I want to draw a few parallels or similarities between running a safety program and, well, running. I’ve been a runner for a significant part of my life – since high school days, in fact, and trust me, that was a while ago! That doesn’t mean that I’m in perfect shape or that I’m extremely thin. It also doesn’t mean that there have not been setbacks (injuries).
Specifically, I want to talk about training for and running a marathon. Yes, I’ve run them and, in fact, I’m training for one now that will go off on January 3rd of next year in Jacksonville, Florida. The distance, 26.2 miles, is a long way and requires some thought before you actually undertake the training and the race itself. Here is where the word commitment comes in. Add to that the backing of your loved ones, as it is going to take you out of the house to run several days each week for various amounts of time.
Next, you are going to have to pay attention to the method(s) you are using to get your body in shape to accomplish such a task. What kind of shoes should I get? What kind of running shorts and tops are best? How about nutrition? Should I get a coach, or trainer to learn a little more? Each person is unique; it will never be “one size fits all”. Most of us are only competing against ourselves, seeking to improve on the last time out.
Lastly, you have to remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint! The training usually takes from 10 to 20 weeks and that’s if you are already a runner. While you are actually running the race, you must also remember to pace yourself; you have a long way to go. When I am asked what my favorite part of a marathon is, I always say “the finish line”!
Now, what could all this possibly have to do with safety or a safety program? The short answer is plenty. Much has been said about CSA or the SMS scores, both good and bad. Yes, I will agree that if you are a very small carrier you may seem to be unfairly targeted. However, I’ve spent almost all of my working life in the trucking industry going from the loading docks, to driving, to training and finally into safety management. I find CSA to be a great resource for safety professionals, a tool to be used to improve upon the scores those insurance companies, shippers, and enforcement personnel all view.
Remember the first thing you must realize before undertaking a marathon? It’s going to take commitment and time. Let’s say you have a couple of BASIC scores in alert status, or maybe they are just a bit too high for your liking. The executives or owners of the company want the scores lowered — understandable. My first question would be, what kind of commitment exists here? Is the support “top down”? Is there backing from the very top to get this done? Does everyone realize that it’s going to take time? If the answer to all of this is in the affirmative, let’s look at the next step.
We need to look at what the violations are and who is committing them when they are driver based, and exactly what is causing them on the maintenance side. You have a fantastic asset available to you in your drivers. Most will always want to be able to improve. Show them where the problems are and what they can do to help improve the scores.
Also keep them abreast of the progress being made; trust me, they will be interested. Maybe additional driver training will be required. Maybe additional training will be required for the safety professional. NATMI has much to offer for the safety supervisor and safety director as well as similar training on the maintenance side.
I’ll end with this; remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint! Escalating scores are not going to go down in a couple of months. In fact, it may take up to 2 years to get some of the BASICs where you would like them. A good safety program is an endurance race against the past.
With proper support and time, with proper training and commitment, you will improve your safety performance! Nothing beats the feeling of success, whether it’s crossing the finish line in a road race or seeing your company’s safety scores show marked improvement!
Steven P Norbeck CDS, CDT (retired)
spnorbeck@gmail.com
With the driver shortage continuing to climb to the top of motor carrier concerns, ATRI has released a new report that highlights a challenging future for the trucking industry based on demographic data and a dramatic shift in the age of the industry’s driver workforce.
ATRI’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data found that the trucking industry is disproportionately dependent on employees 45 years of age or older, many of whom will retire in the next 10-20 years. Complicating this is a sharp decrease over the past 20 years in the number of younger drivers that make up the industry, particularly those under 35.
Distribution of Employees 20 Years of Age and Older
One of the challenges highlighted by the study is the lack of vocational education offering for high school students to introduce them to a career in trucking. Based on data from the U.S. Department of Education, less than 30 percent of high schools nationwide offer any type of trade and industry transportation vocational courses. Further exacerbating the issue is the gap between high school graduation and CDL eligibility.
The results of this research prompted ATRI’s Research Advisory Committee (RAC) to rank two companion studies on younger driver issues as part of its 2015 top research priorities list. The first, Getting Younger Drivers in the Driver’s Seat, will focus on increasing the trucking industry’s vocational presence and examine the potential for a Graduated Commercial Driver’s License (GCDL).
