Over the years, I’ve attended many driver meetings and I’ve seen the good, the bad — and the truly gruesome.

A driver meeting can accomplish a great deal. Do it right and your people will understand your business goals and how you can all work together to achieve them. Your drivers will exit the meeting feeling motivated and satisfied that it was time well spent.

But do it wrong — don’t plan and just throw the meeting together at the last minute as I’ve seen too often — and the meeting will deteriorate into little more than a complaints session. And what driver wants to waste time? They get enough of that at the loading docks. I don’t know of any fleet manager who has time to waste either.

There’s only one way to avoid a bad meeting and that is to plan it from start to finish. Here’s how:

First of all, please make sure that all drivers get at least one month’s notice of the meeting. Your drivers need time to make the necessary arrangements to attend.

Send out a few reminders in the weeks leading up to the meeting.

Expect no less than 100-percent attendance. To be realistic, this might mean holding several meetings in different locations to accommodate all the drivers, but make attendance mandatory.

How do you get drivers to attend? Simple — pay them. Especially because driver meetings have to be weekend events, paying sends the right message and removes excuses for non-attendance.

Let drivers know that complaints will be welcome, but with one requirement -complaints must come with a proposed solution. This way, you can weed out individual problems and focus on
fleet-wide issues. Individual problems are better left to one-on-one meetings.

Try to get an experienced and entertaining guest speaker. It makes for a much more interactive meeting. Ask your speaker to provide handouts and try to work on a short “after-presentation quiz.” Provide gift certificates as participation awards.

At one meeting I ran, I wanted desperately to hold people’s attention on the subject of safe driving. I didn’t want to discuss accident statistics and risk putting the group to sleep, so I found an ‘impact’ video’, a tape from MADD Canada, called “Missing You.” Believe me, nobody fell asleep.

If a weekend can’t work, try a virtual meeting. Some fleets work with professional video companies to produce driver meeting topics in a CD format that drivers can listen to when they’re behind the wheel. It’s all about packaging your messages and making them listenable.

While you don’t actually need the glitz of a CD, you won’t regret putting as much pre-planning into your meeting as possible.
Very important: make an agenda and stick to it.

Kick the meeting off with a recognition or awards program for outstanding work.

End it with a social event. If you’re making teams for the events, put drivers with managers and dispatchers so they get to know each other on a social level.

Finally, here are a few topic suggestions, just to get your idea-generator fired up:

— Safety. Every driver meeting needs a safety component. Review accident trends, starting with your fleet’s top three accident types.

Invite third-party experts, and usually your vendors will be happy to provide the expertise. Management can outline current safety statistics and help drivers understand what CVOR and US SAFE STAT information really means to them,

— Tires. Better tire management can yield bottom-line benefits. A tire supplier presentation can cover the driver’s role in maximizing tire life. Tiremakers have excellent field reps who conduct training sessions, usually at no charge.

— Fuel. Most vehicle and engine manufacturers have technical field training reps available.

— Maintenance. Invite a technician and/or have a vehicle nearby for
hands-on training.

After all, there’s never enough training going on.