Blog

It stands to reason, but a recent University of Pittsburgh study demonstrated that truck drivers don’t perform at the wheel nearly as safely when they are financially burdened. The university presented the study and accompanying data to the Pitt Ohio trucking company, in the Strip District, who immediately worked to establish emergency savings accounts for the drivers.

“Many of our workers had never had a regular systematic savings program where they were always setting money aside,” said Brian McGuire, the vice president and human resources manager at the company.

Pitt Ohio is trying to help financially burdened truckers.

In 2016, the company kicked off a payroll savings program that it dubbed the Rainy Day Fund.

This program worked to encourage employees to extract a minimum of $19 per week from their check and place it in the company’s credit union. Furthermore, the company made it so every employee who regularly saved without any withdrawals would get an additional $56 from the company after 26 weeks. They would get this boost again in another 26 weeks. With the $112 gift from Pitt Ohio, anybody who followed through on the program, would have saved $1,100 by the end of the year.

“That way if they have a car repair, they need a hot water tank, or whatever happens, they will have that ready access money,” Mr. McQuire said.

Pitt Ohio decided to start this program after it got involved with this study at the University of Pittsburgh. They fully participated in the research which was conducted by professor Carrie Leana. In her study, she’s found that anxiety about debt and financial health dramatically hampers productivity. Not only that it negatively impacts the overall health of employees. Subsequently, this can severely harm a company’s balance sheet.

Leana has examined workers from several disparate industries and fields. This includes medical professionals and restaurant servers. The big takeaway from all her research and in-depth interviews is that if people are stressed about money their job performance suffers.

What do you all think? Is this true for you? Should our nation’s heavy haulers get better compensation?