Celadon to Build Indianapolis Facility to House Its Driver-Training School

This story appears in the April 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

Truckload carrier Celadon Group said it will build a new driver training school near its Indianapolis headquarters in its latest effort to boost recruiting as the industry continues to face a shortage of qualified drivers.

The $5.7 million facility will house the Quality Drivers school, which Celadon started about three months ago.

“Driver recruitment and driver retention is a long-term challenge within the industry,” said Celadon CEO Paul Will. “We realize that establishing the Quality Drivers school and the Celadon training program are the next logical steps in ensuring that we have sufficient numbers of qualified drivers to fill our seats and meet our growth expectations.”

In addition to the new driver-training school, Celadon will also continue to pursue other strategies to deal with the driver shortage, Will told Transport Topics .

“You’ve got to look at different opportunities to bring in drivers to continue to address the issue,” he said. “One of the ways to do it is to bring in experienced drivers, which we do. One of the ways to do it is through acquisition, and another way to do it is going to be through the school.”

Earlier this year, Celadon announced acquisitions of Kelly Logistics and Rock Leasing. During 2012, it bought several others, including Robinson Transport.

Celadon said it expects construction of the new school to be complete in the third quarter. In the meantime, classes are taught at the company’s corporate facility.

The new school will train about 400 to 500 new drivers in its first year, Celadon said.

Other carriers are also looking into offering their own in-house training as a way to attract new drivers, said David Heller, director of the Professional Truck Driver Institute.

“I’ve gotten quite a few phone calls on the issue,” he said, adding that it’s not only the large fleets that are asking about how to offer their own training programs.

“Now it’s starting to trickle down to the midsized carriers as they look for avenues to find drivers,” Heller said. “I’ve heard from several midsized carriers that are investigating the need to begin opening one.”

Some carriers have started their own driver-training programs so drivers can train “in a way that their company has preached for years.”

That’s the case at C.R. England Inc., said Thom Pronk , the company’s corporate vice president of recruiting, training and corporate development.

The truckload carrier, which started its training program in 1989, added its newest school in Richmond, Ind., in January 2012, he said. The company also has driver schools in Burns Harbor, Ind.; Dallas; Fontana, Calif.; and Salt Lake City.

“As a company that’s been around 90-plus years, we’ve learned a lot of things, and we get to train people to drive the way we hope they will behind the wheel of our trucks,” Pronk said.

The schools are also “a big part of our recruiting effort” given the driver shortage, he said. “Certainly we, like everybody else in the industry, are feeling that.”

The company waives tuition expenses for students who go on to work for C.R. England for nine months, Pronk said.

C.R. England, based in Salt Lake City, ranks No. 20 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.

Celadon’s Will said his company’s driver-training program, which offers both classroom work and on-the-road training, is aimed at attracting younger people into the industry.

Along with a driver road course, the building will feature dorm rooms, a cafeteria, a basketball court and other amenities.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard joined Celadon executives to formally announce the new driver school in late March.

Will said Celadon also looked at recruiting drivers through third-party schools but wasn’t very successful with that approach because the company couldn’t be sure what the students had learned.

“We figured we might as well do it ourselves, and at least we know that when they’re through the school, we’ve hopefully taught them the Celadon way,” he said. “Hopefully, the turnover is lower with this group of individuals as well because they’re somewhat contractually obligated for a period of 10 to 12 months to run for us.”

During that timeframe, Celadon recoups the cost of tuition, he said.

Celadon’s minimum experience requirement for new drivers is six months, unless they have completed training through Quality Drivers, the company said.

Celadon ranks No. 44 on the TT 100.