Driver safety evaluation shifts from isolated events to pattern recognition

CCJ Staff

Harsh braking, mobile usage, distracted driving, speeding, rolling stops and following distance are all driver behaviors that can increase the risk of crashing a vehicle. If a driver in a vehicle equipped with a Samsara camera looks away from the road, the AI detects that and will give an audible alert like, “Put down phone.”

Safety systems have focused on alerting drivers in the cab, in real time when they trigger an individual safety event, but those isolated behaviors don’t paint the full picture of risk, said Samsara Head of Safety Product Arpan Podduturi. Instead, the riskiest driver profiles are identified when individual behaviors compound.

Mobile phone usage is only 1.7 times more likely to cause a crash. Mobile use combined with harsh braking and night driving, however, is 5.4 times more likely to result in an accident.

That’s according to Samsara’s recently released Compounding Risk Report that determined the top 10% of a fleet’s riskiest drivers account for nearly half of all crashes, and the top 30% of a fleet’s riskiest drivers account for 76% of crashes.

“The reason the top 10% accounts for so many crashes is precisely that those drivers tend to exhibit combinations of behavioral patterns — not single events,” Podduturi said in the report. “Even modest gains in coaching the top decile can translate into meaningful reductions in crashes at scale.”

Coaching priority

These statistics were mined from Samsara data collected between July 1 and Dec. 15, 2025, using the company’s proprietary, patent-pending Risk Model, which informs Samsara’s AI-powered Coaching Priority framework that surfaces and prioritizes coaching opportunities across fleets. The Risk Model evaluates approximately 50 factors across four categories:

  • Driving behavioral patterns: speeding tendencies, mobile usage, harsh events, etc.
  • Exposure: how much time a driver spends on the road, including miles driven and driving concentration
  • Context: the environment in which driving occurs, including road type, urban or rural setting, nighttime conditions, weather, etc.
  • Developmental factors: driver tenure, coaching history, etc.

Prioritizing patterns

Alerting drivers to their risky behavior in the moment with in-cab alerts has helped improve safety over the years, but that is reactive. Podduturi said the next step is proactive. That means getting better at recognizing the behavioral patterns that precede a crash and surfacing them early enough to potentially change that outcome.

“Drivers involved in crashes usually aren’t having a sudden bad day. They are driving in identifiable patterns over time, and those patterns can be visible weeks in advance,” Podduturi said in his report. “Identifying which drivers are most at risk is valuable. Identifying them early — before an incident occurs — is what makes that identification actionable.”

Safety leaders can use Coaching Priority to identify the behavioral patterns most associated with crashes and address those behaviors in the top 10% of riskiest drivers to potentially prevent up to 47% of accidents, according to the report.

In a shift away from individual events, the Risk Model reads tendencies — a consistent pattern of driving behavior across trips and over time, often in conditions that amplify impact. Single behaviors carry risk, but none on its own is a strong basis for prioritization, which is the highest-leverage move a fleet can make, Podduturi said.

This means a driver doesn’t get flagged for braking hard once. Instead, they get flagged for a pattern of how they drive.

Perfecting prioritization

According to the report, the Risk Model prioritizes a driver involved in a crash three out of four times in advance of the accident, compared to a driver who is not involved in a crash.

Podduturi said that prioritization will become even more precise as data depth grows, further increasing Samsara’s ability to see how driving behaviors interact and how context amplifies risk. Future iterations of the Risk Model will incorporate more granular behavioral signals, sharper context modeling and improved interpretability, he added.

“Samsara’s Risk Model is not designed to predict whether a specific driver will crash on a specific day. Crashes are rare and depend on many factors outside any model’s view,” Podduturi noted in the report. “The model is designed to rank drivers by their relative risk based on the behavioral patterns they exhibit — and to do so consistently enough, far enough in advance, that fleets can act on the information.

“Prioritization, not prediction, is where pattern-based risk identification creates value.”

LITIGATION FUNDING: ARE THE CRACKS FORMING?

Doug Marcello

 

For a decade, litigation funders told courts they were passive investors who wrote checks and stayed out of the way. Three developments this year say otherwise — and one of them took effect last week.

On October 6, Ohio began requiring litigation funders to register with the state attorney general and disclose their funding agreements. House Bill 105, signed by Governor DeWine on July 7, also bars funders from influencing litigation strategy or settlement decisions, prohibits funding from entities not domiciled in the United States, and creates a public database of funding agreements after cases resolve.

