Hire Truckers Podcast

00:00 - 00:12
Aaron Craddock: I can't be in trucking anymore. This is too hard. I can't do it anymore. If you're feeling that, you have to have a why. Like, what is your why for being in this role and being in this industry?

00:13 - 00:43
Aaron Craddock: Otherwise, you'll quit. Welcome to the Hire Truckers Podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Craddock. So growth means continuing to learn, solve problems, and show up with purpose even when you're tired. Q4 is where you build the foundation for January.

00:43 - 00:57
Aaron Craddock: So I'm recording this October 1. It'll come out early next week. But yeah, it's just about entering Q4. I sent a message to our team today around Q4. And then yeah, just wanted to speak just our industry, to our audience, to recruiting leaders.

00:58 - 01:37
Aaron Craddock: I acknowledge just from some conversations I've had yesterday, which was the last day of September, and this morning with multiple fleet leaders around the country, just how exhausting that everyone how exhausted everyone is. And so we came out of three years of the freight recession, just hard for fleets to make a profit. And we saw several fleets even go under. It's just a really hard season. And then you enter this new season of the driver market getting tighter through regulation, rising fuel prices, the biggest story right now.

01:38 - 02:09
Aaron Craddock: But you still have increasing costs to operate just across the board, increasing legal costs. Now recruiters are more in demand, or they weren't in demand as much during the great freight recession. So recruiting talent is a little harder to hold on to. And so there's a lot more recruiter turnover, recruiters having different opportunities moving around. Yeah, so it's just hard season.

02:09 - 02:52
Aaron Craddock: And honestly, this topic kind of hit hard for me just personally because I was up at the office till almost midnight last night with several members of our team. I was just working through Q4 plans, making sure everything is running strong in October, just with marketing campaigns for our different clients and agency partners. And so, yeah, and then just having even more conversations this morning. And so, I was so burned out earlier this afternoon when I'm recording this that I just had to pause. Actually, my heart rate was way higher than it normally is.

02:52 - 03:21
Aaron Craddock: And I was asking my favorite AI friend of the day to like some different recommendations. And it said, go take fifteen minutes, breathe, watch the rain, write down what's happening. And so that's my first thing I want to talk to you guys about today is just pause. And so when you're in exhaustion, if you haven't hit it yet, you probably have multiple times thinking you can't carry on. You might not want to show up.

03:23 - 03:42
Aaron Craddock: Whether you're a recruiter, whether you're director of recruiting, safety, executive, owner of a fleet, whatever your role is. If you haven't hit overwhelm yet, you probably will in Q4. You probably hit it multiple times a week. But the first thing you do is pause. And so what I did this afternoon is I paused.

03:42 - 04:12
Aaron Craddock: It's raining here in Austin. Watched the rain, wrote down just things on my mind where my mind was racing of what all things I needed to get done, and just focused on my breathing. I was able to get my resting heart rate down maybe ten, fifteen beats a minute. So that's number two. Number two, when you're completely overwhelmed, or your team is, either you or encourage your team to just focus.

04:12 - 04:33
Aaron Craddock: And so write down everything urgent for the day, for the week that you can possibly think. Just get it out of your head on another list. And as you're doing this, make sure you don't have incoming text messages, emails, whatever. Again, I'm just saying get away from your desk for fifteen minutes. Don't look at your phone.

04:33 - 04:57
Aaron Craddock: And maybe pen and paper so you're not distracted. Just write everything down. Get it out. And then just choose from that list what is the one thing that before the day is over today, if I didn't get anything else done, what's the most important thing? And do a task too that you know you can knock out in a short period of time and or just the thing you have to get done.

04:57 - 05:08
Aaron Craddock: But just pick one. That's it. You're gonna have way more than that. If you get to the others, that's great. But there's just something that helps you relax and get things done when you're like, this is my one thing.

05:08 - 05:28
Aaron Craddock: I don't have to see forward to the next hurdle. Just this is the one thing I'm going to focus on. So as a recruiter, what's the one driver you need to follow back up with that's supposed to be at orientation on Monday? If you're a director of recruiting, what's the one conversation you need to have with a recruiter? Or who's the one recruiter you can encourage today?

