ADDING A SECOND TRUCK AND DRIVER

Thank you for your concern but I fully understand administrative law. In addition to my trucking company I also own and operate a safety and compliance consulting firm, think J.J. Keller only much smaller, and have a HR/employment law specialist on the staff. I also consult for various other firms and am qualified to testify as an expert witness in Superior Court and Court of Common Pleas for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Here in Pa, as in most other states, any injury on the job can become a workers comp claim, as this one was. His heart attack occurred while on the job, digging a car out of a snow mound behind a dealership and loading it onto his truck, in the northeast in December. Realistically, he should not have been hired with a 6 month restricted medical card and a previous heart attack a few years prior, however being he had 20+ years in car haul we took a chance and it bit us in the arse.

The fine for not having workers comp is quite simple to figure, it is a penalty based on the time we had an employee without coverage multiplied by payroll for said employee plus a percentage as a late fine. The WC rate we pay for drivers is 14%, so the driver grossed $150,000 over the 23 months prior to his claim, we paid 28% of his salary ($42,000 which is a 100% penalty) plus some administrative costs and the actual cost of his hospital stay, ambulance transport, etc which would have been paid by WC if we had it. His medical coverage picked up the stent surgery and follow-up care otherwise we could have been civilly liable for hundreds of thousands and this would have had a much different outcome.

Bottom line, we knew better and took a chance by not having the proper insurance in place and it cost us. Lesson learned, it didn't put us out of business, and actually set us up better in the long run. We have a lot of contract work in New York, a very unfriendly state which requires a contractor to carry WC on their sub-contractors or show proof of them having WC. A friend of ours had a NY WC audit, they found a sub without the proper coverage, they were fined double the WC rate based on the gross paid to the sub-contractor, which was a substantial amount. This applies to even one man companies in New York, which puts us in a good place to obtain contract work since we already have the required coverage in place.

 

I will expand upon my earlier post, as to why I don't think the ruling was fair. Although we did deserve some of the cost for the injury (heart attack), the driver was in poor health, on a 6 month restricted card, and had a previous heart attack several years before he was hired. We are to blame because we hired him anyway, knowing his history, but he should have shared some of the cost, which he did through his medical insurance, since he was not doing anything to improve his health.

My objection with the ruling was the fine and penalty for two years. In my opinion they should have only gone back one year at 100% penalty, but they decided to go with two. That was a judgement call and not worth the cost to appeal as they could have decided to look even deeper into our operations, and I try to avoid scrutiny as much as possible.