While students are headed off to summer break, school transportation administrators are hard at work, making sure the fleet is ready for next year. A big part of that task is making sure the fleet actually has enough qualified school bus drivers.
Unfortunately, school bus driver shortages have made it harder than ever to guarantee your staff are responsible and patient enough to handle the daily frustrations of bad traffic and raucous children. Still you can’t let a thin pool of candidates compromise the quality of individuals your fleet employees.
If you are determined to make sure your school bus drivers are upstanding and skilled individuals capable of ensuring students get home safe every day, make sure your school bus drivers exhibit these six characteristics.
- Patience – Between daily bad traffic and kids being kids, driving a school bus can be exhausting for almost anyone. People who are quick to get frustrated or show poor multitasking just aren’t cut out for what being behind the wheel of a bus requires. Bus drivers will be juggling watching over children and driving a large vehicle every single day and those who are quick to anger, frustration, or outbursts are guaranteed to not work out well.
- Quick to respond – New problems pop up all the time on the road, and drivers have to be able to keep their calm and find a solution on-the-go. Make sure your drivers will know what to do when trouble arises and can handle any scenario that may happen.
- Route management skills – Most transportation departments these days have the tools needed to craft perfect routes at their fingertips, but even the best drawn up route can be inefficient if your drivers don’t have good route and time management skills. A good driver will know their route like the back of their hand and be able to make the most of every minute on the road.
- Promptness – Like the majority of working adults in the world, bus drivers are expected to take care of personal business in their free time. If your driver has a record of making an excessive number of personal stops or even disappearing completely before getting the bus returned, it is a serious problem. Similarly, it is important for children to be picked up and dropped off on-time every day. Not only do they have to be at school on time, but leaving children waiting too long in the extreme cold or heat can even be dangerous. Thankfully, a timely driver can be sure to not leave children or transportation administrators waiting.
- Driving skills – It may seem obvious, but a school bus isn’t like other vehicles on the road. Not any driver will do. It is essential that school bus drivers keep in mind what they are driving and use only the best judgement to stay on route without driving like a crazy person.
- Safety first – Of course, the most important trait of any bus driver is an eye for safety. At the end of the day, the ultimate goal for every school bus driver is to keep children safe, and that includes following all the rules of the road, stopping at railroad crossings and stop lights, and not speeding.
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