"You're not going to leave Central Hauling because you weren't treated fairly, or you didn't have the resources to be successful," a Central Hauling driver tells the Washington Post.

Company management says its turnover in 2015 was only about half of the national average, offering evidence its council is working.

Such councils have been around a long time, but seem to be on the increase. The Post article estimates that as many as 50% of truckers with more than 250 drivers have a council of one form or another - but certainly with varying degrees of effectiveness.

The retention issue has also spawned a number of service firms that use various other mechanisms to solicit driver feedback for company management. For example, company called WorkHound, which promotes itself as a "driver retention app."

But despite their growth, such councils can run into some legal issues in their operation.

Why? The National Labor Relations Act, includes has a broad provision that precludes aimed the creation of "company unions," or any quasi-representative body that discusses wages and working conditions. The law is meant to prevent such groups becoming in fact largely controlled by company management.

So, such drivers' councils "can't discuss anything important," Michael Belzer, an expert in trucking industry labor policy at Wayne State University, told the Washington Post. That would include issues that would normally be negotiated in collective bargaining - with wages and benefits clearly falling into that category.

Central Hauling says it avoids legal issues by not directing the council's activities at all or even monitoring what it does.

The Post article says the councils are often used to sort of test drive, if you will, new ideas before they are implemented. An example might be a new pay-for-performance program that would allow drivers to earn extra compensation for things like scoring well on inspections and getting good customer feedback.

The councils not only enable management to get valuable feedback from drivers, they also allow drivers to better understand the challenges, realities and constraints of the business - which helps them better consider why management does what it does.

But in addition to the potential legal issues - and SCDigest suspects the NLRB constraints are frequently exceeded in practice - the council concept has other critics who think they serve to benefit management over workers.

Those critics include Steve Viscelli, a visiting assistant professor of sociology at Swarthmore College who is writing a book on the trucking industry. The carriers are "trying not to bid up the wages among themselves, but they're trying to also delay [driver] exit," Viscelli says. "They know that in order to meaningfully reduce that turnover rate, they're going to have to raise wages substantially. So collectively they kind of manage it. And that's way cheaper than solving the problem."

Our view: These driver councils are of course a good idea, and probably help carriers and drivers in many areas - even if they at times do in fact deal in issues theoretically proscribed by labor law. That said, such an approach might delay for a time wage rates, but in the end, the market will settle on whatever pay rate is needed to attract the number of truck drivers required - as we've seen over the past couple of years.

What do you think of driver councils? Useful concept - or management tool? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback button below (email) or in the Feedback section. Anonymity will be provided upon request.