Brad Klepper
After taking a hiatus last month to explore the ramifications of the proposed rescheduling of marijuana, we’re back with the fifth — and final — installment of a series designed to help motor carriers create and implement an effective safety plan.
In those first four installments, we talked through each team’s role in onboarding and continuing to develop safe drivers.
Now we come to an all-important question: How can we know what is working and where we should invest our efforts? Here’s a breakdown that may help.
Recruiting
What does success look like for a recruiter in hiring safe drivers? The point at which you pay a bonus will tell the recruiter what to value.
You may want recruiters to bring as many interested and basically qualified people as possible and let the orientation team worry about safety-mindedness — or you may want the recruiters to invest more time upfront to bring in safety-minded (but fewer) candidates, spending less money on travel/hotels and time with the wrong people. You must determine what setup is right for you.
If you do want to hold recruiters accountable for the success of the driver, it is important to measure how many of their individual recruits succeed in orientation and the reasons their recruits fail orientation.
- How can you help improve the recruiter’s conversation around that topic, either disqualifying the candidate in advance of coming or setting better expectations for the candidate ahead of coming?
- Is the recruiter ensuring the driver completes anything in advance? New hire paperwork? Advance safety training? Drug screens? Physicals?
- If these are encouraged rather than required, what percentage of the recruiter’s candidates are actually completing the recommended pre-orientation steps? What can they do to improve completion?
Orientation and Road Training
To avoid bias (or even the appearance of bias) in who you determine is or is not a safe fit throughout the orientation process, you can implement assessments with well-defined right and wrong answers.
Well-planned assessments both mitigate biases and create useful measurements — and measurements create the opportunity to evaluate correlations. Correlations allow you to hypothesize what changes could be made to improve the effectiveness of your safety training and, as such, both assemble a safer fleet and expand your pool of candidates.
For example, you might create a points system with pass/fail scores on your road test, similar to that of a driver’s examination. On the form you would note what infractions were made and how many negative points were accumulated for those infractions. This reduces any concerns of possible bias during the examination, and it also creates a measurable metric you can use to compare against CDL schools attended, previous experience driving, etc.
Using this information, you may be able to have conversations with specific CDL schools about what portions of your road test their alums are failing. You could also consider what additional training you may want to offer/require based on an applicant’s previous driving experience. You may want to update pre-orientation materials you offer based on trends you see in previous driving experience, or even require folks with less experience come a day early for additional instruction.
You may want to stop hiring from certain CDL schools altogether if they’re unwilling to update their programs to improve their alums success in your orientation.
Similarly, an assessment at time of upgrade from road trainer to a truck would provide an excellent review of the road trainer’s work as well, along with giving you the ability to see what topics road trainers may need to cover in more detail during road training. Or, perhaps, you might find an opportunity to consider adjusting training in orientation to cover the topic in more detail (or maybe insight into who should be removed from your road trainer program).
Orientation supervisors and road trainers should be very well trained in and given a voice in these assessments. The more say people have in a process, the more likely they are to follow it. Schedule a regular review, perhaps quarterly or biannually, to review your assessments with those facilitating them and discuss updates. At your discretion, share the trending results you see from the assessments and ask their suggestions on what can be adjusted in training so more people with the right attitude can learn the skills to be safe. Perhaps they’ll have ideas on other items to measure.
First Year and Beyond
In Part 3 of this series, I asked a few questions to get your mental wheels spinning about what to measure in your fleet and how to structure your training and coaching around those measurements. Who is having what kind of accidents — and when and why?
Are poor directions taking them down bad roads? Can you train drivers to better evaluate directions and look ahead to be sure they make sense? Or who to call and how to maneuver if they wind up in an unsafe area?
Are drivers having accidents at a specific customer location? Is the freight, traffic, warehouse employee attitudes or limited space creating tight space or requiring snap decisions? Can you set alerts to coach or send a video training to a driver when he/she is assigned a load to that customer and then measure any reduction in accidents at that location?