05:30 - 05:57
Aaron Craddock: As a fleet executive, what is that next most important vendor relationship? Different thing you should do just based on the current bottleneck or pain in your business. And so that's where you can kind of get back into momentum. And so just take in fifteen minutes, believe it or not, you'll get more done the rest of the day. Case in point, I'm doing this podcast, knocking it out for next Monday.

05:57 - 06:35
Aaron Craddock: So Momentum starts with complete priority. And then next, I wanted to go into just my experience in Q4 and what it can look like. Because today kicks off October 1, October, November, December, And a lot of times people are needing to hit their P and L numbers, and so they'll cut across the P and L as much as they can. We see it often in recruiting and advertising to recruit truck drivers is often one of the things that can get axed. Because you're like, oh, November, December, not as many drivers are moving.

06:35 - 07:14
Aaron Craddock: And we can play catch up in January. Because January is usually one of the best hiring months of the year. And what people don't realize is it is the Q4 pipeline that is what sets you up for that good January. And so if you... Let's say you're running at a certain run rate for your marketing, advertising, branding to recruit drivers, and you scale that back by 30% in October, November, December, especially November, December is where we see it most commonly where fleets are thinking about that, then how is that going to set you up for the new year?

07:14 - 07:34
Aaron Craddock: Because what typically happens is just fewer drivers are moving when they're home for Thanksgiving. When they're home for Christmas, they're like, oh, if I'm going to make a change. They kind of just pause changes from... Especially in the period between Thanksgiving and New Year's. And then a lot of times you'll have your biggest recruiting class in January.

07:36 - 08:12
Aaron Craddock: Most new drivers excited about joining your vision and your company, if it's a good match for them. And so, yeah, so I would just focus on building. And then that starts with just the seasonality and showing up in Q4. So sometimes what you see in transportation, a frame a lot of people have in Q4, is they go really strong in the first six weeks of Q4. And because I look today, we have seven weeks.

08:13 - 08:53
Aaron Craddock: And then they'll start just drifting towards the end of the year. But what a lot of people don't realize is a good year is just in how you show up is set based on that frame of how you handle Q4. Like, lot of times, Q1 is actually already determined by how you handle your Q4. And so the advice I gave my team this morning was, hey, I know we're gonna show up and push hard for the next six weeks to add as much value as we possibly can to the industry and to our clients and partners. But think about the seven weeks after that.

08:53 - 09:15
Aaron Craddock: I want us thinking about how we show up these six weeks so that we still show up with excellence and push through those last seven weeks of the year. And it's important just, again, how we handle the whole quarter. Just knowing that, yeah, there's going to be some pressures. There's going to be some times that things are hard. And how do we handle it?

09:15 - 09:26
Aaron Craddock: Like, when we feel like we can't get everything done on our plates. And so and so that's what I see recruiting teams is they're just like, how do how can I get to everything on my plate?

09:26 - 09:44
Ginger Craddock: Hiring CDL drivers isn't about more leads. It's about better ones. That's why serious carriers partner with Hire Truckers by Trucking Clicks. We don't sell ads. We bring clear strategy, straight talk, and a relentless focus on quality drivers.

09:45 - 10:14
Ginger Craddock: Even in a tough market, our clients see improved performance month over month by optimizing smarter and making every hiring dollar work harder. For honest insight, sharper targeting and results that you can trust. Visit truckingclicks.com or call (512) 982-0816. Hire Truckers by Trucking Clicks. Clarity, Courage,

10:14 - 10:36
Aaron Craddock: Results. The next thing is just recover. So as you're in a hard season, like a lot of people on our team worked really late last night, as I mentioned. And so it's just how do you recover? You can't like me personally, I had two nights in a row with about four hours of sleep.

10:36 - 11:01
Aaron Craddock: And you just keep pushing at that pace forever without having something give. And so watch out for people on your team. If you're in trucking, which pretty much everybody listening is, just watch out for people around you. It can be your coworkers, your leaders, your subordinates. It can be just anybody in your organization, this three sixty degree view.

11:01 - 11:23
Aaron Craddock: And when possible, when you see them getting overwhelmed, encourage them. Sometimes it is going to take a fifteen minute break. Sometimes it's encouraging them to take a little bit longer than they would have otherwise at lunch. And sometimes it's encouraging them to leave early. And it may seem a little inverse, but if you don't do that, something's going to give.