The second, Younger Driver Assessment Tool, is designed to develop a screening tool to assess younger drivers that possess the cognitive decision-making attributes of mature, safe drivers. Once the tool is developed and validated, it then could be used to identify a pool of younger drivers for a GCDL pilot test involving commercial drivers 18-20 years old.
While finding ways to safely bring younger drivers into the industry is one potential solution to the growing driver shortage, the industry must also address a number of other challenges that make it difficult to retain the current driver population and recruit additional new entrant drivers.
Visit ATRI at www.atri-online.org.
ATRI is the trucking industry’s 501 (c) (3) not-for profit research organization. The Institute’s primary mission is to conduct transportation research with an emphasis on the trucking industry’s essential role in a safe, efficient, and viable transportation system.
The International Registration Plan and IFTA require a carrier operating under those programs to keep mileage records that can be audited for the carrier’s compliance. Those records have to show where a carrier’s vehicles went — that is, routes and miles traveled — sufficient for an auditor to determine the accuracy of what the carrier reported on its IRP application for registration and its IFTA fuel use tax returns.
IRP adopted language that specifically requires its member jurisdictions to permit such electronic records – if they are adequate – to serve for purposes of audit. Next year IFTA has done likewise. Until now, IFTA may allow records if they are deemed accurate and adequate.
Your GPS records must be accurate – exactly measuring the distance in a state or province as well as the boundary crossing.
You must maintain records up to 5 years – IFTA and IRP have record retention guidelines that exceed log requirements.
Nov 16, 2015 Larry Kahaner Fleet Owner
When Matthew Thiese and his team set out to learn why truck drivers crash, they looked at about 25 different variables including age, gender, weight, experience, heart disease, feeling tense, low back pain as well as alcohol and tobacco use. After recruiting drivers at truck stops, truck shows and on line – and ultimately including 797 in their analysis – three factors consistently stood out: pulse pressure, feeling physically exhausted after work and cell phone use.
While cell phone use makes intuitive sense as a crash factor, because of the obvious distraction, the other two factors – pulse pressure and feeling physically exhausted after work – are baffling, says Thiese, Assistant Professor at the University of Utah’s Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. His work was supported by the federal government.
“In terms of looking at crash risk, I was surprised that feeling physically exhausted after work was related to being involved in a crash,” he says, “but then I was also surprised at how many drivers had uncontrolled hypertension or uncontrolled high cholesterol, so those two were both surprising to me, too – more so the hypertension.” He notes that many drivers who said they were on medication, about 100 of the participants, still had high blood pressure. “I was surprised by that. I would’ve thought there would be more people who had it under control especially because they need certification every two years to drive. There are no outward signs of high blood pressure and some medications have side effects which affects compliance. I absolutely understand that, but it was still surprising.”
The study, funded by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, part of The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had a specific goal of looking at doing a large study of truck drivers to describe their health. “There’s really not much out there looking at it,” Thiese says. “To my knowledge this is the largest study that’s ever address all of these different factors. Our objective was to look at these data and how they associate with crashes.”
In future studies, Thiese wants to learn why pulse pressure and feeling physically exhausted correlated so high with crashes. “We know that these medical conditions occurred before the crash, so it’s more suggestive of causation. We’re working on a grant to actually perform a longitudinal study, where we enroll drivers and actually follow them through time, so that we can really get a handle on that strength of relationship between the predictive elements of a medical factor and having a subsequent crash.”
[Note: Pulse pressure is different than blood pressure which reads the diastolic and systolic pressures like 120/80. Pulse pressure is the difference between the two and represents the force that the heart generates each time it contracts. A high pulse pressure is believed to be a predictor of cardiovascular disease.]
What can drivers take away from the study?
“I want drivers to consider that there is not one risk factor for being involved in a crash. There are a lot of different factors, which also gives drivers many opportunities to try and reduce their own crash risk. There’s been a lot of focus on sleep apnea. There’s increasing focus on diet and exercise, and for some drivers, positive changes are feasible. There are other things that they can do, but for some drivers, it’s just really hard to eat healthy, or they don’t for one reason or another.”
