Friday, October 15, 2010

Income Opportunities

There are no shortage of opportunities at this company to earn a little extra income here and there. Ben and I are working on two at this time: the health incentive and driver recruiting.
The health incentive deals with health, obviously. Specifically, if a driver logs his/her diet and caloric intake for the day, an exercise log of working out at least three times a week, or turns in doctors annual exams or proof of preventative care, points are earned. One hundred points are awarded for each three months of logging; once 600 points are earned, you can redeem them for a sport bottle, gym bag, exercise clothing or $400 cash. Can you guess which one we're going for?
As detailed in our “Exercise Endeavor” post, we are working hard at keeping active throughout the week getting exercise. This health incentive is the extra motivation needed to keep up our routine! At present, we are only logging our workouts, but may add the other options at a later date. It's kind of nice to earn $400 a year for just exercising!
The driver recruiting incentive is where the big bucks come in; for every experienced driver we successfully recruit from another company (i.e. they become employed by our company and are dispatched on their first load), we earn $1000. We could potentially earn more income recruiting drivers than we could in driving! For every $1000/driver recruiting bonus we earn, that is 3 days less we need to be on the road. If we get even just 10 drivers/bonuses, that is one month less we need to be on the road!
We are targeting drivers of our former company, CRST, because we know how poorly run they are and how awful the drivers are treated. If you remember my post about the differences between the old and new companies, you could see how we want to convert, if you will, drivers from CRST to our present company. To date, we have contacted over two dozen CRST drivers; though we have yet to see the bonus. Some of them found other companies to switch over to, and some—no matter how much we tell them “It's better on this side”—are just reluctant to change. This company even offers a $5000 sign-on bonus for teams and 48 cents per mile if the drivers have their HazMat certification. To further give incentive to our recruits, we are offering them $100 of our own money if they get signed on with the company; a 10% investment from our $1000 bonus is worth it to guarantee they apply and are hopefully employed! (Once we receive the bonus on our payroll, we send out the $100)
When we found out about the program, we got decals put on both sides of our truck as well as a stack of promo packs including applications for new drivers. On our last hometime, we made up business cards advertising the $5000 bonus and our phone number; anytime we see a CRST truck we either talk to the drivers directly or leave our card in their window. Once we gather their basic information, we forward that on to our recruiter, Rhonda. She then makes contact to sell them on all the other great aspects of the company. It has been a little bit of a comfort zone breaker, walking up to complete strangers and trying to deliver a pitch successfully. What drives us is the bonus, obviously, but we also really believe in what we're selling: a professional company to work for, and one that treats you as such as well.
If you don't mind, keep this endeavor in your prayers! Like I mentioned—the more recruits we get employed into the company, the less time we need to be on the road!

1 comment:

Jessica said...

LOVE the "free money" opportunities/incentives! God is with you and will help you guys fight down that debt!

If you decide to track daily meals (and don't have special forms to fill out) I know that Sparkpeople.com and myfitness.com both have (free!) tracking services - it's also neat to be able to see how much of each vitamin/minerals you are getting.