11:23 - 11:46
Aaron Craddock: And so what I've seen, and a pattern I used to do, is I used to not recover. I would just go, go, go until I crashed. And so crashing sometimes would look like I would show up to work and just my days would be one tenth as productive. Because I was just sitting there staring at the screen. I remember many a day when I was a little less consistent.

11:46 - 12:23
Aaron Craddock: I would push, push, push, and then I would be just not as productive. So it can show up that way. The other way it can show up is just if you have a lot of recruiters, or people on your safety team, or people on your executive team calling in sick, or just not showing up, that's an example of just they're burned out. Because just these industry pressures and things, they just have an effect on everybody. And so look out for everybody around you.

12:24 - 12:44
Aaron Craddock: Make sure you give them just some space and time off to recover. Another good recommendation I've heard recently on a podcast was... Sometimes you might have somebody on your team be like, I can't do this anymore. I quit. Almost jokingly, but halfway realistic.

12:44 - 13:08
Aaron Craddock: They're just like, I'm not going to survive. Or you might have a coworker just complaining and just venting. Just like, I can't keep up this pace. And that's where you say, okay, well, what if you just quit for today? And so sometimes that's what you have to do is you might quit at 05:00 instead of work until 11:00 one night.

13:08 - 13:51
Aaron Craddock: Or yeah, it just looks different. I mean, is around the clock business of trucking freight doesn't quit moving. And you just have to sometimes create some space, know things that for a short period of time might not get back to them as quickly as you would have if you were online and available. But when you show up the next day, and so I kind of knew if I kept pushing until eleven tonight again for the third night in a row, that would probably be bad going into Friday, because I could just feel myself starting to get near that breaking point. Like I know when that breaking point is, for me personally.

13:52 - 14:22
Aaron Craddock: And to where I mean, I probably would have showed up tomorrow, but I wouldn't have been my best. And so instead, I'm going to do my best to leave at 05:30, have date night with my wife tonight, and get in bed at a reasonably decent time to have my first night of eight or nine hours in a while. And again, I'm going do my best. We'll see. And lastly, in seasons like this, let's say you're director of recruiting executive and you just want to quit.

14:22 - 14:37
Aaron Craddock: You're like, I can't be in trucking anymore. This is too hard. I can't do it anymore. If you're feeling that, you have to have a why. What is your why for being in this role and being in this industry?

14:38 - 15:05
Aaron Craddock: Otherwise, you'll quit. I a couple mentors. So seven years ago when I started Craddock Holdings that eventually turned into our primary business being hiretruckers.com. And when started it back then, I had just these what seemed crazy goals at the time seven years ago that seem less crazy now after seven years. But I told some people these goals.

15:05 - 15:19
Aaron Craddock: I was like, here's what I'm gonna build over the next seven years. Here's my vision. And they said, if you don't have a compelling why, you'll quit. And so I met with one mentor or somebody I respected. They told me that.

15:19 - 15:31
Aaron Craddock: The next week, met with somebody else. I told them the same thing. They said, if you don't have a why, you'll quit. And because things are gonna get hard. And then a third person, I think this was in a two week period, said the same thing.

15:31 - 15:48
Aaron Craddock: Like, define your why and enjoy the journey. Because it's not a destination. Trucks are full and you've arrived. For us, it's not. We hit X number of clients and partners in the trucking industry and we've arrived.

15:48 - 16:01
Aaron Craddock: There is no arriving. It's the journey. And that's what you have to enjoy. You have to enjoy the challenges and the ups and the downs. Feel the emotions, feel the hard, feel the ups, feel the downs.

16:01 - 16:20
Aaron Craddock: But ultimately, last point is remember your why. And me, for my why, like when I was jotting it down seven years ago, it was being able to spend more time with my wife. That's why I want to build a company a certain way. And being able to spend more time with my kids. That was before we had kids, but I was thinking ahead.

16:20 - 16:42
Aaron Craddock: Now we have our fourth one on the way. And it was to have flexibility in my work schedule. And then it was, I had a ton of whys. My whys were to invest in people and help them. Like, if we can build a large team in the industry, I can help people get where they want to go with their personal goals, with their professional goals.

