Dressing appropriately when at a customer’s facility can mean the difference between a new contract for freight services, or the termination of freight services.
For the most part, when you arrive at the customer, you are the face of your company and how you present yourself will reflect on your company. If you arrive neat and well kept, your company looks good. If you look like you just crawled out from under a dumpster, well, you can imagine what the customer will think.
Let’s say, ABC company is looking to move their freight business to a new trucking company. You, as a driver for 123 trucking arrive to pick up a load at the same time as a driver from 987 freight systems. You’re wearing a clean shirt, clean pants, hair combed, facial hair trimmed, and a ball cap with your company’s name on it. The driver from 987 arrives with cut off jeans, a ripped T-shirt that says “I’m with stupid”, a ratty beard with parts of his last meal still stuck in it, a dirty, greasy ball cap with some racial slur on it and smelling like his last shower was a few days ago. If you were the shipper, which company would you prefer to do business with? The bottom line here is…. You are a professional, so why not look like one. It can mean the difference between getting a lucrative freight contract, or potentially losing one.
