Truck driving has become a dream career for many people in Canada. Truck driving is an adventurous and well-paying job. It’s so rewarding that everyone wants to give it a try. However, like any other job, this also needs specific personality traits and it is not an easy gig. Top 4 Qualities Of A Great Truck Driver
All truck drivers have many responsibilities, imagine being responsible for transporting the essential food items to hundreds and thousands of people around the country. These responsibilities make the drivers develop certain traits that help them perform their job better.
Here are a few qualities that you will need and find common in all truck drivers.
Responsible
One of the most eminent traits of a good and experienced driver is that they are very responsible. Carriers and the customers are counting on them to deliver the shipments safely and on time.
People also need to trust them to not cut any corners. If you gain the reputation of breaking the company’s rules or violating traffic rules, your carriers or customers will not be able to trust you.
A good driver should always abide by the rules, follow traffic laws, meet deadlines, and deliver goods in their promised condition. With responsible drivers, employers can sit back and relax knowing their goods are in good hands and customers can relax knowing their orders are with dependable people.
Self- disciplined
Although trucking provides you freedom from confinements of 9 to 5 jobs and traveling to new routes can be exhilarating. However, this can also give rise to many problems that a person working in a closed office environment may never come across.
There is no on-site supervision providing you directorates, this means you should be able to determine your next task yourself and decide on the method to accomplish them. There are no human resource or mechanical support offices next to you to solve your problems. This means you have to figure out the solution yourself.
That is why one of the crucial traits for truck drivers to have is being self-disciplined. When the drivers are on their own on the roads, they need to work independently by breaking down bigger responsibilities into smaller tasks, dealing with logistics problems, and also solving any mechanical issue that can occur with the truck.
Focused
Sometimes it gets challenging to stay attentive during long working hours, but it is of utmost importance for the truck driver to remain focused and vigilant all the time. Truck driver need to focus on a multitude of things all at once, such as their own vehicle, people and drivers sharing the road, and dangerous weather or road conditions.
Dangerous situations are not always visible in car wrecks or swerving vehicles. Sometimes, it can only be a peculiar smell that is indicating a mechanical problem in your vehicle, or a vail of emergency sirens indicating the approach of emergency vehicles, or the vibration under the tires asking you to slow down on the bad road.
Therefore, truck drivers need to be focused and attentive all the time. The slight negligence from the drivers can cause lasting damage to both the drivers themselves and other drivers on the road. Hence truck drivers should not push themselves beyond limits and take regular breaks to freshen up and regain energy. This decreases the chances of accidents and blunders in performing their logistic jobs.
Communication Skills
Many people assume truck driving to be a job done in solitude, but it is not true. Yes, you will be spending a large amount of time all by yourself. But you will also be needed to interact with your boss. Dispatch workers, customers, dock workers, and fellow drivers on a regular basis. This means having a set of communication skills can be handy.
Maintaining well-balanced communication becomes even difficult when you start enjoying staying alone, as in the truck driver’s case. So, as a driver, you need to work even harder with your communication skills. As it is a golden trait to have.
Customers not only appreciate when you deliver their shipments on time. And in good condition but also when you communicate with them politely and effectively. Truck drivers are also customer service representatives in the sense. They are the people customers will interact with face to face on a regular basis.