What Trucking Can Learn From The Airline Industry

What’s the difference between a professional driver and a commercial airline pilot?

Pilots carry human cargo and there’s probably a greater risk of fatality if they crash, but pilots never fly alone and they don’t have the share the sky with endless numbers of idiots that are constantly crowding them and running them off the road. I'd bet that a commercial pilot doing a Toronto-London or New York-London route is pretty similar to a driver doing Toronto-Montreal.

In fact, a top level driver – the kind you’d trust to haul explosives or do oversize flatdeck - probably has qualifications similar to a top level commercial pilot.

The difference is marketing.

The airline industry has done a great job of formalizing different levels of qualification so a pilot can say “I have X designation” instead of just “I have X years on the road”. Trucking could benefit from that as well. Imagine if drivers could have a list of credential letters after their names the way pilots and other professionals do. What would people think then?

As a related question: Why do pilots wear those uniforms?

They could fly the plane just as well in jeans and a t-shirt, but every commercial pilot wears the uniform. I think this is great marketing as well, because it gives the general public much more confidence in the qualifications of the pilot. There’s a sense that, regardless of the pilot’s age, they’ve accomplished something if they’re wearing the uniform.

What would happen if trucking adopted a similar approach? If every driver wore a uniform that said “I’m an experienced, skilled professional”, what would happen to the public’s perception? I'm not just talking about the 'construction blues', here. I'm talking fancy shoulder pads and gold embroidery like the pilots have.

It would send a whole different message to the non-trucking public, wouldn't it.