Many motor carriers struggle with DOT compliance and fleet safety management. While there can be multiple reasons for this, our mission is to help you find solutions! We’ve found that our clients who excel in three specific areas are really a cut above the rest of the industry. Their focus on compliance and safety management allows them to enjoy better operating margins, better business relationships, reduced driver turnover, lower CSA BASIC scores and reduced insurance costs. Do you want to move the fleet safety needle?
Here are my 3 keys to having successful compliance and fleet safety management programs in your organization:
A Strong Fleet Safety Culture
Great compliance and fleet safety programs start in the C-Suite and flow down to each and every employee or contractor that works in a company. Everyone looks to the organization’s leadership for guidance on all issues and especially when it comes to safety and compliance management. Many fleet owners and managers simply pay lip service to fleet safety and they have the CSA BASIC scores and loss history to prove it!
Frankly though, it goes far beyond just these two measures. You can easily spot those companies that have a collective buy in on fleet safety. Those are the organizations that have compliance and safety at the forefront of all that they do. In these companies, safety management isn’t a shared duty within the accounting department. Rather, the safety department has an extremely active role in the daily lives of all employees.
If a trucking company has a strong safety culture, you will see a high level of interaction between the safety department and the other groups within the organization. Beginning with the hiring and onboarding process, your safety manager should have an active part in the recruitment, hiring and training of all new employees. If new lanes or contracts are being considered, then the safety department is engaged throughout the process. Additionally, those with strong safety cultures will regularly interact with the company’s dispatchers and commercial vehicle operators (CVOs). Safety isn’t relegated to a monthly meeting and a small section in the back of the monthly newsletter in these organizations.
Open and Honest Communication About Fleet Safety
Closely related to the company’s safety culture is how a motor carrier communicates about safety. Many studies have shown that companies with the most effective compliance and safety programs have regular and open communication about safety issues. Again, this all starts at the top of the organization. The fleet executives should set the tone and tenor of every conversation about fleet safety.
As with so many other things, leadership by example is key. Instead of the safety department broadcasting all of the safety related messages to your team members, have leadership (and especially top leadership) regularly reinforce their personal views on how important effective compliance and safety management is to your organization.
Having the fleet owners and executives actively communicating about these issues reinforces the importance of safe and legal operations and shows all employees that they are cared about. Effective safety management is about people more than policies or processes. This principle should guide how we all communicate with one another about protecting the lives and health of all team members as well as the general public. In organizations with successful compliance and safety programs, compliance with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs) and having as few preventable accidents as possible are simply viewed as table stakes!
Open lines of communication between the company’s CVOs, the dispatchers and management is a critical component of fleet safety success. If you can engage your CVOs at a higher level of trust, then they will take a much more active part in safety management. They will be more open to sharing incidents and potential hazards and will usually do their best to help others avoid repeating their mistakes. If you find that your company is proactively managing incidents rather than reactively managing accidents, then you have a pretty good indicator that your compliance and fleet safety programs are succeeding.
Effective Fleet Safety Organization
Effective organization is a broad term, so let’s get more specific. Organization is the grease on the gears of all business, and that certainly applies to fleet safety and compliance as well. You can imagine all of the bad crap that can happen to you and your company if you’re not well organized. So, invest the time, money and energy to execute on ensuring that your systems are well organized.
Policies and procedures need to be clear, fair, well documented and easily communicated to allow for widespread adoption and enforcement. They should also be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that they still apply to your team. All relevant files and documents should be in good order and updated as appropriate to comply with regulations and standard business practices. Your CVOs should have easy access to all resources needed to remain both compliant and safe.
Paper is so 2010! These days, you can (and should) move most of your compliance and fleet safety related information to a shared computer network. The era of big data and cloud computing are here. (If you had to Google either of those terms, than we need to chat soon). These days, it’s possible to manage almost your entire compliance and safety management functions on cloud servers. Safety software providers like
TivaCloud make it very easy and very affordable to do this! If you want to integrate even more of your operations on a platform like this then check out National Truck Services Group. Both of these companies provide a tremendous value for fleet owners (and we have business relationships with both of them).
In companies with successful compliance and safety programs, all team members should be able to convey what is expected of them and a strong safety culture is both felt and seen throughout the organization. Communication around compliance and safety is regular and open. All safety related policies, systems, files and documents are updated regularly and maintained in an environment that allows for easy access and adoption.
Like so much else, fleet safety and compliance management evolves. What worked yesterday may not work for your company today. Frankly, who the hell knows about tomorrow? But, with effective and successful safety systems in place, you will be much more prepared to beat your competitors!
If you feel like you’re coming up short in any of these categories, please give us a call at 1-855-211-5550 to schedule a free consultation. We’ve helped hundreds of motor carriers with these issues and would love to help you too!
Thanks!
Sam
Sam Tucker, CEO
Carrier Risk Solutions, Inc.
Based in Atlanta, GA, Carrier Risk Solutions, Inc. is a compliance and fleet safety management firm.
We help motor carriers optimize their DOT compliance and fleet safety programs according to where they are and where they want to be.
From driver training and ELD implementation to acting as your entire safety department, we can help you reduce your insurance costs and your interactions with the FMCSA, improve your driver retention and generally wipe the floor with your competitors.
Find out how at www.CarrierRiskSolutions.com!