Ohio is not an outlier. In June, North Carolina became the first state to ban third-party litigation funding outright rather than regulate it. In the United Kingdom, the collapse of a funder owing roughly £300 million to retail investors has regulators debating whether funders belong inside the financial regulatory perimeter at all.

Taken together, these are not three unrelated news items. They are three simultaneous failures of the same argument.

The scale of what is being regulated

The American Tort Reform Association, citing Westfleet Advisors’ annual market report, told state legislators that major litigation funders alone had more than $15 billion invested in U.S. litigation in 2023. That is the capital base — assets under management across the funders Westfleet tracks.

Annual deployment is a different and smaller figure. Westfleet reported $2.3 billion in new commitments in 2024, down sixteen percent, and $2.8 billion in 2025, a twenty-three percent rebound after two years of contraction. Westfleet stopped publishing assets-under-management estimates with its newest report, citing inconsistencies in how funders define and report the number.

Crack one: the passive investor story

Funders have consistently maintained that clients run their own litigation. Two disputes raise questions, at opposite ends of the market. What happened next is the part most coverage gets wrong.

Burford Capital put more than $140 million into Sysco Corporation’s antitrust claims across the chicken, beef, pork, and turkey industries. The arrangement broke down when Sysco wanted to settle at numbers Burford considered too low.

At the consumer end, funder Legalist went to arbitration against its own client. In Legalist, Inc. v. Rinaldi, pending in the Southern District of New York, Legalist won a partial final award in May 2026 and is now asking a federal court to confirm roughly $105,000 in fees against the man whose case it backed.

Crack two: funders can fail — two different ways

Woodville Consultants Ltd entered administration in July 2026. Its administrators reported in September that it owes close to £300 million to retail investors who bought high-risk loan notes, that its lending was concentrated among ten law firms, that more than £160 million was owed by those ten firms alone — often with no security — and that roughly £37 million appears to have been loaned to parties connected to Woodville’s own directors. The administrators have warned that the value of the underlying portfolio and likely investor recoveries remain uncertain.

Litigation Capital Management, listed on London’s AIM since 2018, went into orderly run-off this month. It lost seven of the eight cases that concluded in its financial year. The result was an £87 million after-tax loss for the year to June 30, 2026 — more than double the prior year — and net liabilities of A$54 million, against net assets of A$114 million a year earlier.

Run-off means LCM will see its existing cases through and make no new investments. It is still carrying 37 ongoing cases, with A$122 million invested and another A$102 million committed. Its directors have warned that the company’s continuation is materially dependent on portfolio realizations outside their control.

The defense implication is worth stating plainly: the plaintiff across the table may be financed by a balance sheet that nobody — not the court, not the defendant, arguably not the plaintiff — has examined. And a funder in run-off is still litigating dozens of live cases while its own survival depends on how they resolve.

Crack three: disclosure arrives, state by state

North Carolina’s House Bill 315, effective June 22, 2026, makes litigation investment unlawful, voids offending contracts, and creates civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation along with a private right of action and treble statutory damages. The law is prospective and carries nine exceptions, including contingency fees, pro bono work, and insurer obligations.

Ohio took the regulatory route instead, and the Ohio approach is the one more states are likely to copy: registration, disclosure, a prohibition on funder control, and a foreign-funding ban that the legislature justified by what it called the grave risk of foreign actors seeking to interfere with Ohio’s courts.

Federally, nothing has changed yet. A draft Rule 26 disclosure amendment from Lawyers for Civil Justice and the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform has been pending before the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules since March. On September 14, a coalition of 214 companies urged the committee to adopt that proposal rather than draft new language. The committee has not published anything for comment. Individual districts and judges have moved ahead with local rules and standing orders in the meantime.

In the meantime, individual Federal Courts have been issuing local rules concerning the disclosure of funding in the litigation.

What this means for trucking defense

Funding is the capital engine behind nuclear verdicts. It pays for the expert work, the trial preparation, and above all the staying power that lets a plaintiff firm decline a reasonable number and wait.

That is the mechanism carriers feel without being able to name. Settlement talks that go nowhere on a case with real defenses. A plaintiff who should want resolution and does not. A demand that bears no relationship to the exposure.

