Episode #56 – Trucking & Covid-19

This episode of The Litigation Psychology Podcast focuses on how the trucking and transportation industry responded to the pandemic and the impressions, attitudes, and beliefs that jurors have toward transportation and trucking companies. Dr. Steve Wood discusses research that CSI has conducted to understand jurors’ views of the trucking industry in light of Covid-19 and the role these companies have played during the pandemic. Dr. Bill Kanasky and Dr. Wood also talk about the opportunities missed and the opportunities that still exist for the trucking industry to highlight the positive things they do and contributions they make to society and the benefits of bringing these things to the forefront of potential juror’s minds in advance of litigation.

Full Episode Transcript

[00:04] Bill Welcome to another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast, brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. I am Dr. Bill Kanasky, and with us again, my colleague, my buddy, Dr. Steve Wood. Dr. Steve Wood, how you doing?

[00:22] Steve Good. How you doing, Bill?

[00:24] Bill Um, well, it’s—it’s 2021. Doing a lot better than I was in 2020, I’ll tell you that. Uh, happy New Year. Um, I think it’s a good time to focus a podcast to kind of get a little update, um, particularly on, uh, the trucking and transportation industry. This is something that we’ve talked about before. We talked about it, I think, more towards the beginning and middle of the pandemic. And now that we’re kind of getting over the 50-yard line, I would hope, knock on wood, of this pandemic, um, I think everybody’s interested to see, well, how has the trucking industry responded to this pandemic from a public perception point of view relative to, you know, the retail stores, relative to healthcare? And I know that you’ve—you, you, you’ve written a paper about this, and you’ve posted, um, on our website. Can you talk about kind of the preliminary data that you have and what we were seeing from, uh, the jurors that we polled about the various industries when it—when it came to kind of post-COVID attitudes?

[01:39] Steve Yeah, I think one of the—the biggest things we’ve—we found, and no surprise, I’m sure, to anybody, is that numbers for the healthcare workers and first responders were through the roof. And the numbers for the trucking industry were a little bit different. And what we found was that 44 percent of people—of the people we asked, about 300 people—that 44 percent of these people said they had either a slightly more favorable view or a more favorable view of the trucking industry, which—which sounds good on its face. However, you had 56 percent of people who really had no opinion or a less opinion. And those numbers actually fit pretty cleanly on top of numbers they had for Walmart employees as well. So, not to belittle Walmart employees and not, you know, talk ill of Walmart employees, but the point that I’m trying to make is that they had similar numbers to that. And the idea of going forward was that this trucking industry was going to be heralded as heroes, and the trucking industry was going to be seen akin to those frontline first responders. And the data just didn’t—didn’t show that as far as that being an issue. So, you know, unfortunately, it turned out that way. But that—that’s what the data is showing, is that the—the positive view that—that the trucking industry thought they were going to have just didn’t kind of bear out as far as from the juror perspective.

[02:57] Bill Okay, well, my hypothesis on why that happened was when you compare—well, actually, talk about health—the healthcare numbers first. Tell us about the healthcare stuff, because those numbers are through the roof, right?

[03:13] Steve Yeah, because about 90 percent of people had this positive view of healthcare workers.

[03:18] Bill Yeah, so, you know, okay. So between the start of the pandemic and when we collected this data and analyzed it, okay, what—like, what’s the difference here? And I think the very obvious difference—and this is my hypothesis—is that the healthcare industry, combined with corporate America, made these healthcare workers the heroes. It’s on every other commercial. It’s—it’s splattered across my webpage every time I’m—I’m Googling something, and you’re getting just—just—just bombarded with these messages about the healthcare workers. And I was telling you earlier, you have companies advertising essentially doing commercials thanking healthcare workers, right? And all the companies are doing this. Delta did it, Wells Fargo just did it. And it’s “hats off to our healthcare workers.” Well, I think maybe in the last eight months I have seen one—and I’m talking one—commercial or ad that not only just maybe thanked truck drivers or the trucking industry or talked about them being heroes. And I think the discrepancy there has completely influenced the public perception of both sides of this. What are your thoughts?

[04:37] Steve No, I agree. I mean, I don’t—driving around town around here in College Station, I mean, I see billboard after billboard after billboard after billboard about healthcare workers and first responders. We have places around here that give discounts to healthcare workers and first responders. And the only sign I’ve seen related to the trucking industry is one as you’re going down the highway. It’s—it’s right on someone’s lawn, essentially. It’s a little handmade sign that someone put together with the Sharpie marker that said, “our drivers, your heroes,” staked in—in the front of the yard. But outside of that, no, there’s—there’s nothing that I’ve seen that has even hinted towards truck drivers being hailed as heroes or any sort of discounts or anything related to the trucking industry.

