Long commutes to company sites with limited housing in Arizona are getting more bearable and less costly for employees participating in a new rideshare program.
At the Bagdad, Morenci and Miami operations, the company is providing vans to employees who live a long distance away and are willing to vanpool to and from work. Each site designed its own program, so they vary slightly. But the idea is the company pays for the vans and makes them available to workers willing to vanpool. That saves the wear and tear of putting those miles on their own vehicles. It also takes cars off the road, which brings its own safety and environmental benefits.
Figuring out schedules and pickup points is pretty much up to the riders. Each van has a couple of designated drivers who are unpaid volunteers, and the van stays with them.
Housing shortages and hiring headaches
All three sites have housing challenges. Bagdad and Morenci are company-owned towns with long waiting lists to get into the limited company housing. In the interim, workers must find their own place to live.
Trevor Nash’s vanpool makes a stop in Florence Junction to pick up riders on its morning run to Miami.Lack of housing and the cost of long commutes often are cited at all three sites by prospective employees as reasons for rejecting job offers from Freeport, and by current employees for quitting. The company has assembled a project team to look at housing challenges across its remote sites. The team’s goal is to find creative short-term and long-term solutions to this issue.
The rideshare program is not directly related to that effort. Each site began independently exploring rideshare programs to help employees with long commutes.
In Miami, the goal is the shuttles will make working there more appealing to people in the Phoenix metropolitan area, about 70 miles west of the operation, said Mark Albertsen, General Manager. That would expand recruitment and retention opportunities.
About a third of Miami’s workers live in eastern metro-area communities that are 50 miles or more away. The 950-person operation has about 130 vacancies and frequently loses workers to lower-paying jobs in the city because of the high cost of gas and other transportation expenses, Albertsen said.
“Even if it prevents us from losing more people, that’s a win, but if it will help recruit people that’s even better,” Albertsen said. “It’s all part of our recruit and retain strategy. It’s a great benefit, and it’s not that expensive for the site.”
Cutting the cost of commuting
The rideshare program was launched in February in Morenci and already has about 140 employees participating, said Bobby Pollock, General Manager-Administration. Most riders are from Safford, 50 miles away, but some live in other areas. To meet that demand, the company is leasing 18 shuttle vans. The lease includes maintenance and insurance costs. Riders pay only for gas.
“We knew the more inexpensive we could make it to the employee, the better chance we had to get them off the road,” Pollock said. “It adds money back into our employees’ pockets.”
Bagdad launched its rideshare program in February with two vans it previously purchased. So far, 10 people have signed up, and more than two dozen others have expressed interest in joining a vanpool.
Additional rental vans will be added if there is enough demand, said Lynette Nelson, Operational Excellence Coach-Bagdad. Information about the program is being provided to new hires and existing employees to encourage participation.
Team-building success
At Miami, the first 15-passenger van was full as soon as it was made available in mid-March to employees living in the metro area. More than 130 people have expressed interest in the service, and vans will be added until demand is met, Albertsen said.
Miami is not a company town and is close enough to the Phoenix metropolitan area that many employees live there by choice.
That is the situation for Trevor Nash, Environmental Scientist I, who volunteered to be the designated driver on the site’s first van in the rideshare program. Nash lives in Queen Creek – about 60 miles away – and his wife works at the local high school. He used to put about 800 miles per week on his car driving back and forth to work.
An added benefit of the rideshare program is that it brings together people from different parts of the Miami operation, Nash said.
“You get to talk with guys you wouldn’t get to know otherwise,” he said. “It makes it a stronger community. Some of those guys I never would have been able to talk to before, and now I am.”