It’s important to tell people the “why” and “what’s in it for them” to get their buy-in, so I encourage you to share the metrics you measure and how completing the training and giving feedback will help them succeed. You certainly do not want to defame a customer to your fleet, but you can professionally share with your drivers that you have seen a location requires a higher level of preparedness to avoid accidents.
What’s Worth Measuring?
When determining if something is worth measuring, always ask yourself these questions:
- What are the possible results of this measurement?
- What else could be affecting that result?
- What action(s) can we take to minimize a negative result and/or improve a positive result?
For example, say you decide to measure what day most people fail in your orientation. Is it more likely people are failing because there is something inherently unlucky about Mondays, or is it that your road tests are on Mondays? I’m going to guess it’s because of your road test. You’re not going to stop having class on Monday to reduce failures. It might seem interesting to know what day most people fail, but it’s not actionable — and it’s likely not any root cause to a negative or positive result.
On the other hand, it might be worth moving road tests from Monday to Tuesday to see if fewer people fail. Perhaps traveling and getting in late Sunday, then taking the road test when drivers are tired and have anxious first day jitters on Monday is not the best situation to assess.
It’s all in how you ask the question and what you’re willing to change based on the answer. Anything you measure but are unwilling to change is a waste of time.
What about Operations and Maintenance?
Operations and maintenance are also key partners in safety. It is important to share with these teams the information you’re gathering, how you intend to improve, and — again — what is in it for them. How can safer drivers make their lives easier? What training would their departments like to see drivers go through?
Driver managers and other drivers are the most influential in how your drivers behave in their daily lives. You’ll certainly want to get operations and your trusted, tenured drivers (namely your road trainers and mentors) on board. Give them a voice with anything you plan for your current fleet before you launch. You may not make the changes they want to see, but you can listen and respond with how you decided on a solution and that you’re open to changing course and continuing to hear their suggestions if you do not see the positive impact you expect.
Closing Remarks
This concludes my lengthy series on building a comprehensive safety plan throughout your company. Each team’s impact on safety could be a series of its own right, but I hope these got some internal conversations going that will turn into productive action on each team. If not, at least you all now have another team you can point fingers at for safety infractions!
Brad Klepper
In Part 4 of this series, I am finally getting to the team no one thinks of when it comes to building a comprehensive safety plan: the safety team (insert tongue in cheek here — and yes, this is why they pay me the big bucks!)
I am also going to address the importance of a mentorship program that works in conjunction with the safety team.
The First Year
While not all carriers hire fresh Class-A CDL graduates, many carriers DO hire drivers with less than one year of experience. Many companies have adjusted down their experience requirement in the past decade — but how much have their safety programs changed in response to the needs of less-experienced drivers and heightened regulations?
Studies show that, regardless of age, drivers with less than one year of driving experience pose the greatest safety risk in terms of violations and crashes. Providing these inexperienced drivers with mentorship from experienced drivers during the first year — on top of additional coaching or training from your safety team — is highly recommended.
So, what does that look like?
My favorite answer to give (and the one all lawyers are trained to provide) is, “It depends.”
It depends on your company’s safety challenges, company culture and the resources you have available in manpower, technology and training development skills. Any of this can be outsourced, but maintaining your company values and unique policies in these programs will still take some manpower from your safety team in guiding the external team and reviewing their work.
Mentorship Programs that Actually Work
For a mentorship program to work, your mentors must be engaged and shining examples of your company’s culture. Just as with your road trainers, it’s vital to regularly connect with your mentors and give them a voice in program development and a voice in changes they would like to see in the company.
You certainly want mentors who are passionate about developing others, but in order for this to be viewed as a professional part of their job, you should provide some type of compensation for their time and efforts — and specify goals to which you can hold them accountable in order to receive their compensation.
Mentors having a minimum of one year of experience driving and a fantastic safety record is an obvious must, but they should also have a positive view of your safety team. Mentors further establish your company’s values and when/how the mentees should engage with office employees.
The same can be said for the safety technology on the trucks. Mentees are likely to adopt a similar perspective to their mentors have regarding the tech your safety team has carefully chosen. Ideally, your mentors share the same convictions your safety team has. After all, they are acting as your safety team in the field!