[05:20] Bill So I see this as a—because I always use sports analogies, you know—I see this as a football game, and we’re at the start of the third quarter. And I think in the first two quarters, the industry, the trucking and transportation industry, had an opportunity to essentially get the message out to the general public about their vitally important role with goods: uh, um, ventilators, masks, food. They’re the people delivering this stuff. I want your opinion. I—I think they fumbled the ball a couple times. I—I don’t think they scored any points in the first half. I just don’t.

[06:02] Steve No, I agree. I agree 100 percent with—I think the percent is so that, you know, outside of the truck industry, we interact with the truck drivers on daily basis. We see them on the highways and stuff, and people still have that same view of reckless truck drivers not paying attention, you know, the being overworked, being undertrained, all these different aspects. And that’s what they see, rather than, you know, seeing it as the people who delivered those goods, who delivered that toilet paper and you couldn’t get toilet paper, you know, delivered that paper towel when you couldn’t get it. And I think, and what—you know, one of those things is going to be messaging, right? As far as getting people out of that mindset of viewing the truck driver as the person you see that maybe you get scared or nervous when you’re next to, in changing that perception to the individual who’s backing in full of toilet paper to make sure you have enough.

[06:52] Bill And—and I think that—I think that’s the problem. Because I think most people have had one, if not multiple, bad experiences with a truck next to him. But not many people, relatively speaking, comparing that number to the people that have had bad experiences with healthcare—I think is vastly different. So I think that’s one of the core issues here. Or that people’s experiences with this particular issue, right, with both—with both of those industries may supersede the perception of their role in COVID, right? You see what I’m saying? So it’s—and it’s hard to—it’s like, you know, you ask people—as I was talking to people in my neighborhood over the week—and when I asked them about, you know, the trucking industry’s role in COVID-19, they were very, very positive about, you know, delivering services, delivering goods. Um, no one really called them heroes, but said, “hey, they’re so essential, they play a vital role.” But then you say, “and what are your experiences with the trucking industry?” It’s a hundred percent negative. There’s zero positive. And they’re seeing all the crashes, they’re seeing all the nuclear verdicts.

So now, okay, back to our football analogy. Now we got—okay, so we’ve started the third quarter of this game, and now they got the biggest thing. They got new plays in the playbook because now, not only are they still delivering everything they were in the first half, they’re delivering the vaccine. They’re delivering the vaccine. And now I’m on LinkedIn and I see all the trucking people posting these like little memes or whatever like, “thank you, like, who do you think’s bringing you this vaccine?” That’s great. Well, voters aren’t on LinkedIn looking at my account. They’re not. And so I—I guess I’m kind of shocked that I have not seen the industry, either at the company level or at the association level, spend the money to put up those billboards, have some commercials. It’s working for healthcare. Do something to now say, illuminate the role. Because the health—the healthcare advertising on this issue—and that by the way, that’s what it is, it’s advertised. Let’s get this straight, it’s advertising—is so overwhelming that if they don’t—I’m not saying they have to match it, but they have to do something significant. Do you think that they can pull that off?

[09:32] Steve I mean, I would say, I think that they could—they could pull it off. And like you said, are they willing to? And that was the the real reason why I—I wrote another piece to really talk about the trucking industry. Because what my—my point of doing it was to give the trucking industry kind of a—a look or a peek into the jurors’ perspective and say, “you know, you might think that this is what people think and that people’s perceptions of the trucking industry have turned to become more different.” What I wanted to say is we’re almost there, but we’re not quite there. So don’t hold back. Let’s keep—as you would, you know, use your sports analogy—let’s keep pushing the ball down. Let’s not start—let’s not start just, you know, taking our one or two yard gains. Let’s start throwing the ball and, you know, let’s keep throwing the ball because we’re not quite there yet.

[10:26] Bill And I love football analogies, so I’m going to continue with this. Um, there is a—and again, knock on wood—but the way this is looking, and whether we’re talking six months or a year, who knows? The COVID thing, like any other pandemic, is—is eventually going to—not maybe not come to an end, but at least, you know, life is going to get back to some sort of relative normal.

