STPS

Maximizing Payroll Data

Do you archive your payroll data?

Here’s one reason why you should.  If the right data is collected you can learn more about your business and make better decisions.

For example, what mileage information do you collect?  Some companies pay all miles and some pay loaded miles and there are many other ways to do it.  If you can collect the hub miles you can compare the hub miles to your billed miles and get a better idea of which runs have your deadhead miles.

Many trucking companies look at total deadhead miles. But looking at them by run or by the round trip will provide help you make a better, more informed decision about that lane’s profitability.

There are many other non-payroll-related reasons to mine this data:

Besides paying your drivers, there are many other operational uses for the data you collect.  In the last post, I talked about deadhead miles by the run.  In this post, we’ll cover detoured drivers.

By detoured, I don’t mean construction detours.  If you can record hub miles try sending two different teams or drivers on the same roundtrip and check the hub miles on the trip reports when they get back.  It’s not unusual to see as much as a five percent difference if you picked the right drivers to sample.  That five percent on a 5,000-mile roundtrip is 250 miles of extra diesel and maintenance for your equipment.  That’s a lot to be giving away even if you only pay PC Miler miles so the driver isn’t getting paid any extra!

A truck with team drivers could do this every week, which would put 13,000 unnecessary miles on your truck and use over 2,000 gallons of diesel for no reason that benefits the company.  When you ask them about the higher miles, they’ll say something like their route has better roads or less traffic.  Those may be good reasons for the driver but as long as it is your money to pay for the truck, that’s your decision to make.

Here's one more use for payroll data, besides paying people of course...

Does your trucking company recognize drivers that reach certain mileage milestones?  If you are tracking it each pay period, you can have a running total at your fingertips.  Congratulating a driver for topping a million miles in the company newsletter or meeting makes everyone feel good.  It’s pretty easy to know exactly when he or she gets to that mark if you are keeping track the whole way.  If you’re not keeping track of the miles driven, the driver will probably think they get there sooner than they do.  You can also post a miles-driven leaderboard so everyone can see who is getting close to another milestone.

I know this doesn’t save a company from financial ruin but it’s a really easy way to recognize a driver for a well-earned achievement.

Do you have any other non-payroll uses for your payroll data?  Please comment on them below.

Written by Gentry DeWinter

Gentry graduated from Grand Valley with a Bachelor’s Degree in multi-media journalism. She is an artist who loves videography, and writing, and hopes to one day own multiple dogs.

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