When pairing mentors to mentees, carefully consider each person’s background, personality and hobbies. Those with similar interests will be most likely to result in a productive and happy match.
Depending on the nature of how your freight moves, you may want to develop a mentorship “hotline” that gives newer drivers an opportunity to reach another mentor if their assigned mentor is unavailable. Another option would be to have a 24/7 on-call safety member who can either answer the question or look up another mentor who may be available.
Effective Safety Teams
For your safety team to be most effective in your fleet, developing relationships and trust is key.
Sometimes having the right title and/or experience can garner enough respect to get someone to truly listen to you and help change their life, but this is rare. Most often, the people we trust have our individual best interest at heart are the ones who change our lives. For example, even with my impressive J.D. degree and decades in trucking (placing tongue firmly in cheek here while pausing for dramatic effect), I still expect those of you who have met me are far more likely to consider my advice in these articles.
For your drivers to believe you genuinely care about them, they need to feel they know you and that you understand and appreciate the challenges of their job.
The first year, when less-experienced drivers are your highest risk, is the most impactful time for you to be calling, listening to what they’re facing and coaching them weekly (or monthly, depending on the size of your fleet).
Important advice: Listen first, coach second. This is coming from someone who loves to talk, but I also love to learn — and learning comes from listening. This is likely to positively affect your retention as well.
Another option is to assign regular training goals using a system that lets you monitor completion rates. Incompletion must have consequences!
Why is this important? First, it shows you believe your program is important and makes a difference. If you don’t, why should the drivers believe in it? Second, if a driver gets into an accident and you must turn over records showing that the driver has not completed any assigned safety training for months, it paints a poor picture of both the driver’s and the company’s commitment to safety.
For the most effective training, you’ll need to measure the causes of accidents and violations at your company. I encourage you to share in your training some metrics to show how serious these mistakes are for the company and for other drivers.
How much are these accidents/violations costing the company? How much downtime does a driver experience following this type of accident? How are these safety issues impacting the company’s and drivers’ CSA scores? What does it mean for the company and drivers if you hit intervention levels in that category? If you can reduce it by X%, what do you estimate the savings will be?
These topics are really great for your entire fleet.
Also, if you love a good debate like me — and can take the time to reinforce you’re all on the same team — share the experience level of the drivers having these accidents.
Most often, experienced drivers are certain it’s always the new “whippersnappers” having all the accidents. While we do see drivers in their first year have the most accidents, they are far from the only ones having accidents. In fact, share the most common accident in each band of experience.
Everyone can be part of reducing accidents, and no one is immune from having one. If you can share metrics that apply to each driver and can convince them that each individual action matters, you are more likely to get their attention. It can also be a good tactic to recruit for mentors.
Speaking of metrics …
Part 5 in this series is focused entirely on building powerful assessments and metrics to bolster your safety program and direct ongoing changes for the better. This applies at every step in your program. You cannot build a safety program that works if you are not unbiased in measuring its impact and continuing to adjust as the demographics, technology and needs in your fleet evolve.
Brad Klepper
In the third installation of this series, we’re going to talk about bad habits.
Whether we want to admit it or not, most of us have picked up some bad driving habits between the age of 16 and whatever age we are now. (No, I’m not going to say how many years that is for me, and I won’t ask you to tell me either.)
Maybe you have a quick bite or drink while you’re driving, or you send a quick text. Maybe you start programming in the route to your destination after you’ve already taken off — or maybe you reach for something in the back seat to hand to your kid. Maybe you speed up as the light turns yellow, or you drive just 4-9 miles an hour over the speed limit everywhere you go. Or, perhaps you’re a perfect driver who makes no mistakes, and you just throw rude gestures to the needlessly careless drivers around you.
Now … imagine engaging in all these seemingly minor distractions and habits while behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck, which requires 50% or more stopping distance than an ordinary passenger vehicle.
Consider this: Most Class A truck drivers have five years or to develop personal driving habits, both good and bad, before they ever start CDL training and testing. We’d like to think the people who decide to be truck drivers quickly gave up those pesky, reckless habits — and maybe they did.