Three practical consequences follow from this year’s developments:

  • Ask about funding. Nothing in the federal rules prevents it, and judges in MDLs, class actions, and patent cases have been requesting funding information on their own initiative. Check your district’s local rules and standing orders before assuming the answer is no.
  • In Ohio, the agreements must be reported. A funding agreement must be reported post-trial after October 6. That is a live argument this month.
  • Build the record early. Courts have been declining to intervene absent concrete evidence of undue control. That points to targeted early discovery into the funding agreement, assignment mechanics, settlement decision rights, and communications — and being ready to argue why it is relevant and proportional. Settlement authority, counsel selection, and notice requirements are where the passive investor claim breaks.

What to watch

The copycat question will define the next twelve months. North Carolina’s ban energized reform advocates, but no other state has introduced a replica and none is expected to pass. The Ohio model — register, disclose, no control, no foreign money — is the template with legislative legs.

The federal timeline is slower than it looks. A rule published for comment in 2027 would not take effect before December 2029. State legislatures will keep moving faster than the federal rules process, which means the practical question for the next several years is jurisdictional: what can you reach, where. In the meantime, check the local rules that are developing a district-by-district approach to addressing the issue.

The funding industry spent a decade arguing that its arrangements were nobody else’s business. Courts, legislatures, and now its own investors are concluding otherwise.

How a community of truckers built a CDL school to save their industry

Jason Cannon

Last December, Shawn Gresham stood at a crossroads that tested everything he believed in.

An investor had just offered him $100,000 to open the truck-driving school he had dreamed of for years.

The catch: The school was to run as a CDL mill—a high-turnover operation designed to push students through the system as fast as possible, bypassing the kind of rigorous, hands-on, real-world training and education Gresham knew they needed.

For Gresham, a certified driver trainer and 17-year Class A CDL holder with a spotless, violation-free record, the choice was easy but “heart-breaking,” he said. He walked away from the money, even if that meant walking away from his dream, too.

“I couldn’t be part of that,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to help people enter this industry the right way, build successful careers, and return home safely to their families.”

What happened next in the small town of Dalton, Georgia, is a testament to what blue-collar workers can accomplish when they are united by a common frustration and a shared hope.

Four months after turning down six figures, Gresham took a leap of faith. He had no funding, but he had a loyal following on a YouTube channel he started four years ago to help drivers succeed.

The pieces started falling into place almost miraculously.

A Dalton landowner who believed in Gresham’s vision offered him a five-acre lot for just $300 a month. Soon after, a fellow truck driver stepped up to pay the lease for an entire year and asked for nothing in return.

Finally, equipment started rolling in.

A man from Florida, whom Gresham had trained years prior, had a 2014 Freightliner delivered to the lot. A week later, a local business, Brown’s Diesel Repair & Towing, handed Gresham the title to a 2012 International ProStar day cab. The following week, Leasing Services in Dalton arrived with a trailer and signed the title over on the spot.

These weren’t wealthy philanthropists looking for a tax write-off or good PR. They were working truck drivers and local business owners tired of watching an industry in decline. Frustrated with sharing the highways with new CDL graduates who were never properly taught how to back up a trailer or operate a big rig, they decided to take matters into their own hands.

Over three months, more than 50 truckers from New York to Texas chipped in what they could afford—$50, $100, or $300 at a time. Drivers from across the country shipped traffic cones and chains. A local meat market stepped up to help feed incoming students.

By August 1, exactly three months after Gresham signed his lease, the school was fully funded.

Today, the Trucking Life Academy boasts a five-acre training lot and a seven-office facility. As word of the grassroots school spread, Amazon packages began piling up on their doorstep. Strangers and community members sent printers, paper, pens, and even toilet paper to ensure the academy had everything it needed to operate.

While Gresham happily admits the perks of an automatic rig, and enjoys driving them himself, all instruction at the academy will be done on manual transmissions. He insists that mastering a stick shift forces rookies to respect the sheer size and power of a commercial truck, keeping them from treating it like an oversized passenger car.

More than 3,000 providers have been removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Training Provider Registry for not meeting federal standards, and numerous others have been flagged for more minor clerical violations. But Shawn says he is ready for the scrutiny.

Gresham isn’t asking for any more money, and he isn’t selling anything. The first class, set to begin October 18 pending Georgia licensing, is already completely full. He proudly offers on-site tours and donor records to anyone who wants to verify the seemingly impossible story of how the academy came to be.

