The owner-operator of yesteryear struggled to prosper amid a complex web of Teamster pressures and over-regulation. Shutdowns and other conflicts lined the highway that led to today’s climate in which the self-employed contractor is integral to the industry and able to operate with much greater independence. From fighting for enhanced freedom to haul in its early days to stressing smart business practices later, Overdrive has championed the owner-operator’s concerns.
1950s and ’60s: Fast track to a golden age
When Overdrive launched in 1961, trucking was dominated by the Teamsters union. Even in the unregulated area, where owner-operators and small fleets had hauled commodities deemed exempt from price regulation since the industry’s infancy in the 1930s, unions exerted their organizing pressure. Overdrive founder Mike Parkhurst is said to have been driven to launch the magazine in part by a personal affront chronicled in historian Shane Hamilton’s 2008 book “Trucking Country: The Road to America’s Wal-Mart Economy.”
Then owner-operator Parkhurst was at a receiver in Mansfield, Ohio, when “a Teamster organizer informed him that he would have to pay union dues to unload his produce,” Hamilton wrote. Along with the complicated regulatory structure of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Teamsters, Parkhurst believed, “had ‘strangled the healthy growth of the free enterprise system.’”
The options for owner-operators wishing to haul regulated freight prior to the mid-1950s were limited to finding one of the relatively few regulated carriers who leased owned and operated equipment. Most operators of the time carved a niche in produce markets.
No motor carrier authority was necessary, thanks to agricultural interests securing an exemption from price and lane regulation in the first Motor Carrier Act in 1935, which directed the ICC to regulate the movement of any non-exempt freight. As a result, “a lot of your early owner-operators – especially in produce – come from farms,” said Brian Kimball of the Kimball Transportation brokerage (whose family is pictured, around 2011). “They’re hard workers. They have a knowledge of the machinery – they could repair their own equipment.”
Kimball’s father, Ed, hauled produce with his five sons in Ed Kimball & Sons Trucking. Before that he leased to different produce-trucking outfits in Florida and, by the late 1950s, typically hauled refrigerated commodities back under trip-lease arrangements. Enabled by legislation enacted in 1957, trip-leasing (running under a regulated carrier’s authority for a single trip agreement) expanded options for owner-operators. Deadhead miles were reduced as obtaining regulated backhauls became more common.
Through the 1960s and into the ’70s, in spite of the limitations to entry in the regulated market, a small-town Indiana boy could buy a truck and “make a decent living” just trip-leasing with carriers, said consultant Jay Thompson. Thompson and his brothers did just that.
After repeated scandals among Teamsters leadership under Jimmy Hoffa in the 1960s disillusioned many drivers – and more carriers began to view independent owner-operators more favorably – the average income of the self-employed driver rose above the average wage earnings of employee drivers for the first time nationally.
The exempt trucking market was “the most cutthroat business there ever was,” saidTodd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. “Brokers stiffing truckers was routine.” With lax ICC regulations governing carrier leases with owner-operators, many of those who leased owner-operators prior to the late 1970s had the upper hand, he said.
The 1970s: The road to deregulation
As owner-operators increased in numbers, so did their recognition within the industry. Parkhurst in the 1960s launched a national trade group, the Independent Truckers Association, and later the Roadmasters.
Avoca, N.Y.-based owner-operator David A. Margeson, who hauled exempt potatoes, was a Roadmasters member. He recalled that the organization put the owner-operator “on Main Street. Up to that time there’d been no recognition of owner-operators.”
“For the first time in history, a simple thing such as a magazine brought owner-operators together from every aspect of trucking with common interests and common goals which could be heard and shared with other truckers from coast to coast. In the days before computers and Internet services, this was a connection unheard of.” – David A. Margeson, with his 1985 Mack Superliner
He also recalled the frustration of independents, who felt the ICC had outlived its original intent. “When it was first formed and set up regulated routes, carriers had to obtain rights so that no area of the country would be left out of the picture,” Margeson said. After trucking was well-established across the nation, “to the independent, it seemed like we didn’t need that system anymore. Areas would get taken care of without it – it seemed like a hindrance to interstate commerce to have rights to a particular area.”
Owner-operators leased to regulated haulers, too, banded together to force carriers and the Teamsters to recognize them. In the Midwest, the Fraternal Association of Steel Haulers formed to fight for the union’s consideration of the “unique economic interests” they had as owners of their “own expensive equipment,” Hamilton wrote. They launched strikes in 1967 and 1970, feeling as if they were paying dues for little representation from the union.