But let me ask you this: How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been successful simply because you knew they were better for you? Again, I won’t tell or make you tell, but I’m guessing most of us are not feeling a rousing sense of achievement at the thought.
So how do we re-train safe driving habits in orientation?
In recruiting, you assess a candidate’s attitude around safety, their accountability for their mistakes and their ability to learn from those mistakes.
IIn orientation, you assess those same items, plus the person’s ability to learn or retrain themselves based on your guidance. If you assigned videos and quizzed them ahead of orientation, now you are seeing if they can apply the information in the real world.
Orientation should consist of hands-on driving and training that cannot be completed online. Some things to cover with drivers during orientation include:
- Share examples of common scenarios that have led up to a violation or accident at your company. Ask the recruits what risks they would face in that situation and how they would mitigate them.
- Provide recruits with examples of publicized lawsuits in the industry over the last several years and how they have played out for the driver.
- Introduce them new drivers your safety team and offer a Q&A session to build trust.
Orientation is your chance to more deeply connect new hires with your value for safety and teach them how to think about and to take safety personally. If new drivers simply sit silently through dull lectures and take quizzes, you’re teaching them to memorize, regurgitate and discard information.
Changing habits necessitates creating new neural pathways through action, interaction and problem-solving.
What about road training?
Road training is equally, if not more crucial than orientation in re-training habits. Road training allows the new employee to cement their new safe habits with the oversight of a respected, mindful advisor.
Your company’s road trainers should be some of the most deeply scrutinized, well-paid and highly engaged employees in your company.
When considering the length of your orientation versus your road training process, I tend to believe investment in road training pays more dividends because it gives a more realistic opportunity to retrain habits.
What’s next?
I’ll bet you wouldn’t have guessed we’d be three parts into a series about a “comprehensive safety plan” before addressing your company’s safety program as it relates to candidates. But each step in the recruiting, hiring and training process is vital to overall safety.
Recruiting, orientation and road training are the gatekeepers of your organization’s value for safety. If your organization’s culture is built on people, these teams are pouring the foundation for your company growth.
You cannot build a strong safety culture on top of a weak safety foundation. Don’t take that statement lightly.
So, what’s next? It’s time to talk about the work your company’s safety team does to build your safety culture.
Brad Klepper
I’m sure my riveting column about strategically interviewing candidates as part of your comprehensive safety plan is what’s drawn you back for the highly anticipated Part 2. (Thanks to both of you for contributing to my delusions of grandeur.)
But on to business.
Now that you eliminated some of the knuckleheads through the recruiting process discussed in Part 1, let’s talk about safety training. I’ve taken the liberty of anticipating some of the most-asked questions on the topic. If you have additional thoughts or questions, let me know.
When should safety training start?
I don’t pretend to be the most tech-savvy person, but like many people my age, I’ve allowed myself to be dragged along by the younger generation. I’ve been assured the constant change and updates to our technology is an inevitable part of being a successful business.
While I will not give specific recommendations on systems, I’m aware many training platforms now offer the option of assigning videos and training materials before candidates even show up to orientation. Drug testing is more commonly completed in advance now too.
However, training in advance might seem like a heavy, and even wasteful, administrative burden.
“Why would I invest in training up front when 20% of my candidates may not even show up to orientation?” you ask.
That’s a fair point — but let’s debate it for a minute.
Human nature dictates that the more time we invest in something, the more committed we become to seeing it through. In addition, when exposed to the same information multiple times, we’re more apt to like it, to believe it and (this is very important) remember it. We see this in advertising, news, music and popular culture in general.
So, do I believe providing safety training before orientation could improve your show rate with more prepared candidates who better understand and are interested in the work you’ll ask them to do? Absolutely.
“I thought this was a safety article, not a psychology article!” I can hear you saying.
Right! Let’s get back on track. Next question….
What topics make sense for advance safety training?
Training materials showcasing your unique safety protocols for your company’s equipment and freight would be a great introduction.