And, um, yes, the—uh, Texas A&M Aggies defeated my Tar Heels of North Carolina, and I was very disappointed for a couple hours. But then the message was, “we got to a big game, we played well, didn’t quite have enough. Let’s take that momentum into next season.” The trucking industry has the next season post-COVID to take all this stuff and run with it. They’ve never had this opportunity, and I just don’t sense or see somebody thinking like this. Because if—if you could take this opportunity and at least—I’m not saying you’re gonna get to the level of what the healthcare folks have done, but you could get close. I think that would have, um, a huge impact on juror perception because they would be exposed to it so much. Because right now, hey, how often are you exposed to a trucking advertisement that’s positive? Or a truck—it’s a truck. I mean, I drive by every single day. Now, I don’t see a healthcare provider—I haven’t seen a healthcare provider in—in six months, but I see them on TV every day. And that’s the—I think the advertising power here. But I know that costs money. Uh, I don’t know, maybe they align with some—I don’t know how they should do it, but I just—I’m telling you, if they don’t do it—uh, and I know that we’re going to continue to collect data—I don’t care if they deliver the vaccine and then roll out red carpets, the jury is not going to care at the end of the day. Thoughts?

[12:33] Steve No—no, I agree. I think at that point, going to be a lot of—with jurors, it’s a lot of their experiences, you know? Experiences shape their attitudes. Well, we already talked about the negative experience that they’ve had, which have then shape their attitude towards the trucking industry. But you start getting experience with, you know, more positive messages, get experience with more, you know, positive advertising, seeing billboards, these things like that. Yeah, I mean, it could easily help to shape their attitudes to things that people don’t really necessarily think about. Because I think jurors in the back of their mind have an understanding that truck drivers are the ones, in the trucking industry are the ones, bringing their goods and that they’re appreciative of it. But it’s not really pulled to the forefront of their mind like it is for the medical. I mean, I just saw this morning, uh, two doctors on TV getting the vaccine, and they’re in the middle of the—the, uh, interview. The doctor was actually getting injected as he was talking in the middle of the interview. I mean…

[13:26] Bill Where’s the truck driver getting the vaccine? Yeah, where—where’s the trucking—where’s the trucking executive like, “it’s my trucks delivering this stuff and I’m going to get vaccine on TV”? Come on, people, wake up!

I mean, the healthcare people have figured this out and the trucking folks haven’t. And it’s disappointing because I think it’s so important with litigation going forward. Um, so let’s kind of wrap up this podcast. I think the one thing they have to do is going forward, um, is during, particularly during jury selection in voir dire, and during opening statement and closing argument, when they’re allowed to kind of go off and educate the jury on the trucking industry, they have got to pair—you have to pair trucking with COVID. Because that’s where you get the most positive attitudes. You can’t just say, you know, you know, uh, “trucking is essential because it brings you your toilet paper.” It’s like, no. The message is, “it played a critical role, just as,” I would say this, “just as important as the healthcare provider.” I’d go that far. Because my next sentence is, “where are the healthcare providers? Those gloves they’re putting on, where are they getting them from? A truck, right? Where are they—where, where, where are they getting, uh, the medications from? Oh, a truck.” In other words, without the truck, you don’t have this—these healthcare people being heroes. And no one’s come out with that message, and it’s shocking. But I think that—I think litigators, I think trial attorneys can use that message. I think that is the message—is to say, “we are just as important as the healthcare providers, and here’s why.” And I do think jurors would buy that. What are your final thoughts?

[15:15] Steve Uh, I agree. And I think as you were talking, what the—the thing that stuck out in my mind is really kind of the—the linchpin or even just kind of the—the theme you could take is that the trucking industry and truck drivers are the unsung heroes. They’re the forgotten heroes. You know, they’re the heroes that no one’s talking about. They’re the guys that are—they’re doing the things other people want to do, more than likely. And you know, they’re spending a lot of time away from their families, a lot of time on the road, to get us the products that we need. So when we go out, we can have what we have. And at the end of the day, like I said, they’re the unsung, unappreciated heroes that need to be appreciative and we need to push it forward more.

[15:51] Bill I know. And I think—I think—I think that’ll work to an extent in the courtroom. But boy, it would really help if it was on a larger scale to influence the more general public. I think that would help everything in the jury box. Dr. Steve Wood, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Everybody else, thank you for participating. We’ll see you next time on the Litigation Psychology Podcast, brought to you by Courtroom Sciences.