Importance of Driver Paperwork

Being a driver comes with many responsibilities, including route planning, time management, and keeping your driver managers informed with locations and ETAs. But arguably one of the most important responsibilities is staying organized with your paperwork.

Truck drivers do a lot of paperwork, most of which are bill of ladings. It can be a struggle to keep track of your paperwork in the midst of the job. Staying organized with your paperwork can cause quite a headache, but our Mobile Capture system helps everyone stay organized. Marvin Keller has implemented Mobile Capture to ultimately make the paperwork process more efficient, organized, and accommodating to your busy over-the-road schedules.

One issue that has arisen with this implementation is illegibility of the bills. This is the main reason why we are so particular with the images submitted. We are aware that this has caused a bit stress for some drivers because we have required them to resend higher quality images of the bills. To ease the stress, we would like to provide a brief overview of our particular needs when it comes to driver paperwork and perhaps a few tricks to help alleviate this issue.

We will start with the importance of driver paperwork. As many of you know, it is very important for Marvin Keller to receive all of the bills from the loads we have delivered. This importance is due to the fact that we are unable to bill the customers for the load without a copy of the paperwork.

In some cases, however, the bill that is submitted may be hard to read, blurry, or have a part of the image that is cut off. It is crucial to have clear, legible copies of the bills because some customers will refuse to pay us for the load if areas of the bills are illegible or missing.

When taking a picture of the bills, be sure to hold your camera above the paperwork maintaining a bird’s eye view above the page, parallel to the paper rather than holding it near the bottom of the paper. Doing this will help ensure that the bill is legible.

When capturing the image, remember to try to keep a steady hand because we also have an issue with the images being blurry. If the bills are printed on thin paper, try placing a clipboard or a blank piece of paper behind the image before capturing. Often, this will allow for a clearer image.

One simple step you could take today to become more organized is to purchase a daily binder to keep your paperwork in one place. Make sure to keep each load’s paperwork separate from each other. Another tip would be to write the load number on the bills in an area that does not contain important information, or use removable sticky notes. This will ensure you are sending the correct bills for the corresponding load number.

Once you have sent a copy of the paperwork for each load, we advise for you to keep your copies for at least 30 days in case your image was not received by Marvin Keller. After you have sent your copy of the bill, place it in your 30 day binder so it is in a separate binder from the paperwork for your daily loads. If you are unsure whether or not to get rid of a bill, ask your driver manager to find out if it has been received. This process ensures quick access if we have requested for you to send another copy, and we want everyone to stay organized.

Lastly, do not be afraid to ask your driver manager and fellow drivers for help. A benefit of being a part of a team and network is that someone else may have a few helpful tips to make your lives easier.