As union disillusionment spread, volatile fuel prices and runaway inflation provided a key mobilizing force for industry change. During the independents’ shutdown during the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, a new owner-operator organization emerged, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. OOIDA focused on regulation of carrier leasing practices.
As more all-owner-operator carriers emerged and operator numbers surged in the 1970s, abuses of leased drivers were rampant, said Charles Myers. Myers was a district supervisor with the ICC beginning in 1976 in Harrisburg, Pa.
Myers recalled the typical owner-operator complaint in which an individual sets up an office, promises freight to “all these owner-operators who commit to running for him. He’d run them for a while and never pay them,” Myers said. “You’d have to come back and make a case for violation of the leasing rules of the time. Most of the time they’d just get an injunction and shut the guy down and try to get restitution for the owner-operators.” Penalties were small, so repeat offenders were common.
Congressional hearings in the ’70s exposed such practices, in part at the instigation of OOIDA. In 1979 the ICC adopted the Truth in Leasing regulations, adding “transparency to the relationships” between leased owner-operators and their carriers, Spencer said.
After a series of unsuccessful bills throughout the ’70s to allow owner-operators to compete in the regulated freight marketplace, conditions climaxed in the late 1970s. The leasing regs were hitting the books. Independents were shutting down in protests prompted by 1979’s fuel shock.
As Hamilton recounted it, the unstable economic environment was seized upon by Senator Ted Kennedy, then eyeing the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Kennedy and others pitched wholesale trucking deregulation as a solution to the problems of independent owner-operators and price inflation of consumer goods. Deregulation was achieved when President Jimmy Carter pushed through the Motor Carrier Reform and Modernization Act of 1980.
The 1980s and ’90s: An industry transformed
The new environment did not immediately translate to more pay for independents. Unrestricted as to lanes, areas of operation and freight, carriers with capital to invest in new trucks and drivers expanded quickly. As a guy with one truck, said Margeson, “we were still out of the picture, because what can we do with one truck?”
Many have characterized post-deregulation as a “race to the bottom” in terms of rates and driver pay, said Spencer. “The rising stars rejected the mold that trucking had evolved to,” largely a patchwork of regional businesses. “Everyone was going to be a national carrier,” he added. “They weren’t interested in hiring drivers who only wanted to work in regional areas with good pay.”
It’s one reason OOIDA didn’t support deregulation. “All we had to do was look at the already unregulated segment of the industry,” exempt hauling, to see where the rest of the industry would go if deregulated, Spencer said.
All the same, as competition soared throughout the ’80s, the owner-operator’s role was being established. Efficient single-truck businesses became more attractive to carriers. All-owner-operator “non-asset-based” fleets multiplied.
In the intervening years, the rise of computing and communications technology eased accounting and registration procedures. Load information became available online by the end of the century. By the early ’90s, nearly every state was a part of both the International Registration Plan and the International Fuel Tax Agreement, eliminating much paperwork. Prior to IFTA, Margeson said, “we had to send in a quarterly report for each state we ran. If we ran 32 states in a quarter, we had to make out 32 quarterly reports.”
As the industry changed, so, too, did Overdrive. When Parkhurst sold the magazine in the mid-’80s to Randall Publishing Co., the company refocused the content toward helping readers refine their business practices.
2000s up through 2010: The ‘enforcement industry’ arises
When historians look back on the first decade of the 21st century in trucking, no doubt the fuel-price shocks and the 2008 economic meltdown will play large. But some owner-operators and leasing carriers were prepared for both, having experienced variations on those themes for years.
What might figure more largely is an “industry,” as Spencer called it, surrounding safety enforcement. Since the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program emerged in the early ’80s, throwing trucking enforcement money at states – “well over $300 million a year” as of 2011, he said – intrusions into owner-operators’ businesses in the name of safety have increased.
That extended to truckers’ day-to-day relationships with law enforcement. In spite of the long-held outlaw image of the independent trucker of the ’60s and ’70s, Spencer said, “at night, the best friends a cop could have were the truck drivers. The truckers would be the first people to stop and help” in an emergency.
