What is the morale like in your office? Is there lots of turnover currently? Are the working conditions better or worse than 5 years ago?
Morale is a bell curve. We have drivers who think everyday is awesome, and drivers who want to pull their hair out sometimes.
As far as turnover, not really. A lot of the older drivers are beginning to retire because of where they see the company going, which I think newer drivers tend to get taken advantage of and don't know their union rights.
Working conditions are essentially exactly the same except the trucks are now 5 years older.
UPS has been posting a lot of profits because they don't take care of their infrastructure until after an accident happens. At which point they get Liberty Mutual to seek a cash payout to put it under the table with a NDA of some sort.
There's a decent safety culture and unfortunately some management cares more than others. I've seen management take drivers off road for being on the phone, and I've seen management do some absolutely dangerous stuff before. Same with drivers.
So at the end of the day I think the best way to make any driver's day better, (or management because sometimes they end up covering for them if no drivers are available) is to say that you really appreciate what they do for you. Not everyone will take this the same because not many people realize that we deliver in multiple feet of snow, cliff faces, floods, hurricanes, etc, but we do it because we need a check and don't want to lose our jobs or benefits, not necessarily because we believe it's the right thing to do. That said, sometimes it definitely makes a difference in someone's life and I think that's why it takes quite a lot, literally a truck with chains not being able to get up the road going backwards, for example, to get the justification to deliver a package the next day.
