My note; Doug Marcello is one of the most distinguished lawyers who works with trucking companies. Carefully consider his advice – my experiences as an expert witness has proven his point many times.
– Joel
Every trucking company I talk to has the same fear.
“If we analyze our data too closely, plaintiff attorneys will get it in discovery and use it against us.”
I call this The Discovery Fallacy.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: The data already exists.
Your ELD is generating it. Your cameras are recording it. Your telematics are transmitting it. Every mile, every brake, every speed variance is already documented.
The only question is: Who writes the narrative?
If you do not analyze it, plaintiff attorneys will. And they will not tell your story.
This week I interviewed Hayden Cardiff from Idelic about how machine learning transforms this equation. His company has access to 40 billion miles of driver data and over 500,000 crash records.
His key insight: “It’s not like the machine learning or the predictive analytics is now creating new underlying data. It’s taking the data that’s already existing.”
The carriers winning today are not hiding from their data. They are leveraging machine learning to:
- Identify at-risk drivers before accidents happen
- Document supervision with objective, timestamped evidence
- Prove standard of care against industry benchmarks, not expert speculation
- Create defensible records that flip the script on plaintiff narratives
The Discovery Fallacy costs carriers millions because they let fear drive strategy instead of data.
The data is already there. The only choice is whether you control its narrative.
