When Tim Eckhardt, Sr. Director of Safety for Dot Transportation, joined the company 10 years ago, the company’s hiring tools consisted of people, paper, pencil, email, and fax. All interviews were in person and when
applicants stepped into the office, a big stack of papers to sign greeted them at the door.
The manual processes worked, but they weren’t easy or convenient for applicants or Dot employees, and they wasted a lot of valuable time.
Then COVID hit. With it came the realization that Dot Foods was going to need to grow the fleet quickly, and the company would need a new recruiting tool to reduce days-to-hire. That’s when they started using Tenstreet.
Dot Transportation achieved its time-to-hire goal and then some, including an improved applicant experience, connected departments now aligned with recruiting, and thousands of labor hours reallocated.
CONNECTING TEAMS AND IMPROVING VISIBILITY
At Dot Transportation, the HR team makes first contact with applicants, the operations team conducts interviews and approves hires, and the safety team is responsible for compliance, ensuring driver qualification files (DQFs) are complete.
Before bringing on Tenstreet, those teams were siloed and didn’t have visibility into where an applicant was in the hiring process.
That changed once Tenstreet was in place.
“Hiring a driver is complicated,” Eckhardt said. “There’s a lot of external factors you have to work through. Tenstreet gives us the ability to see where we are with each candidate. For instance, are we waiting on medical? Are we waiting for the background check? Tenstreet connected our departments, so everyone is fluent in the entire driver-hiring process. The visibility is awesome.”
SAVING THOUSANDS OF HOURS WITH DQF AUTOMATION
As the leader of the team in charge of compliance, Eckhardt’s contribution to reducing days-to-hire was finding a way to organize DQFs and simplify the process. Tenstreet helped in this regard, too.
“The automations Tenstreet has, — whether it’s a PSP, background checks, MVRs — all of that can be sent out and taken care of with the touch of a button. Then you have visibility when it comes back, too,” Eckhardt said. “Being
able to have all of the initial hiring files in one spot helps us make sure we’re 100% compliant, which is our standard. It’s saved thousands of hours for us, and now employees have the ability to do other things.”
Instead of manually handling DQFs, Eckhardt’s team can focus on working more proactively and conducting audits to make sure the files are compliant.
The Human Resources (HR) team is saving time, too. “Instead of chasing paperwork and signatures, they have more time to work with the applicants, schedule the interviews, and make more calls,” Eckhardt explained.
SAVING MORE TIME (AND PAPER) WITH INTEGRATIONS
Although DQF files are collected in Tenstreet, Dot Transportation uses a fleet safety platform to house them.
“We used to keep paper files for all our drivers. We would have to print them all, audit them all, and scan them back into Idelic. It would take hours to do just one,” Eckhardt said. “All we have to do now is drag and drop the files to move them over into our compliance system.”
Dot Transportation will hire roughly 450 drivers this year. On the conservative side, if the integration saves the safety team two hours per applicant, that’s an additional 900 hours saved, which is the equivalent of 22.5 40-hour weeks. And that’s just one integration.
“Tenstreet set the stage for us to look at other systems that can help improve how we do things, especially on the safety and compliance side,” Eckhardt said. “It’s helped digitalize our entire safety management system.”
INVESTING IN CREDIBILITY AND GROWTH
These days, Dot Transportation’s applicant pipeline is robust: Each week the company gets about 300 applicants.
“I think brand recognition helps,” Eckhardt commented. “Tenstreet is well known in the industry — they are the top.”
Beyond Tenstreet’s positive reputation in the industry, Eckhardt said the company’s commitment to continuous growth and improvement makes it an ideal partner.
“We know Tenstreet has a long-term vision and is going to continue to invest in their product. They’re going to continue to grow. And they’re going to continue to make it better,” Eckhardt said. “We want a vendor that we can count on; one we know is going to support us but is also going to grow with us.”
ABOUT DOT TRANSPORTATION
Dot Transportation, Inc. (DTI) is the transportation affiliate of Dot Foods, the largest food industry redistributor in North America. DTI is responsible for shipping 120,000 dry, refrigerated, frozen, and 4th temp products in 2,900 trailers — all while maintaining a 99% ontime delivery rate.