Margeson said the relationship “went sour from about 1985. About the only thing you could get stopped for back in the day was speeding. If you got stopped for that, they might ask you for a log book. Other than that, your DOT checks – then called ICC checks – came in the fall of the year,” and again in the spring. Today, Margeson added, it’s not unusual to get checked two or three times on a short run. “They do it in the name of safety, but now it’s more of a money deal for the states.”
Safety ratings based on compliance reviews became the norm for carriers when the SafeStat program emerged with the new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 2000. The events of 9/11 increased scrutiny of all drivers, whether hauling sensitive freight or applying for a general-freight lease. SafeStat’s successor, the 2010-instituted Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, took safety rating to an unprecedented level, providing monthly updates to a carrier’s safety rankings based on inspection and crash data.
At that time, the FMCSA even planned to put individual drivers under a similar public ranking system. True independents looked to receive possible dual numerical rankings as both carrier and driver.
Challenges abounded, both regulatory and otherwise: multiple hours-of-service revisions, onboard recorder mandates, tighter health restrictions for CDL holders, increasing congestion, long wait times at shippers and receivers, fraud among fly-by-night brokerages.
Partly for some of those reasons Marion, Ind.-based owner-operator Mike Long traded his independent business model for the safety net of leasing to a carrier, he said. In 2008, he leased to Landstar.
Long echoed many operators when he said he wouldn’t trade a business he calls “his life” for anything. “My dad made money in his day,” he said. “But you can still make money today, taking everything into consideration. There’s no way I’d want to run a single-rear-axle gas-engine truck on springs, no power steering, no A/C on U.S. 40” across the country.
“Certainly trucking can be a hard life,” says Spencer, “but some of the most wonderful people in the world are attracted to this business – it attracts people who want to work hard” and succeed. For that, the owner-operator career remains a prime example of the nation’s opportunities for self-employment.
Viewers often fail to see objects, such as pedestrians and other vehicles. Such failures-to-see have great importance in safety as well as in many other domains such marketing, medicine, and sports, and elsewhere. I have discussed seeing in general and why failure-to-see is so common. Here, I provide a broad overview of the specific reasons for failures-to-see. I present these in tables that are adapted from the book Roadway Human Factors: From Science To Application (Green, 2017), which discusses them in detail. However, such categorizations inevitably begin to fray at the edges. They are didactic and an attempt at cognitively simplifying the large number of visual factors affecting seeing.
The reasons can very broadly be divided into visibility and cognitive. The first table shows 5 visibility factors. External physical factors are partial or complete sightline obstructions. Physiological factors can be optical, neural, or motor. Psychophysical factors usually boil down to those affecting contrast detection. Lastly, these five entries can readily be decomposed further. There are more than 16 subfactors in contrast alone (Green, 2017).
Level
Explanatory Factors
Description
Physical
External Obstruction
Physical obstructions completely or partially block the sightline and prevent retinal image formation: e.g. buildings A-pillars, windshields.
Physiological
Optical
Optical imperfections. Blur caused by mis-accommodation and spherical aberration. Cataracts and opacity.
Neural
Retinal limitations, e.g., field size, photoreceptor spacing, and scatomata.
Motor
Eye muscle movements also reduce vision, e.g., saccadic suppression and blinking.
Psychophysical
Contrast
Factors that determine whether an object differs sufficiently from the background to be visible: e.g., size, adaptation level, retinal eccentricity, etc.
In many cases, however, the cause of failure-to-see is cognitive – the viewer does not consciously see an object which is theoretically highly visible. The usual culprit is attention. The failure to see is especially likely in given circumstances. There is vast a literature on attention and cognition that provides many potential explanations for failure to see in a given set of circumstances. The table below boils this literature down to a single list of 28 cognitive failure-to-see “constructs” that are again grouped into rough categories purely for didactic purposes. Further, the chart constructs require further elaboration.
Cognitive (Learned Adaptation)
Expectancy
Attention tuned to the location and objects of highest anticipated meaningfulness, so others not noticed.
Automaticity
Tasks performed with minimal attentional control, so little attentional supervision to notice difficulties.
Familiarity Blindness
Failure to notice scene information that has been irrelevant in the past.
Cognitive(Loading)
Tunnel vision
Attention concentrated in the center of the visual field, so information in peripheral vision is unnoticed.
Inexperience
Novices have not yet learned to reduce foveal loading by chunking or by automatic control.
Stress Hypervigilance
Stress focuses attention on a narrow set of information, so other information not noticed.
