In the 1998 National Football League draft, two teams, picking first and second, needed quarterbacks. One made the right decision. One did not. The Indianapolis Colts put all their trust in a young man named Peyton Manning, who went on that year to break several rookie records and led his team to the AFC championship the next. The San Diego Chargers gave the wheel to Ryan Leaf, who was recently cut by the team and will be lucky to play a down next year.

Both quarterbacks were winners in college. They were well coached and trained at top-ranked football programs. Both were predicted to be future superstars. In many football circles, it was believed that Leaf was the more talented of the two. So why is one on pace to reach the Hall of Fame and the other the halls of the unemployment office? In hindsight, the reason is clear. Manning was groomed, not only by his coach, but by his father, an all-star quarterback with the New Orleans Saints. While Peyton’s coach instilled the fundamentals, his father put on the finishing touches a school never could.

This is not a football story. It’s a story about training and education-and the difference between the two.

Kim Richardson understands. The president of Caledonia, Ont.-based Kim Richardson Transportation Specialists, one of Canada’s more innovative schools for drivers, dispatchers, and driver trainers, is constantly looking for new ways to raise the level of professionalism and competence in the industry and to cut down on the expensive problem of driver turnover. A trucking operation will invest anywhere from $4000 to $8000 to hire a driver and coach him to a point where he can be a productive worker. These costs go well beyond money spent on recruiting ads: they encompass opportunities lost due to a driver’s inexperience, and man-hours devoted to reducing the impact of those mistakes.

Richardson has developed a “driver-finishing” program designed to give students real-world trucking experience at a carrier before they become full-time employees. The program, based on standards developed by the Professional Truck Driver Institute (PTDI), is a continuation of the curriculum Richardson uses in the classroom and on the road. The program focuses on mentoring and one-on-one education where a trainer can convey the important intangible qualities that separate new hires who know how to drive a truck from those who arrive ready to work.

“I have always believed that there is a real difference between training and education,” says Richardson. “Training is the easy part. Educating a driver takes a lot more care and commitment.” Richardson is currently operating the program, call “Next Gen,” as a pilot project with a handful of trucking companies. Carriers interview students enrolled at Richardson’s school and “pre-hire” them, agreeing to take them on for at least four weeks. The students drive with KRTS driver-trainers hauling revenue-loads using the carrier’s equipment. The students are paid by the mile, by the carrier or KRTS, which prorates the cost into the fee of the program. None of the hauls leaves a 500-mile (800-km) radius.

The carrier implementing the program also interviews one of KRTS’s driver finishers. The trainer remains in the passenger seat for the duration of the program, and offers guidance with vehicle operation, regulatory paperwork, attitude, customer relations, and knowledge and compliance with company policy. A student is fully hired by the carrier only after he has successfully met all of the curriculum’s requirements.

“It’s kind of like shadow training,” says Richardson. “The specialist is able to sense the limitations of a new driver that would otherwise go unnoticed. Maybe the new driver isn’t ready to go down a certain grade or corner, for example. Well, fine. The instructor’s job is to sense that, pull the truck over, and talk him through it.”

Most carriers don’t have the personnel or the resources to give adequate post-hire training. Many break in rookies by putting them with a company veteran for a few days, but few can afford to use two assets on one haul. Moreover, although veterans carry a lot of on-the-road experience, they simply aren’t trainers, and very rarely are educators. Richardson adds that by using a KRTS trainers (or by sending company trainers and drivers to finishing school), a carrier can keep veteran drivers on the lanes where they are needed most while an outside party is responsible for filling in the break-in gap between school and on-the-job driving.

The desire to close that gap prompted MacKinnon Transport in Guelph, Ont. to take on the pilot project.

“Getting someone right out of school and saying, ‘Here are the keys, off you go,’ doesn’t work anymore,” says Bill Kalbhenn, manager of safety and driver resources at MacKinnon. “You need someone with (new drivers) that first little bit to give them a solid foundation of the environment they’re working in. We were spending a lot of time working with people in that gap.”

For the program to work, there has to be a great deal of trust between the carrier and KRTS. Although the trainer and the student are still the responsibility of KRTS, both are responsible for the carrier’s equipment, time, freight, and insurance liability. The carrier is essentially handing over the keys to its reputation.

This is why it’s important that each participating fleet has hand in drafting Next Gen’s structure, Richardson says. The carrier chooses the student driver and trainer, who undergo an orientation at the fleet. More importantly, the carrier plays a primary role in adapting the standard Next Gen curriculum to the fleet’s requirements. These components range in variations of how driving skills, logging, maintenance, accident and loading procedures, trip planning, and many other proficiencies are tested and evaluated.

It’s still too early for MacKinnon to put a figure on the cost benefits of the pilot, but Kalbhenn says he can easily see where future advantages lie. There has already been a hint that Next Gen is an effective “reality check” for new drivers who aren’t prepared for the stringent demands of the industry. As fleets focus more on retention than recruiting these days, the program may serve as a valuable gatekeeper when the cost of hiring, training, and then replacing a driver is so high.

“Some people get into the industry because they may, for example, have gotten laid off at other jobs. They go to school, get their licence, and show up at someone’s door for a job. Well, after a couple of weeks they realize that this is not for them,” Kalbhenn says. “This program allows them the opportunity to find out what they’re in for.”

Being an extension of the standard PTDI program, the chances of retaining a driver after finishing from Next Gen look good, Richardson says. In a follow-up survey KRTS conducted with 97 of its recent PTDI graduates, 57% said they were still employed at their first carrier after a year and 30% were at their second. Only 13% were employed at three carriers or more.

Kalbhenn says putting a polished driving school graduate through the Next Gen program is like having a blank piece of paper the carrier can fill with its own specifications. Being part of a fleet that takes pride in its award-winning customer relations and safety record, Kalbhenn stresses the importance of having a driver who understands and fits in with the fleet’s culture from the start. Moreover, by being trained and educated on the job by a certified finisher, the new driver is less likely to start his new career with bad habits he’s picked up from other drivers or by improvising while trying to troubleshoot an obstacle by himself.

“It is important to understand how we operate, how we function, our customer-base, the equipment we use and procedures and policies we as a company have in place,” Kalbhenn says before siting specific MacKinnon policies in maintenance, customer relations, and load procedures. “Culturally, that individual has to be able to function in our environment.”

Richardson calls the procedure, in the case of Kalbhenn’s fleet, “MacKinnonized.”

“We spec trucks, we spec trailers, we spec our computers. Why not spec your (drivers) to the culture of the carrier?” he asks. “The way MacKinnon does certain things may be different than, say, the way Schneider National does them.”

As the program and others like it advance from pilots to policy, both Richardson and Kalbhenn hope that even if the market gets soft and carriers are not able to keep all of their finished drivers, they can, at the very least, provide the industry at large with a pipeline of more polished and qualified drivers.

Richardson, for one, is tired of the fact truck driving is generally viewed as the spare-tire of professions. “The bar must be raised. Period,” he says. “Every other professional industry has standards so why should driving be any different?”

Above any of the driver-finishing program’s attributes, it is the systematic mentoring process that best instills the commitment and fine-tuning the industry desperately needs. It was that same polished care that was missing from Ryan Leaf’s training profile.

Seeing that trucking needs all the help it can get, it would be only a slight exaggeration to say that perhaps Leaf may consider driving if he gets cut again before this fall.

Would Kalbhenn take him? Maybe. As long as he graduated from a reputable school and successfully completes a finishing program, of course.