strengths. We employed a mix of male and female analysts, and the encouraging weekly comments from females especially seemed to really get the drivers working on self-improvement. We had about 100 stock phrases we’d use, in order of skill exhibited by the driver, and I’ll bet that the same technique applied today would get 95% of the participants out of their complacent 7-mpg rut and up to around 10 or better, in less than the five years noted above.

Oh, I also uncovered a note from Air Canada saying I had 257,000 frequent-flyer miles from when I was bouncing all over Canada running these programs. I’m still too busy to use them!