He concludes: “Being physically exhausted after work, your pulse pressure, not talking on a cell phone – these are three very different things that, in theory, if you’re able to address, you should be able to reduce your crash risk.”
The study was published in the October, 2015 issue of Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
Is leverage good or bad? Depends on who you ask, and which side of the leverage you’re on. You cannot grow your business without leverage – time, money, and information.
Whether you own a trucking company or manage a private fleet – technology is leverage in your business. Technology amplifies the good and magnifies the not-so-good.
What is leverage? It is the ability to influence a system or an environment in a way that multiplies the outcome of one’s efforts. We think of leverage as financial. It is more than that. It is your people, your systems, and the technology you and your company uses to direct your assets and people.
Do you have good systems? Technology makes jobs easier, clearer, and allows more transparency. Drivers know what to do and what’s expected. Dispatchers can spend more time doing, and less time remembering or digging for information. Managers and owners can clearly see what’s going on in all levels of their company.
Do you have bad systems – or no system at all? If you do not have clear processes and expectations – technology will simply add tasks to a disgruntled workforce.
I have been fielding an incredible number of phone calls, emails, and requests for meetings because of the upcoming Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate. We’ve talked to fleets, technology providers, and government agencies. Some people are happy – for a variety of reasons. Some are in panic mode. Some are resigned to yet more government intrusion.
Many miss the point, so let’s create the scene that I see. It’s the same scene that many of our customers see. Technology is just a big lever that can solve or create problems. It can expose opportunities or weaknesses more quickly than they’d surface on their own.
I was first exposed to telematics in 1988, and by 1991 I was implementing Tripmaster in CX Transportation’s fleet nationwide. At the time I saw this system and its data as a tool to help us win business, manage customers, decrease variable costs, increase safety, improve compliance, and help drivers. When I went to work for Tripmaster in 1994, I was surprised by what I saw with other fleets running this same technology.
Surprise number one – I was neither unique nor a genius. We decreased accident costs by 75% and increased fuel economy by a full 1 MPG at CX. But, so did other fleets. What was common among the successful fleets? We had a Standard Operating Procedure that clearly defined expectations and roles for everyone. Data was visible and transparent throughout the business. We clearly wanted to help two primary groups of people; drivers and local managers.
Surprise number two – misapplied technology did not create a better business. Poor business practices and poor people practices are simply poor – with or without technology. With technology added to a toxic workplace, the bad becomes visible to everyone. If you believe drivers are a necessary evil and are always “out to get you”, technology is a baseball bat that makes everything worse. If you have no improvement plan and see no need for standard procedures – you’ve created more work with no clear benefit.
I’ve seen fleets big and small do wonderful things with their fleet technology. I’ve seen businesses saved. I have seen driver’s lives improved. I have seen managers grow, do more managing and less paperwork.
I have seen fleets use their telematics system as a battering ram – and for no good reason other than misguided egos and lack of true leadership skills.
So – what does this have to do with the ELD mandate?
Do you run a good, tight, company? Do you have an economic and philosophical advantage in your marketplace? And, are you worried that this ELD mandate will level the playing field – raising others up to your level and destroying your advantage? Stop worrying. From what I see – companies that have a “safety last” attitude now, won’t change because of a mandated technology. They will buy the cheapest ELD device they can find and hope it doesn’t work all the time. Companies that are a miserable place for drivers to work – won’t suddenly get better with ELDs. If you run a good company and you are distinctively different – it’s your leadership and business philosophy that counts. Your technology is your toolbox to do better planning and to keep it all running.
I encourage you to read “The Long Road to Success” by J.B. Hunt, you can find it here. Not only will you learn how a great company was built, but you’ll see that clear application of technology as leverage.
Do you think you can improve your operations with the smart application of technology? Do you need help creating a Standard Operating Procedure for your fleet? Do you want to have a conversation about fleet technology? Contact us here and let’s set a time to talk.
Source: The Washington Post’s article about Werner’s Derek Leathers and how he expects women to make up 10% of Werner’s driver force by years end.
