Building Better Drivers: Apprenticeship Programs in Trucking with Dave Harrison from Fastport

In this episode, Lindsey talks with Dave Harrison, the Executive Director of Fastport.

Dave shares his diverse background—from military service to teaching and trucking—before detailing how he helped develop a military engagement program at JB Hunt Transport that incorporates apprenticeships. He outlines the advantages of these programs as effective tools for recruiting and retaining employees, emphasizing their benefits for employers such as liability protection, enhanced training standards, and access to resources without incurring costs. The conversation highlights the importance of fostering diverse participation, with a notable percentage of veterans and minorities, and encourages employers to collaborate with industry associations and government entities to successfully implement apprenticeship programs.

Understanding Registered Apprenticeships
Explanation of registered apprenticeships as a recruiting and retention tool
Benefits of apprenticeships for employers, including liability protection and improved training standards
Process of implementing an apprenticeship program
Collaboration with industry associations and government agencies

Dave Harrison - dave.harrison@fastport.com
www.fastport.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-harrison-542879a0/

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The Next Generation in Trucking Association is a non-profit trade association who is engaging and training the next generation of trucking industry professionals by partnering with high schools, community/technical colleges and private schools to connect to and launch training programs around North America.

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Transcript

Before we hit the road on today's discussion, I want to express our sincere gratitude to our sponsors. Without their support, this podcast wouldn't be possible. So a big shout out to our investors, Advanced Training Systems, Averitt, Ford Air, Walmart, XPO Logistics, and the National Transportation Institute. Thank you for your commitment in advancing the trucking community. So buckle up and get ready for an insightful journey into all things next gen, tracking your road to the future. Hey, welcome to NGT Talks. I have an awesome, amazing person on the show today, Dave Harrison. Thank you for being on NGT Talks to talk about this awesome, amazing topic. Apprenticeships. 

Awesome and amazing. I have a lot to now the buildups there. I have a lot to live up to now, Lindsey. Okay, let me stretch, let me get ready. Here we go. 

So first though, I want to hear, Dave, how you got into the trucking industry. What was your career path? 

Oh, how I got into the trucking industry. That's a long, strange trip, like many things. So, as you know, I was a United States army infantry combat leader, nco. And I got hurt pretty significantly doing something I'd done a thousand times before. My current goal at that time was retire, you know, and I was doing pretty well in my military career. And that's all I really thought about and I wasn't expecting to do anything else. I finished my. I finished my education, became a school teacher, high school football coach. As you may know, school teachers, then and now don't make a lot of money. And high school football coaches don't make a lot of money, at least not unless you live in Texas. And then you can make a lot of money if you get in the right spot. 

But so had some family situations change and all of a sudden I had to make money, more money. And you know, this is many years ago, so the landscape is a little different. And so I had to change my folks and I ended up, long story short, I ran, started a marketing company and then I ended up selling some advertisement, doing some other things. And I bought into a restaurant, had no idea what the heck I was doing in the restaurant, but was successful to the point where somebody owed me some money, Lindsay. And they couldn't pay me, so they gave me a truck. Oh, the Peterbilt. 

Okay. 
S

With a 550 cat in it. I didn't know anything about the trucking industry. I didn't know anything about running a truck, I guess. Yeah. And you know, in hindsight, maybe I should have punched him in the face four or five times, but I didn't so I figured I can figure this out too. So I got my own authority, started running that truck and that led to another truck and led to another. So I ended up with five trucks and I eventually got my own CDL license because the first time you got to go recover a truck halfway to the country and pay somebody else to do it, that would change your mind about the truck. So later that led to me going to work for a company called JB Hunt Transport. 

And I worked for them for a number of years and wore different hats, did different things with them. And that eventually led me to. I'd written a paper about the aging of the driving workforce called, you know, the Silver Tsunami. And I wanted to. And J.B. Hunt hadn't trained anyone without experience since the 90s. And so this is 2014. I'd written the paper in 2012. And I want to do a military engagement program where we're hiring veterans and transitioning service members and bringing them in and put them to work. Seemed like the smartest thing for me, for us to do. And so they bought into it, asked me what I needed to do it and turned me loose. I'm grateful for that. So we had a mission to hire 10,000 veterans in five years. 

And that led me to how I got into registered apprenticeship. Because I didn't know anything about registered apprenticeship, Lindsey, nothing. I thought it was for bricklayer and pipe fitters and I thought it was only for unions. And so I sit on a sojourn. I went to the VA first and after I sat down with them for three and a half hours and realized what all they wanted just to do an apprenticeship, let me back up in order. I'm hiring veterans and a veteran in a registered apprenticeship program can get draw a monthly housing allowance, stipend. That's their GI Bill benefit they earned. 