This shows recruits how you stand out and starts drilling the information they’ll need to have to be successful at your specific company. These are things they very likely did not learn in CDL school or at another company.
For more general training, Smith System training or DOT regulation training can benefit drivers at any company. Providing these training opportunities in advance also reinforces to candidates that you have a core value for safety. Ideally, it also helps further narrow your pool to those who share a value for safety or at least for learning.
If the training is presented by your safety team with photos or videos, you have the added benefit that it will acquaint your future drivers with your team early on, making them more accessible and familiar.
How many times have you had a driver make a costly mistake because they were afraid to call the safety director and admit they didn’t know what to do? The more familiar employees are with your safety team members, the less intimidating it will be to make that call in the future.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be worth my salt as a lawyer if I didn’t caution you to be VERY thoughtful when choosing what you put into writing or record as you prepare these materials.
While it’s great for your safety team to be personable and approachable, your company should never seem cavalier about safety. Any safety training you provide could be scrutinized in the event of a lawsuit. You should be comfortable with showing any piece of your training (possibly cut down and taken out of context) to a jury. Getting the opinion of an attorney who’s knowledgeable in transportation lawsuits and verdicts could save you from making a well-intentioned mistake when attempting to connect with your drivers.
How will we make sure these materials are even completed?
Well, that depends on your systems and your company culture.
Some training platforms can track a student’s progress and determine whether a video session was played in its entirety or was closed out early. You could also build out quizzes to measure trainees’ comprehension.
As far as incentives go, I’m a “use-a-carrot-instead-of-a-stick” guy.
Perhaps those who complete their videos are first up to be placed in a truck, or get first pick of a truck. Maybe they get a bonus at the beginning or end of orientation, or maybe offer a free shirt or hat or other item that will be useful on the truck.
If you’re more of a “stick” person (with the word stick meaning reprimands, not the drawing) and can build the administration to track it, you might require that training be completed before scheduling orientation or purchasing the applicant’s transportation to orientation.
You’ll certainly want to work out this piece before you get started. There is no sense developing safety training no one will complete.
One last note:
While I’m writing these articles in the order a candidate enters and moves through your company, this is not necessarily a step-by-step chronological guide for implementation. If you enhance your safety-mindedness at any step in the career of an employee at your company, I’m sure you’ll reap benefits.
Brad Klepper
We all know how much people love to hate lawyers. Even I can jump right on that bandwagon.
When you pay a lawyer for his/her advice, you’re often actually paying someone to be a killjoy. He/she will listen as you describe what you hope to accomplish — and then not-so-lovingly point out all the risks associated with your dreams.
“But with no risk, there are no rewards, Brad!” I can hear you saying. Well, that’s true, or at least partially true.
Mitigating every risk is impossible, but to avoid losing all those hard-earned rewards, minimizing your risk is a must. This is where your safety plan swoops in to save the day and keep those killjoys off your back.
A comprehensive safety plan starts with these five steps:
- Recruit driver candidates who value safety;
- Engage safety training both up-front and ongoing based on industry standards as well as both individual and fleet performance;
- Evaluate customer locations, freight and routes;
- Provide consistent communication with your drivers on Steps 1-3; and, if that’s not enough —
- Have a process in place for reducing the impact of mistakes when they are made.
I’m sure a parley with my friends in safety could drum up more, but most lawsuits could have been minimized or prevented through careful planning in these categories. And no, of course it’s not just about making money and preventing lawsuits (I know, it’s shocking to hear this from a lawyer), but it’s also about saving lives and feeling pride in how we take care of our people and our industry.
Let’s start with Step 1: Recruit driver candidates who value safety.
In addition to getting the driving history of your applicants, how are you evaluating their attitude about safety? If they have had accidents or tickets, are they taking accountability? Did they learn how to prevent it from happening again?
Here’s a good question to ask prospective drivers: “If you were faced with that same situation on the road again, what would you do differently?”
Perhaps they would pull over for bad weather, remove distractions, study their route more closely in advance, get out to look before backing, etc. Perhaps they’ll tell you there’s nothing they would do differently — which may tell you that, if they’re faced with this same situation at your company, they will likely have the same accident.