Mental Workload
Attention consumed by one task leaves less capacity to perform others.
Cognitive(Selection)
Inattentional blindness
Failure to notice even highly visible objects located in the center of the visual field.
Change blindness
Failure to notice a feature alternation in a scene that has changed over time.
Mind wandering (Internal distraction)
Attention is focused internally rather than to the external world.
Repetition blindness
Second in a sequence of two identical objects is not noticed.
Foreground bias
Viewers tend to fixate objects in the foreground and to ignore objects in the background.
Cognitive (Background)
Clutter masking
Background contours interfere with attention to foreground objects. It is sometimes a psychophysical effect.
Overshadowing
Attention attracted to the most salient scene object and away from other information.
Cue generalization
Viewers direct attention to the most easily discriminated cue, such as color.
Crowding
Visible objects in peripheral vision merge and cannot be identified.
Motion induced blindness (MIB)
Object projecting retinally stable images tend to disappear when seen against moving backgrounds.
Cognitive(Search)
Satisfaction of search
Termination of serial search before reaching the critical information.
Inhibition of return
Once a scene area is searched, the probability of making a return saccade to re-search is reduced.
Visual space asymmetry
Different parts of the 3-D visual space are specialized for different attentional tasks.
Switching Costs/Attentional blink
Switching attention from one focus to another takes time and effort.
Cognitive(Reduced Capacity)
Fatigue/Lack Of sleep
Difficult to define, but usually explained as lowered performance due to lack of sleep.
Vigilance decrement
Ability to notice information falls within the first half hour in routine tasks.
Low Workload/Boredom/Monotony
Low arousal level with longer time spent in a dull and unchanging environment.
Circadian Rhythm
Arousal lower in troughs of the daily 24-hour arousal cycle.
Age
Older viewers are both slower and have lower attentional capacity.
Cognitive (Decision)
Biases & Heuristics
Attention and decision are guided by mental short cuts designed to increase efficiency.
Satisficing
Attention becomes unnecessary once a reasonable solution achieved.
The cognitive construct list is long, but the phenomena overlap considerably because they are different manifestations of our fundamental cognitive architecture and its consequences:
1) conscious awareness is limited by capacity,
2) attention is selective,
3) attention is efficient, trying to use the easiest and simplest selection criterion,
4) attention generally selects information that is most meaningful based on past experience and on expectation of the future. This overlap is why I call them “constructs” rather than variables or causes1. The criterion for inclusion in the list is only that the authors frequently use the “construct” to explain a cognitive failure-to- see. In many cases, the construct name specifies little more than an experimental paradigm, e.g. “change blindness”.
Lastly, the constructs also represent different granularities of explanation. “Inattentional blindness” (failure-to-see central objects) and “tunnel vision” (failure to see peripheral objects) are really just descriptive terms for phenomena that are ultimately caused by more specific constructs (expectation, hypervigilance, mental workload, etc.). They can be useful as umbrella terms when merely describing the functional loss, but they are not very specific. They are symptoms of deeper causes. They are not explanations.
Endnotes
1 The definition of “causation” is a knotty philosophical problem. In practice, however, it is often merely a “symptom” that doesn’t require an explanation. Causal reasoning normally works through a chain where symptoms have causes which then become symptoms for other causes. Here’s an example. A driver is blamed because he responded too slowly in seeing a pedestrian at night. Slow perception-response time is a symptom and low visibility is the cause. Low visibility is then the symptom, and a burned out streetlamp is the cause. The burned out streetlamp is now the symptom, and poor maintenance is the cause. Poor maintenance is the symptom… and so on. The chain stops when the symptom need not be explained. In this example, a human factors analysis doesn’t need to know what caused the streetlamp to be burned out, so the cause need not be determined. For an investigating utility company, the causal chain would continue until the poor maintenance were explained.
A major failing in trucking “defense” is that is seen as synonymous with “defensive”.
Too often trucking companies and their insurers hunker down after the accident, waiting for the bill board attorney to make their move. Worse yet, even after receiving the letter of representation, they sit by idly waiting for the plaintiff to dictate the time and place of the action.
Because too many see “defense” as meaning “defensive”. Enough!
THE NEED FOR AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE
Passive, reactive, “defensive defense” rarely if ever works. Aggressive, proactive “defenses” often do. And they do so by flipping the script on an opponent, even one that appears to be in stronger position.