So I'm like, you know, if I'm hiring veterans and I want to train them and I want to keep them and I'm claiming to be vet ready, vet friendly and all these things, then I should provide them the GI Bill benefit they earned absolutely right. So, you know, I'm like, okay, we're going to do this. So that's, that's really what got me into it, is I can do this by being an apprenticeship provider. So then I started studying. So 14 months later wrote the first national program standard for truck driver. There had been previous standards, state level programs. Werner was the very first one. I don't want to take credit. I'm not taking credit for the very first one ever done. But I did write the first national. 

And then so because we had brought several elements from the transportation industry together with the Department of Labor in ways the Department of Labor had not been able to do, the idea of industry intermediates were kind of born and that kind of engagement. And then Department of Labor reached out and said, hey, look, we would like to expand that kind of capacity and role because it produces, I mean it helps people basically to cut it down real small. You're getting a real long answer to your question. 

Yeah, I love it though. This is before things about you. 

Yeah. So. And then, so I. So that led me to the current role I'm in that I've been in since 2016, which the executive director of workforce development and government programs and other things with the Department of Labor on a contract. And this has been through three of those and for transportation, distribution and logistics and supply chain. 

Okay, so now you have registered apprenticeships in transportation. 

Yes. 

And you are the preferred intermediary for transportation, distribution and logistics for. With the Department of Labor. 

The only intermediary. So that might be the preferred one. 

Yeah, yeah, the preferred and only. Wonderful. Okay, so I'm an employee. 

You don't need another game in town when the game is working. 

So that's right. Okay, so let me ask you this. I'm an employer and I've heard of apprenticeship. I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm curious. Tell me what is an apprenticeship and what's the best way go about starting one? 

Well, first off, it's not going to cost you anything more than what you are or you're willing to spend to get high quality trained professional workforce. That's first thing. It doesn't need to be complicated. I know it seems complicated to many people and you can hear different stories from different people, even people who've been in rest your apprenticeship at state levels for years and all those are a thousand stories out there. When I say this, I'm going to give my bona fides right here. We have facilitated just short of 27,000 people into transportation related apprenticeships since early 2017. Across this spectrum. Again, I'm going to add more to this. 

We are aligned and co sponsored with the American Trucking association, with the Truckload Carrier association, with the Trucking alliance, with Next Generation in Trucking, with the Minority Professional Truckers association, with the National Punjabi Trucking, North American Punjabi Trucking Association. I can go on. You name it. The Food Industry Management Association. I'm going and we align this to bring together a standard of training post CDL so that both government and private industry could say this is what a professional safe truck driver looks like. And that relying for federal benefits when they're available mainly state level benefits. But it also can even align for lowering of insurance costs which it has done in some cases doesn't always work but it gives you. It gives somebody leverage to do things. 

When I say it's easier than you think because of the way We've overlaid this 7080 page documents already been written. Lindsay, you know this. You signed one of them because NextGen Trucking is a co sponsor for a national program for registered apprenticeship. Did you have to write anything? 

No, but I read it and it looks amazing. I learned a lot, I feel like from it. 

So we write it, we hand it to you. You read every single part of it because you're smart and you don't sign anything without knowing what it is. You signed it, we signed it, we're co sponsored together. How much work do you have to do on that? 

Not. Not a whole lot. 

Who does most of the heavy lifting? The heavenlifting has to be done Fastport Martin, the reporting everything same for employers. An employer wants to. If you're in the transportation sector now I can't talk all industries and everything else but if you do, if it flies, if it floats, if it rolls or some rails we're doing something with it. Or we can do something with it and we can make it easier for you to hire people and for easier for you to keep them. Because all registered apprenticeship really is. Is a recruiting retention tool. And I'll say again, it's a recruiting retention tool that should you should not cost you anything more than what you are or you're willing to spend to get professional safe workforce. 

So what do you recommend? If do you recommend? So somebody has a brand new CDL driver they come, we've hired them, they're coming to work for me. You recommend putting them through an apprenticeship program? 

Well, yeah, for several reasons. First off let's just think liability. 

Okay. 

