We don’t have to tell you that trucking businesses face a lot of risks. The roads aren’t always the safest place, and that’s why it’s so important to take steps to emphasize and improve safety at your truck business. While this is beneficial because it will lessen the chance of your drivers and employees getting hurt, safety can also help you avoid truck insurance claims. In turn, that can help your truck insurance rates.
The following articles give suggestions and tips for improving different areas of safety at your business. Take some time to check out the various topics that we explore in the articles. We’ll explain the dangers of distracted driving, the importance of pre-trip vehicle inspections and preventive maintenance, why you should always wear a seatbelt, and more. Safety is an ongoing process, so it’s important to always be looking for ways to make your business a little safer. The following articles might help you think of ways to do that.
Your SAFER score may not only signal issues within your trucking business. It can directly impact your truck insurance rate. Learning more about how this score works and how an insurer views this score will help improve audit performance and keep insurance premiums low.
Here’s what you need to know.
Read moreHow does my trucking business’s SAFER score affect my insurance rates?
Imagine looking in your rear review mirror and seeing your cargo spill onto the roadway. A scenario like this could result in a serious accident. A vehicle might swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting the cargo. Or, perhaps a car runs over your spilled cargo, which causes the driver to lose control. Either of these scenarios could happen if you fail to properly secure your load.
Aside from causing accidents, improperly secured loads can hurt your vehicle’s performance. It can affect your braking, speed, and steering control. It can make loads shift or roll back and forth in your truck. We’ll go over some common loading problems and how to properly secure your load.
In the US, on the job fatalities rose 7% last year. The transportation industry accounts for a whopping 40% of these fatalities. That far exceeds any other industry.
As important as it is to prevent a fatality, that’s not the only cost. Injuries, property damage, damage to your own trucks, potential downtime and increased insurance premiums cost you.
You have trouble keeping your trucks and drivers on the road. Here’s how UPS has been tackling this problem head-on. And these are the results.
When something is this critical to the safety of your truck drivers and the health of your trucking business, it’s important not to leave definitions to chance. Distracted driving is more than texting. Make sure to talk to your new drivers about the dangers of distracted driving.
Read moreHow to educate new truck drivers about the risks of distracted driving
People get distracted. Sometimes it’s a clever billboard or a person in a costume walking down the street. Sometimes it’s a non-urgent need to use dispatch equipment. They may be reaching for a map or using a cell phone – either talking or texting and driving.
It’s all distracted driving. And it leads to over 25% of truck accidents. A fleet owner, on average, will be out of pocket around $70,000 per event. Some studies show this average even higher. The effects of distracted driving on trucking businesses can be huge. It’s also dangerous, which is why the FMCSA has banned handheld cell phone use for commercial vehicle drivers
Preventing distracted driving is important. But you can’t prevent what you don’t know about.
In British Columbia recently, a horse and buggy driver received a simple citation for texting while conducting a tour down city streets. Distracted driving really can happen anywhere.
But while all distracted driving is dangerous, some distracted driving is more dangerous and therefore more costly to those involved. Such is the case for transportation businesses like your own.
Last year, work-related crashes cost owners nearly $57,000,000,000. Yes, that’s billion. 26% of this can be directly connected to driver distraction.
12 years. That’s how long the average truck has been on the road today. Many are closer to 20. Each year a fleet will only replace 1 truck for every 70 trucks in service.
It’s thanks in part to well-built trucks, dedicated drivers, efficient management and a focus on the importance of maintenance.
Let’s take a look at how your in-house truck maintenance can help you keep those trucks performing and paying you back as a business longer.
Read moreIn-House Truck Maintenance: Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Trucks?
Disasters can come in the form of hurricanes, tornadoes, or forest fires. Other disasters are man-made, like vandalism, arson, electrical fire, or even terrorism. FEMA (the government agency that handles disaster relief) estimates that as many as 60% of businesses don’t re-open after a major event like this.
In most cases, it’s not by choice. They’ve lost everything.
That’s why fleet disaster planning is so important for the trucking industry. It allows you to keep your business running (when possible) and quickly recover from a major event.
Read more6 Things Every Fleet Manager Should Know About Disaster Planning
Truck driving is not for the faint of heart. The open road, though freeing, is also dangerous, especially when you drive a huge big rig that weighs however many tons. It’s like a missile. Once that thing gets off track, there’s almost no stopping it. However, we’ve got a few truck driver safety tips that can help you stay safe on the road.
Read more12 truck driver safety tips that you need to know about
There are a lot of regulations that trucking businesses need to be aware of and follow. The FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) is the agency charged with overseeing CMVs and regulating trucks. The FMCSA has the power to intervene with truck businesses in the form of written letters of warning or investigations. But how does the FMCSA decide who to investigate? There are a lot of businesses out there – why would they single out your business?
The FMCSA uses BASIC (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category) percentiles to prioritize which truck businesses to investigate. What’s a BASIC percentile? Great question. We’ll explain what BASICs are, where they come from, and what could cause your business to get poor percentile scores on your BASICs.
Read moreWhat is a BASIC in trucking and why do the BASICs matter?