ROADMASTER DRIVERS SCHOOL

Who is Roadmaster Drivers School?

Roadmaster is a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) training center and has been in operation for more than 25 years and has trained more than 100,000 men and women to be professional truck drivers. Roadmaster teaches students how to drive a truck after 3 to 4 weeks of CDL training classes. They guide students through the process of becoming a driver through instruction, development, and experience.

Roadmaster Drivers School Found a Need...

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate was at 8.4% in August, lowest it had been since February of that year. However, recovery across the country wasn’t uniform. Cities in several states were especially affected: Ohio was at 17.6% in April; Arizona held at 10.6% in September; and Tennessee was 6.3% as of September 30, 2020. Despite the inequality of unemployment rates, the professional truck driver shortage was harming the entire national economy. Roadmaster was opening new schools in these some of the areas, providing 4-week training and education that prepare students for new careers in the trucking industry. just 4 weeks of training, helping get Americans back to work – and restoring health of the U.S. supply chain.

...While They Faced ChallengeS

COVID-19 caused the unemployment rate to skyrocket, forcing many people out of their longtime professions and putting them on the hunt for new employment. Roadmaster was readily prepared to provide a solution to the unemployment problem, but safety measures, including social distancing, meant that in-person shopping was seriously curtailed. Consumers then turned to eCommerce for their needs, increasing the demand on the already the already stretched then trucking industry. Mandated CDL facility closures also meant that new drivers were unable to obtain licenses, keeping them from joining the trucking fleets. Roadmaster, despite the impact of the closures, pressed on with their efforts to train new drivers. Despite the economic downturn, Roadmaster opened new schools in several states that had been especially affected, now able to supply that much-needed solution.

…JOTO PR DisruptorsTM Provided Disruptive Solutions...

JoTo PRTM brought extensive media attention to Roadmaster’s schools in several states that had been enduring high unemployment, showing they were providing the training necessary to begin a new vocation and find employment. We concentrated on earning placements in publications specific to the U.S. locations experiencing high unemployment and job displacement, showcasing Roadmaster’s various schools and their benefit to the local communities.

Media EXPOSURE Metrics

Over their precisely targeted 6-month long campaign, Roadmaster Drivers School earned a total of 29 placements within a range of business and trucking journals and websites.

This amounted to an exposure aggregate of nearly 27 million potential views from trucking industry and business publications, websites, and local television and radio news shows. Based on that aggregate and the expected industry standard of 2.5% for actual views, about 673,000 of Roadmaster Drivers School’s target audience (candidates for CDL training) watched, listened to, or read these news stories and industry articles.

• Brad Ball, president of Roadmaster Driver’s School, was interviewed by KTAR News 92.3 in Phoenix, which as an audience of about 484,000 listeners. Brad used this opportunity to explain the causes for the increased demands on the trucking industries, making the case that there was ample opportunity for those out of work to begin new careers. His input on current events was just what the local population in the Phoenix area needed and Brad brought his solution to the unemployment issue.

• eMissourian, which has a readership of 85,000 for the local residents of Franklin Co, Missouri, interviewed Brad to get his thought leadership regarding how the spike in e-commerce has challenged shipping and in turn his industry, further pushing even more need for new truck drivers. This placement is especially targeted precisely to a local market that includes area companies that are in need of driver

• Land Line, which has the U.S. trucking industry’s largest direct mail circulation of more than 324,000 professional truckers when combined with pass-along readership, featured U.S. Army veteran Ivan Hernandez, a Roadmaster graduate. He is one of four finalists for the Transition Trucking: Driving for Excellence award and showcases the quality of the training and education students receive from Roadmaster directly to a huge trucking industry audience.

Roadmaster was also featured in a number of other highly targeted media outlets:

• TXGarage: Reeling Economy in Texas
• Columbus Business First: National trucking school to open new training facility in Columbus
• The Trucker: Roadmaster Drivers School set to open new training center in Columbus, Ohio
• Galion Inquirer: Truck-driving school opening this month in Columbus
• ABC 6: Demand for truck drivers spiking amid pandemic, causing surge in new students
• KENS-TV: Job retraining puts people on the road to success
• Transport Topics: Truck Driver Training Programs Overcome COVID Risks
• Navajo Times: Handbag designer rides out the pandemic as a long-haul trucker
• News-Press Now: Decline in commercial truck drivers when shipping demands are high
• CCJ: Fleet hiring accelerates as industry claws out of COVID employment hole

We highlighted Brad Ball’s industry thought leadership with multiple media placements that in outlets covered topics affecting the shipping and transportation industries – specifically, the cities hardest hit by COVID-19 shutdowns. Multiple placements gave Brad’s driver training schools exposure to highly relevant and localizes audiences, showing that Roadmaster was bringing a solution to the unemployment problems facing these cities.

…and Roadmaster Drivers School Responded!

“JOTO PR Disruptors has been a great PR partner for us. The pandemic started to really change how we did business — and as we were expanding our school footprint to capitalize on the demand for training a new breed of truck drivers, JoTo PR™ was able to heighten awareness of our schools in their regional areas. In just a few months, our story has been exposed to a potential of 20.5MM people in the markets they secured major media stories in around the country.”

“I know working with media can be tough—meeting impossible deadlines and expectations of different outlets and reporters, all while navigating the volatile news cycle during a pandemic— but JoTo PR has taken an aggressive stance in getting out our message to let as many people as possible know of the job opportunities available to them. This has been most important, that we have been able to get out a positive message during a very grim time in our nation… and they helped us with that.”~ Brad Ball, President Roadmaster Drivers School

About Roadmaster Drivers School:

Roadmaster, headquartered in St. Petersburg, FL, is a nationwide training organization for truckers. They have more than 25 years of experience training more than 100,000 graduates with 13 training locations nationwide. By focusing on giving students the best education and maintaining high job placement standards, Roadmaster has gained a national reputation in the trucking industry for quality training of entry-level commercial truck drivers—noted for their training practices to be the most hands-on and safety-focused training in the country.