Pick your example. Israel in 1966 compared to France in 1939. How did that “impregnable” Maginot Line work out?
How many times have you yelled at the TV when your favorite football team is ahead and decides to play “prevent defense”?
One of my favorite examples is from Malcolm Gladwell’s story of Vivek Ranadive, an immigrant from Mumbai who, despite having never played basketball, coached his daughter’s team to a national championship game despite only two of the girls having ever played organized basketball before.
“They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling.”
OK? So how did they do it?
Watching his first basketball game, Ranadive was struck by the illogic that after a basketball, the scoring team retreated and defended only about 24 feet of the 94 feet long court. “He thought it was mindless.”
So he applied the principle “that his team would play a real full-court press, every game, all the time. The team ended up at the national championships.”
Gladwell’s article expands the principle of aggressive defense to Lawrence of Arabia and David v. Goliath, the original pre-pay-per-view Match of the Century that has a scientific explanation. Great Read
And in case you think the full-court press, aggressive basketball only works with youth sports, ask a Razorback fan the name of Coach Richardson’s national championship style of play. Young ones—Google it.
The point is that too often trucking companies and their insurers only defend the last 24 feet of a 94 feet long contest. They concede the early going, even the middle going, and hunker down for a final skirmish.
You need to take the fight to them. Particularly after the letter of rep. Keep reading. I’ll get to it.
PROACTIVE, AGGRESSIVE TRUCKING DEFENSE
So what can you do? Hope the advertising plaintiff attorney won’t sue? Avoid antagonizing them and maybe they’ll be kind and gentle? How’s that been working for you?
Sounds ridiculous, but it is too often the “strategy”. If you can call sitting by passively and waiting for the attack a “strategy”.
BEFORE THE ACCIDENT
I’ve written and spoken a lot about pre-accident preparation, so let me just give a recap.
The highlights:
-Have an accident response plan in place NOW;
-Train your driver
-Thoughtfully select and train whomever is going to take “the call”;
-Preselect experts and ensure their 24/7 availability;
-Know what you need to do to preserve data—ECM, telematics, video,…;
-Review your safety plan, manual, training, …and prepare as if you will have to defend it at trial;
-Identify who is going to be the “face of the company” in a suit and prepare them.
Key—if you were on the witness stand, what evidence would you want to present? Develop it now. After the accident, it’s just back-fill.
WHEN THE ACCIDENT OCCURS
Act immediately. Investigate. Document. Get statements from witnesses. Do something!
We have an advantage that none of those daytime TV attorneys have—immediacy. We know about the accident before any of them. If we are not ready and act immediately, we will have squandered our greatest of assets.
Don’t rely on your insurer. If they act immediately-great. If not, protect yourself. In a world of high insurance rates and significant risk retention levels, it’s your money.
You can’t afford to sit by idly if your insurer delays in assigning an adjuster, opening a claim,…. One of my grandmother’s saying was, “the Lord helps those that helps themselves.” Act immediately. Help yourself.
Take the slack out out of the post-accident chain. Do something.
AFTER THE ACCIDENT
This is where the “hunker down”, “defensive defense” is tragically the norm. “What can we do except wait until they sue?” Answer—A lot.
Sue them first. If you have an argument as to liability and you’ve suffered damages (PD, cargo, downtime,…), sue them first. This gives you the jump on the cable TV attorneys by being able to subpoena records and propound discovery against the claimant who, at this point, is represented by the auto insurance company attorney.
More importantly, you have the potential to anchor jurisdiction in the location of the accident rather than allowing the plaintiff to drag you into a “hell hole” on the theory that you are a trucking company and can be sued anywhere. This can save you millions and the industry as a whole hundreds of millions of dollars.
You may even be able to prevent the claimant from if you get a judgement in your favor against the claimant. This can result in res judicata or collateral estoppel–legal terms for “you had your chance and you lost. Good bye.”
Someone recently told me that they do this. “We pursue subrogation on all our cases. We often get our money without having to sue.”
They’re missing the point. You might not want to get your money right away, otherwise you could lose being in a conservative jurisdiction. Sue them. Maximize your suit per discovery and jurisdiction.
Watch the Video Tease–learn what Coach Bill Walsh said before every big game that is the best advice for your defense. But…you have to watch the Video
Push back against the Letter of Representation. Shortly after the accident you will get the standard letter of representation from the advertising attorney—“This is my client. No further communications with them. What are your policy limits?”