Okay. Those of us who are aware we know that within that nuclear verdicts abound. Now doesn't it's not a get out of jail free card or anything else. But if you've got a standard of training that you can show that this person has met the conses of that everyone else has to meet that the Department of Transportation, the Department of Labor and exceeds the DOD an American trucking association, the Truckload Care association, the trucking alliance which is More about safety than anybody you know. And all these others, including next generation in trucking, all have said, this is the standard for a truck driver. This is the standard. If you have that in your hand, at least you can argue weren't negligent in how we trained. We trained to this standard. They met this standard. 

It's not as if they didn't know how to do it and how to do it correctly because we didn't show them. We did show them. Maybe they didn't do it, but we as an organization are, weren't negligent in making sure they knew how to do it, you know, and that's one of the reasons you'd want to do it. I mean, if I am taking people with limited experience right now, I guarantee you I'm putting through registered apprenticeship program with a documented training cycle that is not just my own. It's something somebody else is doing and a lot of other people are doing. So I can use that in the comparison and say, look, this is an accepted practice. This is accepted training standard. 

Right? 

Right. And so, and I would do that in a heartbeat. The other thing is, again, we've literally had companies that have been able to hire people they couldn't hire before because experience requirements, whatever, because of insurance, that have literally taken that work process and those things and said, look, the three federal agencies and all these, all the industry associations have said this is, this is the standard. This is what, and if you want me to be around as a business, I got to bring people in. And I, and I would rather grow my own and get, grow to my standard and teach them what I want as opposed to teach somebody to correct bad habits. When, when you say when. 

If you're looking for a way to train people to be what you want them to be, you need to be able to do that with your own touch on it. And if you can train to a standard that people have agreed upon. There you go. Here's the other thing about this. We've, we've seen this empirically and even in over the road type jobs, starting with where retention goes up because people feel like they're part of something. Okay. And, and I've got one employer that they literally just, they have a magnetic sticker they put on the side of the truck and they call it their goal program. They don't call it apprenticeship program. I don't care what you call it. You can call it the flying duck program. I Don't care. I don't care. 

You just meet the guidelines that I, which are very minimal because the way we manage it and all that. I don't care what you call it. They call it their goal program. And they literally have somebody fairly high up in the food chain, you know, here you go. You're part of our goal program. We appreciate you. And then, and when they finish it, they get a national credential from the Department of Labor. 

Amazing. 

That comes through us. We send it to the employer and we like it when a VP or somebody up in training or somebody's safety comes out and says, hey Jill Snuffy, you've done great. You've graduated our goal program and you're, you've proven to be an asset. We are really glad you're here. And here's your national certificate. And guess what? You get to put this on your truck. And they put it on truck that's over the road. That's over the road. And they, and they did that. And within three months, 20 uptake on retention. And all we do here is we try to make it as easy for employers and associations to garnish to get candidates they wouldn't see otherwise. Yeah, because that's the other thing. You can register apprenticeship provider. You can pull. 

Candidates will be going to the DOL to the apprenticeship.gov site looking for jobs, looking for career opportunities. And they will see your jobs posted that pull from the nlx. You don't have to do anything. Once you get it set up, it pulls. You don't have to go change racks and do all that stuff. It's there, it's like candy. It's free. 

Because you have a registered apprenticeship program. 

Just because you have a registered apprenticeship program. We do a lot of work for veterans. 21% of our nearly 27,000 people in rest your apprenticeship are veterans. Now if you know anything about. There's no more than about 3% of the population that's ever served in uniform, less than 1% that's ever served in combat. Okay. So having 21 is a really strong number and we're really, we're happy with that. But over 50% are minorities. And if you look at what is classified as diversity, inclusion populations by age and any other, we're at over 70%. And that's not an accident. It is not. It's because of the way that we open the aperture. 

If because you open aperture the United States military, you open apture the most diverse organization in the planet that Talent, because they can show up on time, they can pass the drug screen, they can do all those things, and they have the soft skills that a lot of people don't have coming in. And so. But once you hire one of those people, their word is gold. To somebody else they served with their word means more than a million dollars advertising. So they tell somebody else they come, and that person may not look like them, it may not be where they were from, but they trust each other. 

Yeah. 

And that person, though, however, tells their cousin from the south side of Chicago, who never even thought about driving a truck, says, man, you can do this. 

Absolutely. 

You can do this. Come on. 

Yeah. And I'm going to train you. I think that apprenticeship represents celebrating people and it's celebrating diversity. It's celebrating how you want to take a person and build them up, build up their skill set, invest in them, and hope to have a long career with your company. And I think we all need to celebrate people. This week is National Apprenticeship Week, and we want people, we want companies to consider registered apprenticeships and for them to contact fastport. How can they get a hold of you, Dave? And we're going to have your contact information in the show notes or who should they reach out to if they want to start an apprenticeship? 

