How To Lower A Small Fleets Safety Rating

Its all about time. Pass lots of inspections with no violations. Hope your drivers are safe / lucky and avoid accidents or dot reportable incidents. And as time goes on your saftey rating will improve.

 

If you are sure the drivers, trucks, and freight securement is all good, just start having your drivers ask for inspections at the coops.

 

Are you at the mandatory inspection rating yet?

The feds paid a visit to my last carrier and put the fear of God into them... they changed how they pay their drivers now from % to mileage... lots of changes on how to log... more paperwork for the driver and the company. they are still on mandatory inspection level simply because a few drivers didn't keep their logs up to date.

The outfit I'm with now has had similar problems. The feds even told them their one page O/O lease isn't comprehensive enough..say what? Why does it have to be complicated? Spells out what they do and what I do... fricking crooks is all the DOT is becoming.

 

Clean inspections, no accidents, no tickets and time

 

Demand your drivers do it right everytime ! Tell them this is a new mgmt team and this is it. Don't just speak the talk....own it! Live it!!

Use lots of open communication and build a team.... boost salaries for those who join the club. Use incentives for production and safety. Warn the office staff this B.S. won't be tolerated! Run the company !

Grab the bull by the horns !!! But the first thing is communication, get them together and tell them your plan....outline your expectations for today and beyond. Set goals for 3-6-9 months and tell them.... invite them to join you. Invite suggestion for improvement... let the drivers beach about the old mgr.

Also consider turning the trucks down to 70....that's a good number and then use cash incentives for fuel mileage... and make the goal reachable and realistic. Reward the drivers for good inspections....and make it a reward boss. A crisp $50 is a good start.

It's a long and expensive road back from 2 log books and hammer down but it can be done and it starts with you..... set the tone !!

JMO

 

I'm with a medium size company, and we turned off the prepass so as to get more inspections. Also a clean inspection will get you a $25 walmart gift certificate. By the way we are still at 75 MPH, but we run a lot of western states

 

We turned off prepass also. But remember OP, you, at your size of company, will need 4 or 5 clean inspections to balance out any one bad inspection. You have to do it right nearly every time.

Our safety incentive program includes:

$10 Wally card every week you turn in clean logs (match fueling, tolls, etc) Adds up to a lot of money in a year. My wife buys all the pet and paper products we use with her cards (you didn't think they would be mine, did you?)

As an O/O, we get $250 per quarter safety bonus.

We get $100 per clean inspection, paid quarterly. HOWEVER, if you have a clean inspection this week and next week have one that isn't, you lose the first $100 you had in the bank. Incentive to always be ready for an inspection.

As an O/O, I get A $1 per thousand reduction in my physical damage rate by letting the company (and by extension the insurance carrier) download my ECM every quarter. To qualify for the discount, you can NEVER be over 75 MPH, over 65 no more than 10% of the time and a few other parameters I don't remember off hand. I insure my 07 Shaker for about $150/mo. at a small company.

MOST IMPORTANTLY.........operations (dispatch) and safety have to have a unified message. You can't have safety preaching following the rules and dispatch having drivers doing 4500 miles a week and breaking every HOS reg in the book. Without that cooperation at corporate, everything else is window dressing.

Good luck. Sounds like you'll need it.

 

i have a high score and with just 1 clean inspection it dropped 5 points

 

THIS:

.... should be sent to every company in the country that does NOT match up policy with dispatch. Too many companies preach safety and HOS compliance, then let the dogs (dispatch) loose to wake you up at 3:00am and beg you to rescue a load when you have several hours left on your required 10 hour break.