Too often this is sent to the insurer after which it is filed it away and waiting for the inevitable. And all that time the claimant is running up medical bills from a doctor to which they are frequently referred by their attorney.
Do something. Push back. Have your attorney send a letter and say all communications are to be to them. And do more.
Include medical and employment record releases in that letter for the claimant to sign and return. Request a list of medical providers and employers. State your need for these records to promptly investigate the claim and potential prejudice if not provided. And do more.
Request that their client submit to an immediate medical examination. Again, make clear the prejudice that you will suffer is they do not agree to do so.
What responses do I get from the plaintiff attorneys when I do this? “I’ve never had this before.” Or, more often, “What right to you have to request an exam before suit?”
My answer? “None. But I’ve documented my request. If this goes forward, you and your client will have to explain why, if you were really injured, you would not let our doctor examine them.”
Quite frankly, I don’t care if they agree to it or not. If we get the exam, great. if not, we have documented the record as to our request. Documentation to challenge that ongoing treatment and medical expenses run up before they file suit.
BOTTOM LINE
We cannot concede an inch. We cannot make it easy for those who want to eat your lunch. That is exactly what “defensive defense” does.
Learn the lesson—full court press in defense of your company.
Labor costs for repair and maintenance increased 2.6% between Q1 and Q2, according to Decisiv’s and the American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council’s North American Service Event Benchmark Report. Overall, cost of parts increased by 2.8% in the same time period, with tires increasing 10.7% and the cost of transmission parts rising 9%.
But time between breakdowns is improving. TL carriers averaged 23,769 miles between breakdowns, up 8.8% from Q1, according to a survey by TMC and FleetNet America.
LTL carriers bettered their performance by 4.1% from Q1 to Q2, increasing to 46,186 miles from 44,380 miles, according to the TMC/FleetNet America survey. The tank sector had a 4.7% improvement, running 18,241 miles in Q2, up from 17,420 in Q1.
Dive Insight:
Unscheduled maintenance and breakdowns have been a rising cost issue since early 2020, but now the issue of inflation appears to be rearing its head. Costs have been spiraling upward for quite some time.
The arrival of COVID-19 worsened the costs, not because the raw materials behind steel and rubber became more rare, but because the supply chain slowed at first and is now currently experiencing congested ports and backed-up orders.
Costs for actual parts are also going up, along with the labor costs associated with breakdowns and even regularly scheduled maintenance.
“The increases in costs for parts and labor reflect the changes taking place in the North American economy,” said Dick Hyatt, Decisiv president and CEO. “Ongoing economic growth has led to a rise in freight volume and demand for carrying capacity. That is also being driven higher by the need to replenish supply chains that have been depleted due to manufacturing and distribution shutdowns during the pandemic.”
Hyatt said increased transport demand pushed up vehicle mileage and usage.
The heavy parts, as well as the electrical parts, went up by doubles digits. Lighting systems increased 17.4% in Q2 from a year earlier, transmissions costs were up 16.4% in the same time frame, and brakes costs increased 11.1%.
Emily Hurst, manager of data and analytics at FleetNet, said fleets seeking to cut costs need to mimic the habits of the best-in-class fleets in the TL, LTL and tanker divisions.
Such habits could include reinforcement and better insulation put around electric wiring and lighting lines to prevent problems that put out lights.
The Decisiv/TMC North American Service Event Benchmark measures results in 7 million commercial vehicles operating in the United States and Canada, serviced by Decisiv’s SRM platform. The surveys on unscheduled maintenance and general costs were both released before TMC’s fall meeting.
Fleets using in-cab cameras said they pay for themselves within months, as video exonerates drivers in crashes and drops insurance premiums.
Jim Stinson
When Keith Wilson proposed having an in-cab camera system for the trucks at Sharp Transport, the idea did not go over well with some drivers.
The system raised privacy concerns with drivers, not least of which was the fear that in-cab cameras would record while the truck was parked and the driver was sleeping. A few drivers threatened to quit the fleet if Sharp went ahead and installed the rectangular units, which would produce four different camera angles from the cab.
Wilson, Sharp’s director of safety and recruitment, knew he had to address the concerns before he implemented the policy change. After proposing the idea, Sharp contacted the chairman of the driver council the next day, said Wilson. “We met with the [council] a few weeks later to discuss and answer questions.”
