First, a bit about Lanefinder for the uninitiated. What is Lanefinder? We asked and answered just that question a few months ago in an interview with Lanefinder’s head of marketing, Benjamin Rehmie. Here's a snippet that sums it up:
...In the Lanefinder app, truck drivers set their expectations, experience, enter their zip code and… that’s it. They either find jobs they know they’re qualified for right away, or they wait to get notified by our app when matching jobs become available.
A few things have changed since our March interview, primarily that companies no longer have to pay for drivers that apply to their jobs on the Lanefinder app. That’s a big deal, because all driver leads coming from Lanefinder are pre-qualified before being able to apply to the position. In other words, companies on Lanefinder receive pre-qualified driver leads (ones that are interested in their job) for free.
Why are we so excited about Lanefinder? Well, to set things straight… Yes, we do have a horse in this race. YouCruit serves as the back-end platform for all the companies that want to add their jobs on Lanefinder. It is through setting up your jobs and setting up your hiring areas and operating in YouCruit that your jobs become available on the Lanefinder app. Doing that is just as free as the driver leads from Lanefinder. However, we wouldn’t have such a tight relationship with Lanefinder if we didn’t believe in the tremendous value that their technology brings to drivers and companies alike.
How and why is Lanefinder onboarding 90+ carriers per week?
The main reason for this article was to answer the question - Is Lanefinder the next big thing in trucking? That question would sound loaded if it weren’t for the fact that Lanefinder recently onboarded 90 carriers in just five working days. You can see the post they made about it on their Facebook here.
Well, apart from the low barrier to entry, the friendly price tag of $0, and the fact that the deal is almost a no-brainer, companies are drawn to it for a few reasons.
-
Additional exposure, for free - Many companies want to diversify where their jobs are seen. For some companies with smaller budgets, having their job on Lanefinder means an additional channel on which they’re seen. It’s also a great way to receive a steady trickle of candidates over time as the app continues to grow and more drivers across the country start to use it.
-
Interested & pre-screened leads - Unlike many other driver sourcing methods, the drivers coming from Lanefinder are quality. Before applying to your job, these drivers need to fill out their driver profiles, find your job, and express their interest. Competitive positions fare better but if your job’s top notch, you should have nothing to worry about.
-
Drivers are always within your hiring area - The hiring areas you set up inside of YouCruit are automatically synced and uploaded to the Lanefinder app. Such precise control over your hiring areas is unmatched anywhere else, and allows you to be confident that each applicant is worth your time.
-
Drivers on Lanefinder can find out more about your job - More than on most job boards, anyway. In order for a driver to match with your position, their profile (which is their preferences & their experience) needs to fit with what you’re offering. Drivers can find out your operating area, pet policy, rider policy, drug testing policy and more before deciding whether to apply.
With these features and benefits in place, it’s no surprise that carriers across the country are flocking to join Lanefinder. It’s a deal that’s hard to pass up on, especially when getting your jobs on Lanefinder means getting a fully functional Applicant tracking system (ATS) to go with it.
** Famous Ice Road Trucker, Alex Debogorski reminisces about the time he spent with the Lanefinder crew at MATS 2019. **
Where does YouCruit come in?
The profiles of all the drivers that apply to your jobs in Lanefinder will be available for you to view and manage in YouCruit. YouCruit, being an ATS made for the trucking industry, comes with a variety of features that make handling recruiting easier for you and your team.
The idea is that once applications start coming in, you need a good platform on which to manage, sort, and contact those drivers. Let’s put it this way: you could spend hours sending emails, making spreadsheets, and tracking your applicant load manually… or you could use YouCruit. With YouCruit, you can:
-
Sort your candidates by hiring stages and other filters
-
Message drivers directly without opening emails
-
Collaborate with your team and stay updated with a clean events overview
-
Build a database of driver profiles for the future
These are just a few of the features on offer to help you manage your applicants. We want you to have a comfortable working environment where you can manage your recruitment in a modern and smooth manner.
Lanefinder is free… so what’s the catch?
The only catch to using Lanefinder is the fact that its free offer relies entirely on organic traffic. This means that there’s no gas being put in the tank to promote jobs. Instead, jobs are uploaded onto the app and are then found based on their merit, how competitive they are, which area they’re in and more.
Lanefinder won’t suddenly open the floodgates and overwhelm you with drivers you didn’t know existed. It will, however, give you a platform to receive qualified driver applications if your job can stand on its own two feet.
For most carriers, Lanefinder is a long-term supplement to their recruitment strategy. At its core, it prioritizes quality over speed.
For those with more urgent hiring needs, Lanefinder plans to roll out something they call Lanefinder Promote, which is a pay-per-applicant based job advertising model that delivers pre-screened and interested drivers to companies on demand. More on that later.
What does this mean for the future of trucking?
It’s hard to draw conclusions and determine what effect Lanefinder will have on the trucking industry as a whole. However, there are some things that indicate that Lanefinder will be an industry force that cannot be ignored.
With the momentum at which they’re growing, the amount of carriers signing up each week, and the amount of drivers discovering the app each day, it’s only a matter of time before Lanefinder is a household name in the trucking game.
The truth is, the industry is getting more competitive and companies are becoming more reliant on good technology to carry their recruitment forward. For those companies and many others, Lanefinder is an exciting innovation that embodies the solutions the industry sorely needs: Smart technology that’s favorable for both carrier and driver, accessible to all, with no arbitrary restrictions or over-the-top price tags.