16:44 - 17:14
Aaron Craddock: Because when I looked back on my previous job before I started this company, that was what gave me the most satisfaction. It wasn't getting raises or getting promotions. It was helping different people get to their goals. And so that's my why. That's like helping recruiting teams and fleets solve recruiting challenges, get 50 trucks, 100 trucks off the fence in innovative ways that aren't being done.

17:14 - 17:47
Aaron Craddock: You have to constantly innovate, constantly change, constantly solve really, really complex, hard problems. And that's what I'm here for. I'm here to be shoulder to shoulder with fleets, with executives, with partners in our industry, and just to solve complex problems. And then another one of my whys isn't just the internal team that I know we can impact from Hire Truckers, but it is external people. Like, who can we be a light to in the industry and encourage across the industry?

17:47 - 18:04
Aaron Craddock: And so we want to be a voice that speaks life and truth and encouragement. I hope you see that in anyone you interact with on the Hire Truckers team. We're here to work hard, we're here to grow, but we're also here to encourage. And so that's one of my whys. And then drivers.

18:05 - 18:35
Aaron Craddock: Everything in this industry is about the millions of drivers. And so how recruitment marketing plays into that is the right driver at the right fleet. So Ginger talks about this all the time on LinkedIn in her newsletter, but just Fleet Fit. And so that is the right driver with the right fleet and the right culture. And that's what we think, like with the right messaging and the right positioning of fleets, we can get them in front of that right driver.

18:35 - 18:49
Aaron Craddock: And then that right driver can have the amazing career based on what they want. They want to be out for three or four weeks at a time and be over the road, that's great. And then other ones might want to be home weekly and have consistency. Some might want regional. Some might want dedicated.

18:50 - 19:07
Aaron Craddock: And so some of it's the route and lifestyle and time home. And then some of the Fleet fit is just culture. How are they being talked to and respected? And not in a cliche way, like respect, respect, respect, but just genuine. Does the fleet care about them?

19:09 - 19:43
Aaron Craddock: Yeah, just the right fleet, the right driver at the right place where they can stay. Because we don't want to market to a driver and hire truckers and then have them come on at a fleet and then leave thirty days later. We want to make sure that if we're selling a certain position, that it is what the driver may want. And then even in the recruiting room process, we talking about what could go wrong with the job? Like when we're recruiting for people to join Hire Truckers, I say, here are all the things that are going to be challenging about working here.

19:43 - 20:05
Aaron Craddock: Here's how it could go wrong. And the best recruiting teams I see around the country that I've talked to, one of the things they do really well is here are the challenges with the role. Are why drivers have left when they haven't left. Like here, and then here's how maybe we can work together if some of these concerns come up. And they just get ahead of that.

20:05 - 20:25
Aaron Craddock: They don't hide anything. There's radical honesty in the process. And so, yeah, so part of my why is just helping drivers be successful. And everything ultimately needs to be about the driver. Like in the trucking industry, we all support the driver in terms of what we do.

20:25 - 20:49
Aaron Craddock: And we want to make their lives better and more fulfilling as they move everything. Like everything in my office here came on a truck. And so we appreciate you drivers. And driver appreciation should be every day and every time we see a driver, not just the weeks it pops up on our calendar. So remember your why.

20:49 - 21:23
Aaron Craddock: And then also know through the hard seasons in business, that's when you improve and innovate. You don't improve and innovate when things are easy. And so just have that mentality. We're going to be better as a team stronger, more cohesive, more productive, and more unified because of this hard season. And so that's what I encourage you guys to do is just innovate and add value to your team.

21:24 - 21:57
Aaron Craddock: And then I close want with you don't have to carry the whole quarter today. Pause, pick up one thing, and get it done. Keep building the pipeline, give your people room to recover, remember why this work matters, And then what we do helps drivers provide for their families and keeps our country moving. Keep showing up. We need you in the trucking industry, and we appreciate all you do in your role.

21:58 - 22:03
Aaron Craddock: So yeah, I'm thankful for this industry. I'm thankful for our drivers. I hope you guys have a great week.