“We showed them everything the camera did, and everything they did not.”
The list of concerns soon narrowed, with drivers asking if the cameras would be able to peer into the sleeper areas.
“The biggest objection obviously was the driver-facing cameras,” said Wilson. “We showed them everything the camera did, and everything they did not.”
One thing the cameras do not do is record when the keys leave the ignitions, Wilson said. The cameras even go inactive if a truck is idle for three minutes. And most important to drivers, the unit did not record the sleeper area, he told drivers.
Out of 150 Sharp Transport drivers, only three left the company after in-cab cameras were installed, Wilson told a WorkHound webinar last summer.
Then the policy paid off. Costs went down, and the cameras “paid for themselves.” Wilson said it only took eight months for the return on investment.
For truck drivers, often blamed for accidents, the in-cab video became a useful piece of evidence to show the police. Sometimes truck drivers were exonerated “on the spot” following an accident, after police reviewed the video, Wilson said.
“It changes the narrative really quickly,” said Wilson.
The video benefits
Alan Drazen, vice president of Simco Logistics, said its Samsara-branded video cameras have indeed exonerated the company’s drivers. But Drazen pointed to other benefits from the cameras, as well.
“The biggest change for us was the culture change,” said Drazen.
From safety to “harsh events” such as sudden braking, the cameras have proven their benefit by improving the company’s safety record, Drazen said.
The New-Jersey-based company has 160 trucks, Drazen said. The Samsara in-cab cameras have cut use of personal electronic devices by about 90%, he said. The video cameras, which can upload videos immediately after a harsh event is detected, are also used for driver coaching, tips and discipline.
As for privacy concerns, the drivers still have them, even though Simco has no overnight drivers. But Drazen tells the drivers that video is only uploaded to him under certain circumstances.
“If they don’t do harsh events, we’ll never see [the drivers],” said Drazen.
In three years of usage, Simco’s insurance premiums have dropped, Drazen said, as the company’s “culture of safety” grows.
“Right now, we are paying about 60% of what we were paying before the cameras,” said Drazen. “And [insurance premiums have] been dropping every year.”
Drazen said Simco agreed to a five-year prepayment for the Samsara cameras and service. The ROI was quickly recognized.
“We got a full recovery in costs in 18 months,” said Drazen. “It’s unbelievable.”
Drazen said he now promotes the cameras to other fleets.
“It makes it safer for everybody,” said Drazen.
Wilson said the time from idea to implementation of in-cab cameras relatively short, and the ROI came quickly.
“The proposal and vetting process took about a month to complete. Two weeks to finalize the financial aspect, a week to have shop personnel trained to install,” Wilson said. “We estimated three months to install in all units.”
From skepticism to support
The cameras can notify dispatch offices immediately after a harsh event. In Samsara’s case, the cameras can upload video immediately via cellular networks.
As with Sharp Transport, the first strategy advised was meeting with drivers and transparency. And during those meetings, showcase real exoneration footage, the blog states.
“We got a full recovery in costs in 18 months. It’s unbelievable.”
“Successfully exonerating drivers is the most powerful way to get skeptical drivers in support of dash cams,” the blog, written by Samsara product marketing manager Eleanor Horowitz, said. “If you have an example of a near-miss or not-at-fault collision that was captured during a pilot, share the footage with all of your drivers.”
Wilson said there is no legal precedent that favors violations of privacy for company-owned vehicles.
“We did have to compromise with our owner-operators,” said Wilson. “They agreed to have the cameras installed on all of their vehicles with the option to have the driver-facing camera turned off.”
Privacy issues aside, Samsara makes the lure of decreasing accidents and premiums the main selling point in the promotion of the cameras. The company, on its blog, cited a June report by Frost & Sullivan. The report noted the FMCSA estimates that 71% of large-truck crashes occur due to driver distraction.
“Unsafe practices, including texting or calling while driving, increase the likelihood of crashes,” the report reads. “They also affect a fleet’s brand image and reputation, while creating challenges related to driver retention.”
Frost & Sullivan concludes that the U.S. and United Kingdom market for such cameras will grow by 22.2% from 2018 to 2025, surpassing 3.5 million units by 2025.
Wilson said Sharp’s accidents have dropped 125% since cameras were installed, and part of the reason is the psychology involved.