“Everything about this school is proof that what is impossible with man is possible with God,” Gresham said. “It wasn’t built by one wealthy investor. It was built through faith, sacrifice, working truck drivers, local businesses, and an entire community of people who believed this industry could do better.” Click on following video to see video. https://youtu.be/T3TXpaK-z_0

 

Pre-employment screening: What drivers and carriers need to know

Brad Klepper

Hiring safe, qualified drivers is essential to every motor carrier’s success. A strong safety record protects more than the company’s reputation: It can support equipment uptime, reduce crash-related costs and legal exposure, help control insurance premiums and make the roads safer for everyone.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) helps motor carriers make more informed hiring decisions by providing access to a commercial driver applicant’s federally maintained crash and roadside inspection history.

Why PSP Matters

With the driver’s written consent, an authorized motor carrier can obtain a PSP record containing five years of crash data and three years of roadside inspection data from FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Management Information System.

Unlike a Motor Vehicle Record (MVR), which generally focuses on state-reported license status and convictions, a PSP record provides federal crash and inspection information. Used together, these resources can give employers a more complete picture of a driver applicant’s safety history.

 

PSP records can help motor carriers:

  • Identify crash and inspection patterns during pre-employment screening;
  • Make more informed and consistent hiring decisions;
  • Recognize areas where a driver may benefit from additional training; and
  • Strengthen their overall safety culture and risk-management practices.

PSP does not make hiring decisions or assign safety ratings to drivers. Instead, it provides objective information that employers can consider as part of a fair and comprehensive hiring process.

Recent PSP Enhancements

FMCSA has introduced several enhancements to make PSP information more transparent, useful and secure for drivers and motor carriers:

First-Name Variance Transparency

A driver’s first name may appear differently on an inspection or crash record because of a shortened name, alternate spelling, nickname or roadside data-entry variation.

PSP now provides greater transparency by displaying the first name as it was recorded at roadside. The report also identifies the information used to conduct the record search. This helps drivers and employers better understand why a name may appear differently and reduces potential confusion when reviewing a record.

45-Day Driver Candidate Monitoring

Driver Candidate Monitoring gives participating motor carriers an additional way to remain informed during the hiring process. An eligible PSP record can be monitored for 45 days from the original request date and time.

If the underlying record changes during that period, the employer is notified and can reorder the PSP record to review the updated information. This is especially helpful when hiring decisions, onboarding, background reviews, or start dates extend beyond the day the original report was requested.

Driver Candidate Monitoring does not continuously provide updated information. Instead, it alerts the employer that a change was detected so an updated record can be requested with the appropriate driver authorization.

Free PSP Monitoring for Drivers

Drivers can also enroll in the free PSP Monitoring service to stay informed about their own records. The service automatically monitors the driver’s PSP record and sends notifications when crash or inspection information is added, updated, or removed.

Enrolled drivers can receive email notifications and SMS text alerts. This gives drivers an opportunity to review changes, identify possible errors and use FMCSA’s DataQs system to request a review of potentially inaccurate data.

Monitoring helps drivers remain informed about the records prospective employers may see and better prepared for future employment opportunities.

Protecting Sensitive Driver Information

PSP’s optional PII Masking feature provides additional protection for sensitive driver information. When enabled by an authorized company user, the driver’s date of birth and commercial driver’s license number is partially masked.

This enhancement reduces the amount of sensitive information visible when PSP records are stored, shared, or reviewed internally while preserving the information needed to identify the driver and evaluate the report.

Safer Drivers Strengthen the Entire Operation

A safe driver contributes value across the organization. Fewer crashes and roadside violations can mean less equipment downtime, fewer costly repairs, stronger customer confidence and reduced legal and insurance exposure. Most importantly, careful screening and a strong safety culture help protect drivers, passengers and everyone sharing the road.

PSP provides meaningful information to motor carriers before making a hiring decision, while its driver-focused services provide greater transparency and help drivers take an active role in understanding their safety records.

To find more information about PSP, request a record or enroll in monitoring, visit  psp.fmcsa.dot.gov

Moving disabled vehicles to a safe location is a lifesaving necessity, not an option.

