Driver responsibility with the cleanliness of issued trucks?

Yeah. Biggest reason for small business failure. My wife -the accountant- has a motto for all business owners/managers:

Trust all you want to. BUT VERIFY!

 

There are so many ways that you are vulnerable that it is really hard to say. You will never prevent it completely. But one of the best deterrents available, is to take quick action when you find it. A "zero tolerance" policy is the ONLY one to have.

But you do have to be careful about it. You need to be able to prove theft/embezzlement before taking action, or you WILL be sued.

I knew of an small electronics parts company back in the sixties that was owned by a "real nice guy." I'm serious here. This was one of the "nicest" people I've ever known.

One day, he caught an employee going out the back door with some transistor radios. He called the guy into his office and had a "father/son" "chat" with him. The guy admitted that he had been stealing from the company for over two years.

But with tears in his eyes, he told the owner, "I have a family to support, and you just don't pay me enough to live on." Not only did the owner not fire his ###, he GAVE HIM A RAISE. Needless to say, this company was out of business in just a few years, mainly because of employee theft, and owner incompetence.

It is hard to prove theft in this business. Your driver signs for a certain number of pallets, or a certain load count. Then when he gets to the receive, the load comes up short. The driver says, "I just don't know." Mainly because either he can't count, (a very real possibility,) or he did not bother to count the load.

Now, did the shipper short you, either accidentally or deliberately? Did the receiver miscount, or short count, again either accidentally or deliberately? Did the driver steal and sell the freight? It is tough to prove.

If you are a full load only company, you should insist that the load be sealed at the shipper, and the seal number put on the BOL. Then the receiver verifies that the seal is intact before the doors on the trailer are opened. That will be a help.

If you are LTL, it's gonna be a lot tougher. Particularly if you are a local P & D company where the driver is making anywhere from six to over twenty stops a day.

Look for patterns. Does one driver seem to come up short more than the others do. Another thing to look at, does one driver seem to have more freight damage than most. While not indicating theft, it can indicate carelessness, or willfull malicious damage. Does one driver's fuel use suddenly go up.

If you have the driver do any collecting for freight bills is all the money accounted for. Does the paper work all jibe.

If you are big enough to have an office, with office people, you need to look at any and every way they can get to you. I'm not saying that you need to be paranoid. But you do need to cover your assets!

If you see something that looks like a pattern of theft, then you have to decide which way to go.

The vast majority of companies will find some other excuse to get rid of a questionable employee. This avoids them actually accusing the individual of theft, which unless can be proven will likely lead to a law suit. But it also allows the questionable employee to just go somewhere else, and keep on the same scam he was doing.

A few companies will take the trouble to actually try to watch the employee and come up with proof of theft. If you have the ability (both time and financial) to do this, then follow through with prosecution, it sends a big time message to other would be thieves.

The thing you don't want to do, is to get so paranoid that you run off good employees, because you are overly suspicious. It is really a fine line you need to walk.

 

And the sad part of it is, that some of the worst ones will be the ones you REALLY don't believe would do it. That "long time, conscientious, well liked, trusted, and loved" employee, is just as likely to rip you off, as the new hire you wonder about. This is why you find a lot of long time accounting people arrested for embezzlement.

There need to "checks and balances" in every system. But then you can go overboard, and spend so much money in looking over everyone's shoulder, that you actually are self defeating. There is no hard and fast answer.

You hire a watchdog. Now you hire a watchdog, to watch the watchdog, and so on...

It is one of the reasons for having an outside auditor periodically review the books.

 

The last otr co. I worked for seemed like they had their eye on every thing. And they did! If you blew a tire and didnt bring back the casing, you bought that tire, they watched mpg's through computer system, When you picked up a trailor, you had a checklist you had to go over and mail to them on each trailor you hooked to, now, if sumthing was wrong or missing, and you didnot record it, or miss it, you would pay for it! NO,EXCUSES!!, NO SECOND CHANCES!! If you dont like it find another job! I went to sleep 1 night in the truck, woke up the next morning and my truck wouldnt start, dead batteries. I got a jump and went on, alerting the co. of my prob. first. They eventually routed me into the terminal and changed my batteries. I watched them change the batteries and as they were doing so I noticed the guy had a clipboard in his hand and was writing something down. When I asked what he was writing, I was told they had numbers on the batteries, and if the numbers didnot match up with the ones it left with, I would be buying a set of batteries. Now this may seem alittle extreme to some, but I never once had to pay for anything, then again I didnt steal anything!! People can always come up with excuses, and you will always get 1. So as Big Don said, have a zero tolerance policy, And STICK TO IT!! You can have workers or friends, But not both!

 

I hope you dont either, but Im sure they picked up these habits 1 at a time, fact is your an easy target to a thief, and theres alot of em out there, (steal the teeth right out of your mouth while your yawning!) The co. I was speaking of had around 700 trucks so I figure they seen bout every trick in the book. And they'er catchin up with em. All the inspiration a thief needs to steal a second time, is to get away with it the first time! Good luck to you.