Discussing drivers’ previous tickets and accidents may also offer insight as to the attitude they would typically display at a traffic stop. The first guidance I give all drivers is this: Remain calm and professional and treat the officer with respect, regardless of whether you feel the stop was warranted or not, or if you feel the officer is reciprocating.
As you ask questions about a prospective driver’s MVR (motor vehicle record), notice their behavior. Are they becoming defensive with you? Angry? Accusatory?
When reviewing the dates of an applicant’s previous infractions, check to see if they have multiple tickets from the same incident/inspection. In my experience, more than one ticket (and especially more than two tickets) during one interaction means the driver put on his/her war uniform before interacting with the officer.
Also notice whether the driver is willing to take responsibility for his/her part in the interaction. For example, are they saying the citation was bumped up from speeding to reckless driving because the officer was “out to get them?”
Perhaps it’s worth asking a simple, direct question: “How was your interaction with the officer during this incident?” The response could be something like, “Oh he was an idiot. I only got those tickets because the cop was out to get me and wouldn’t listen to reason.” This type of attitude is likely to result in the driver putting several tickets on your fleet’s record — or possibly even the driver being arrested during a roadside interaction. (Meanwhile, you’ll be scrambling to recover your truck and deciding the best way to inform your customer you’re just a little behind schedule.)
Depending on the setup of your company, this conversation with a prospective driver might be with your recruiters, your safety team or your orientation supervisors. Whichever team takes on this conversation, make sure the person asking the questions is clear on the perspective you’re trying gain from an applicant’s responses to.
When it comes to screening and interviewing job candidates, it’s best to assign the duty to a small handful of very well-trained individuals. If, for the sake of expediency, you want to train your entire team to help speed the screening/hiring process, I recommend that you have team members conduct practice interviews with each other at least once a month to keep their skills fresh and focused.
You’re not going to mitigate every risk, but if you’re able to identify a hothead before you put him/her behind the wheel of a truck, you’re going to save your team a lot of headaches at the least — and explosive litigation at the worst.
Mark Schremmer
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration plans to revisit its ELD rule in 2025.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Spring 2024 Unified Regulatory Agenda, FMCSA is targeting June 2025 for a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding electronic logging devices. The notice is expected to propose revisions to the agency’s existing ELD rule.
In September 2022, FMCSA requested feedback from truckers about how it can improve the ELD mandate.
FMCSA’s advance notice of proposed rulemaking considers changes to the ELD mandate in five areas:
- Applicability to pre-2000 engines
- Addressing ELD malfunctions
- The process for removing an ELD from FMCSA’s list of certified devices
- Technical specifications
- ELD certification
As part of the notice, FMCSA asked truck drivers for feedback on the original mandate’s decision to exempt trucks with pre-2000 engines.
“Should FMCSA reevaluate or modify the applicability of the current ELD regulation for rebuilt or remanufactured CMV engines or glider kits?” the agency asked.
As part of comments submitted to the agency in November 2022, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said that there is no justification for removing the exemption.
“The agency lacks data confirming the ELD mandate has improved highway safety and has failed to demonstrate how the expansion of existing requirements to vehicles operating on pre-2000 and rebuilt pre-2000 engines would enhance safety,” the Association wrote in 2022. “OOIDA is unaware of any research that demonstrates vehicles operating under the pre-2000 exemption fail to meet the same level of safety as vehicles with ELDs.”
Individual truck drivers also spoke out against any plans to remove the ELD exemption for older trucks.
“The job of the FMCSA is to advance highway safety,” Dan Roe wrote. “When the FMCSA implemented the ELD rules, it exempted vehicles with pre-2000 engines. To my knowledge, there have not been any problems with these vehicles causing injury-related crashes. Therefore to repeal the exemption for pre-2000 engines will do nothing to advance highway safety.”
Although it remains unclear exactly what FMCSA will propose, the agency appears poised to move forward with a notice of proposed rulemaking next year.