Reach out to me. My contact information, show notes. You just reach out to me and we will get you help. I got. I've got an amazing team here. If they're talking to you about building an apprenticeship, they know what they're talking about. Okay. And it won't always be me because I'm busy and. But I have people, I have a couple people around me to talk you through. Just about anything exists and they can't. They get with me. All right? And if we can't, if we don't know the answer, we can usually figure one out. This is our mantra. Simple, scalable and sustainable. It's not simple. We make it that way. And when we make it that way, we want it to be scalable and sustainable. And we don't try to take a square peg and pound it around hole. 

I don't care if you're union, I don't care if you're not union. I don't care if you're small. Small carrier, I don't get a large carrier. I don't care if you're driving class B, class A, I don't care if you're rail, I don't care if you're flying, I don't care if you do all of it. I don't care. We do it all with companies like that right now and we can make it fit. You tell me. Oh, it won't work for us. Really? Challenge me. Let me see. Prove it to me because I bet you we can find a way where world there are too many things you can gain from this. You go on the employer training provider list just by being a registered apprenticeship program. You may not get. We owe dollars right now by being a registered apprentices program. 

But that doesn't mean you won't next year or you won't six months. But I'll tell you won't if you don't get on the list. 

Right. 

I never danced at a, with anybody at a dance that I didn't go to. So if I don't get in the front door and ask somebody. I never got a dance when I was young. You know what I mean? Okay. It's a no until you ask. And once you get arrest your apprenticeship provider list. Now there's tax breaks, there's all sorts of things that are available you didn't have before. You're training somebody now and you're not getting those extra things when you could have them. And it didn't cost you anything else. I don't know. I'm not a smart guy, but why not? Because, hey, another way I should have said this rather bad. There's no charge for what we do for you. 

Absolutely. 

Department of labor pays us to do what we do. Not only do we provide that service to get you started, we provide ongoing technical assistance throughout the entire process for everything and everybody and every you do. We were going to facilitate it. We're going to make your life easier through the whole thing. And that's not going to cost you anything. None of that. We're going to help you get your GI bill set up mha, which is the most difficult thing. And that's not apprenticeship problem, that's VA's problem. But we're going to navigate those things with you, show you how to do it. Not going to cost you anything. I'm going to have somebody that is with you every month, every week or every day that you need to. 

And as we updating information and you're going to, you're going to give us the few minimal things we have to get you taken care of and keep everything square. And that will happen. And you can always pick up the phone and say, dave, I don't know what the heck's going on. And I will say, all right, let's talk. All right, so no charge from us. You're getting candidates, you're getting resource candidates. You can post your jobs nationally, get, you get access to. You'll get tax credits that are available to you. You also get access to possible funding through dollars and other assets that you couldn't get otherwise. You build a program that gives you a training that gives you some measure of liability protection. You also give a program that will help your retention. 

All you have to do is make it a community based concept where people feel like they belong to something. 

What I miss Lindsay, it's a no brainer. I think that anybody and everybody should research doing an apprenticeship program. Reach out to fastport and start it. Start training your drivers and diesel mechanics and freight brokers to you know, let's do it. Let's train our workforce. And this is the answer. And Dave, thank you for all you've done. Thank you for what you all do and serving and supporting the military and supporting veterans. This is an exciting opportunity that our workforce has to invest in people. 

Lindsey, my goal is and always has been since I've met you that before I retire you and I are going to have the ball rolling that we're going to fix the skills gap in least this segment in the American workforce. We will have a clear path for youth to work in space, in transportation and to do so in a way that makes sense for them and the country. I do. Lindsey, I appreciate you talk to you. Yeah went long and anything I do to help you or anything else or anybody else within this space or anything else and it's helping a veteran or veterans and then through transportation you give me a call. I'm pretty, I'm. They say I'm a softie when it comes to that. So I tend to see to volunteer my time when I shouldn't. 

So if it literally going to help veterans or something like that or especially youth trying to get into programs or things like that where there have been barriers, if there's anything we can do, we will try. So don't hesitate to reach out. My contact information will be available. No charge for what we do. And we will do everything we can to help you. 

Incredible. Well Dave, thank you and we appreciate fastport and your commitment to next gen trucking and building up our future workforce. So thanks for all you do. 

Thank you for your time Lindsey and thank you for giving me the opportunity love to help anybody we can.