“Just having the camera in-cab changes behavior,” said Wilson.
Years of rising insurance premiums have pushed fleet operators to their limits, with many insurance carriers mitigating costs through dramatically increased deductibles and reduced coverage, according to the American Transportation Research Institute. Yet, a growing number of carriers are reining in insurance spending – without taking on excess liability – by leveraging advanced fleet safety programs.
Powered by artificial intelligence, global positioning systems and other technology, today’s safety platforms are helping organizations not only to reduce outlays for insurance premiums and settlements, but also to incur fewer citations, conserve fuel, reduce wear and tear on vehicles and, most importantly, experience fewer accidents.
The right tools can help drivers protect themselves and others from accidents. When an accident does occur, telematics and smart cameras can provide a record and valuable context of the event. Even when a fleet’s driver is at fault, a strong safety program demonstrates an organization’s commitment to safety and can aid in negotiating a settlement.
Follow these seven steps to create a fleet safety program or transform a mediocre system to be state of the art.
1. Evaluate your organization’s telematics
There is a reason that more than half of commercial vehicles in the United States use telematics devices. Data tracking is essential to identify challenges and give managers visibility into driver behaviors and vehicle operations. The more detailed the data collection, the clearer the picture and its applications to shape ongoing improvements and driver coaching.
Fleet technology has expanded past basic location tracking (although that remains an essential element) to now record or flag incidents of unsafe driving. A system can warn drivers when they exceed the posted speed limit, for example, and can be set to alert managers by text or email of speeding or other incidents. Smart dash cameras not only reveal unsafe driving but also help defend against false claims. The most advanced dashcams record multiple views, which can reveal reasons for hard braking or sudden lane changes, potentially proving that a driver was paying attention and acted to avoid an accident.
2. Identify your safety challenges
Telematics systems that integrate smart cameras reveal which drivers are following the rules and which are breaking them. Fleet managers can share this hard proof with individual drivers to identify each person’s opportunities to drive more safely, such as complying with a smartphone policy or paying special attention to traffic signals and posted speeds. After installing smart cameras, fleet managers often discover issues that had gone undetected, such as inconsistent seatbelt use.
3. Close telematics gaps
Is your technology collecting the necessary data to address all your safety needs? What about other telematics applications, such as informing operational adjustments to improve fuel efficiency or reduce wear and tear on vehicles and equipment? It may be a worthwhile investment to add forward- and driver-facing video capability, to begin tracking engine idling or to evaluate a driver’s route selection, which can affect fuel consumption and customer wait times as well as vehicle wear.
4. Establish challenge-based goals
The transparency that telematics and video evidence bring to the table can help managers cut to the chase in confronting drivers about their unsafe practices. Rather than delivering a laundry list of safety mandates for all drivers, tailor goals to the individual’s problem areas. Driver A may need to focus on coming to a full stop at stop signs, while Driver B needs to stop speeding and learn to buckle-up behind the wheel. Set achievable goals and use your fleet safety technology to confirm progress.
5. Update your driver safety policy
A baseline of expected behavior helps drivers maintain safety by following the rules. A policy also lets the organization explain what data it collects and why, including how management will use data to reach its goals. Spell out training requirements, authorized uses, maintenance expectations and background check authorization. Require employees to acknowledge the policy. Explaining in the policy how telematics enables the company to enhance safety, save money, verify compliance, improve customer service or meet other objectives can increase employee buy-in.
6. Benchmark the fleet
Take some time to document how each driver typically performs before launching into an improvement campaign. This is also a good time to benchmark vehicles and equipment for later comparisons of fuel consumption, wear and other metrics.
7. Coach for long-term improvement
The technology is in place, safety challenges identified, and drivers know and understand which behaviors need improvement. The final step is to check in regularly and review their performance, marking progress against earlier benchmarks.
Some organizations hold up their best-performing drivers as examples to others, awarding gift cards or other recognition on a regular basis as an incentive for consistent, safe driving. A sense of friendly competition can help employees view cameras and telematic devices as tools to meet shared goals, protect drivers from false claims, and verify the quality of their driving. With the right telematics partner, a fleet safety program can be the answer carriers seek in the quest to counter rising insurance costs. By following the seven steps and leveraging today’s advanced technologies, fleet operators will reduce accidents and make the roads safer, while at the same time reduce risk and qualify for lower premiums.