Kevin Rohlwing

 

Key takeaways

  • Position disabled trucks to give technicians a safe workspace away from traffic whenever possible.
  • TPMS can alert drivers to low tire pressure before a roadside emergency develops.
  • Proper use of reflective warning devices helps improve safety during roadside tire service.

In May, the Tire Industry Association (TIA) sponsored Roadside Service Safety Week to raise awareness on the steps technicians can take to protect themselves when servicing tires and wheels on the side of the road. Over the past year, the truck tire service industry has experienced several serious and fatal accidents during emergency road service. In most cases, those accidents were preventable.

As someone who performed emergency roadside service decades ago, I can speak firsthand about the dangers of working next to traffic traveling at highway speeds. I’ve had my share of close calls and had to dive under a trailer more than once to avoid getting hit by a passing vehicle. Today’s drivers have far more distractions, speeds have increased, and the number of cars and trucks has never been higher. Just a few months ago, I was on the side of the road filming a video, and we had a couple of cars drift to the right with ample warning devices and a film crew in reflective vests on the shoulder. There’s no shortage of distracted drivers.

TIA is the industry leader in tire technician training and certification, so it felt it necessary to raise awareness of the hazards associated with servicing tires and wheels on the side of a road or highway. We produced a new training video that emphasizes the importance of positioning the service truck behind the disabled vehicle, as parking in front has been a common factor in multiple accidents. TIA made the following video available to everyone on its website.

Furthermore, fleets share some responsibility in protecting the technicians who risk their lives to repair or replace tires on the side of the road. First and foremost, drivers must be trained to evaluate the position of the tire(s) in need of service before positioning the truck on the shoulder. If the tire or tires are on the driver’s side, the truck must be positioned as far to the right as possible so the technician has room to work between the vehicle and the fog line. Conversely, tires on the passenger’s side require more room away from traffic, so the vehicle should be positioned closer to the fog line.

In situations where there is insufficient shoulder space to service the tires on either side safely, the truck should be driven to an area with sufficient space or to the nearest exit. This may require replacing the wheel or wheels, but a technician’s life is worth far more than the cost of a wheel. As emergency road service providers move in that direction, more and more will require the vehicle to be moved to a safe location, or they will decline the job.

When a vehicle is disabled on the side of the road, it is also important to ensure drivers have reflective devices and position them properly. By law, they have 10 minutes to complete that task. In one recent accident, the driver did not position their reflective devices, and the technician positioned the service truck in front of the disabled vehicle to service a tractor tire. Combined, these factors almost cost a man his life.

Tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) help prevent accidents during roadside tire service by typically alerting the driver when a tire is losing inflation pressure. This gives them time to find an exit ramp or area with ample shoulder room so the technician can work safely. Impact-related blowouts will happen, and TPMS cannot prevent them. But TPMS can prevent separations caused by prolonged underinflation by warning the driver that a tire or tires are losing inflation pressure.

Emergency roadside tire service is not golf, so technicians are not going to play it where it lies. If the disabled truck is not positioned where the tire(s) can be serviced safely, it will have to be moved. If that requires a wheel replacement, then so be it. If it can’t be moved, then it will have to be towed to a safe location. Serious and fatal accidents can be prevented if fleets, drivers, and service providers work together to prioritize the safety of technicians working on the side of the road.

Click on link below to see video.

https://youtu.be/9LLv8Vv7lQY

The cost of a mile: Higher rates collide with rising expenses

Cliff Abbott

It took a while to get here, but small trucking businesses are finally finding higher freight rates and greater revenue opportunities than have been offered in the past few years. The higher rates, however, are at least partially driven by higher costs, especially fuel. It’s vital to your business to know your operational cost so you can determine if higher revenues are covering increased costs.

 

The U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes average gasoline and diesel fuel prices every Monday (except holidays) at eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel. The report provides national average retail prices, as well as average prices for different regions of the country.

The Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, report showed a national average price of $6.53 per gallon. Although higher prices may have occurred on a spot or temporary basis, it’s the first time the national average gallon price has topped $6. If you purchase your fuel in California, the average price shot above $8 per gallon for the first time. Even in the Gulf Coast region — typically the cheapest area for fuel — pricing exceeded the $6 mark at $6.03 per gallon.

This means record high prices for trucking operations.

Many Class 8 trucks average 6 to 6.5 mpg. Modern trucks can perform significantly better; but idling, traffic congestion and higher speeds can keep any vehicle from reaching maximum fuel economy.

At the national average gallon price of $6.53, small trucking businesses may find their diesel fuel costs have reached $1 per mile or more.

Petroleum-based fluids, like engine and other oils, see price increases, too. Oil-derived products, like plastics, cost more to manufacture. This impacts the cost of parts — and the cost of shipping those parts to maintenance facilities has gone up, too. Tires are more expensive, too.

Even the interest rate paid on your next truck loan could be impacted.

On Sept. 16, 2026, the Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously to increase the federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point. It was the first such increase in three years. The action came as inflation remained elevated, with crude oil prices above $100 per barrel contributing to increased price pressures. Fed policymakers indicated that another rate increase could come before the end of the year.

So, where do freight rates fit into the profitability picture?

According to data received from DAT Freight & Analytics, the seven-day rolling average linehaul freight rate for dry van, as determined from the DAT load board, was $2.17 per mile, excluding fuel surcharge. That figure is up 31.5% from the same week of 2025, an increase of 52 cents per mile. In contrast, the third week of September 2025 only rose 4 cents per mile from the same week in 2024.

Rates are definitely improving.

Refrigerated rates rose from $2 to $2.73 over the past year, according to DAT, an increase of 36.5%. Flatbed linehaul rates for the same period rose 55 cents, landing at $2.60 (that’s up 26.8%. However, expenses for these segments may be different from dry van expenses: Refrigerated trailers require fueling, and flatbed operations incur expenses for tarps, dunnage and securement equipment.

Here’s how owner-operators can work to maintain (or even improve) their bottom line.

The first order of business when considering a load is to make sure the fuel surcharge is covered. If the rate does not specify a surcharge amount, visit the EIA website and make a note of the current national average for diesel fuel in the U.S.

For example: The national average for diesel fuel in the third week of September 2025 was $3.75. This year, it’s shot up more than $2.50 per gallon (that’s a 67.8% increase) for the same time frame.

Now, it’s time to pull out your calculator. You should be able to divide that $2.54 increase by your average fuel mileage to determine how much your fuel cost per mile has increased.

Ask yourself: Have your freight rates, including any fuel surcharge, increased enough to cover the difference? If you’re tracking your other operational costs (as you should be), you can calculate how much more revenue you’ll need to cover your increased expenses.

There are resources to help you decide what’s needed.

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released its 2026 update to its Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking in July, providing some average trucking costs increases reported by survey respondents. The report is free, and it can provide some guidelines even if you don’t detail expenses for your operation.

The average operational cost per mile in the truckload sector in 2025 was $1.72, according to ATRI. That figure includes driver pay and benefits cost. Additionally, truck insurance, tolls, maintenance and truck lease or purchase payments continued to rise through the first quarter of 2026. It’s safe to assume that the 2025 cost of $1.72 has already grown to $1.80 per mile and is likely to be even higher, considering fuel increases.

Taking the DAT average dry van freight rate of $2.17 per mile, excluding fuel surcharge, and assuming operational cost of $1.80 per mile leaves just 37 cents per mile for driver pay and benefits — an amount many trucking business owners would determine isn’t worth their time and effort to manage the business.

Fuel efficiency can make a big difference.

It’s important to note that the ATRI operational cost estimates include fuel costs, so the fuel mileage achieved by your equipment can make a huge difference.

At the current EIA national average of $6.53, a truck that gets 5 mpg consumes about $1.31 in fuel every mile. If your truck gets 6 mpg, your fuel cost drops by about 22 cents per mile. Multiplied by a month’s worth of miles or more, the savings for just 1 mpg of added efficiency add up quickly.

For example: If your truck runs 100,000 miles in a year, the difference between achieving 5 mpg and 6 mpg is 3,333 gallons of fuel. Multiply those gallons by $6.523 and you’ll see that the truck getting 5 mpg will burn nearly $22,000 in additional fuel expenses in a single year.

Drivers know that keeping speed down and avoiding idling help increase fuel mileage. So does investment in aftermarket aero products such as wheel covers, fairings, trailer skirts, flow-through mud flaps and other products.

It all begins, however, with knowing your operational cost per mile.

Knowing where your business revenue is being spent helps you determine the areas where cost savings will have the largest impact. It also helps you make sound decisions about which loads, and which rates, will help your business profit.