Making safety a core value of your fleet

Steve Keppler digs into safety and compliance concerns for fleets

Safety and compliance are both important, but they're not necessarily the same. Focusing on only one can lead fleets to fall behind the curve.

We spoke to Steve Keppler of Scopelitis Transportation Consulting about major safety and upcoming compliance concerns that small fleets should be aware of, and how they can maintain a safety culture at the center of their business models.

What do you see as the biggest safety concerns currently in the trucking industry?

The capabilities of drivers and safety department and operations personnel vary widely and so do the safety cultures of motor carriers. As a highly regulated industry, many motor carriers focus primarily on compliance, failing to appreciate the differences between safety and compliance. This often leads to a focus on lagging rather than leading indicators. This has been complicated by the advent of onboard safety technologies, back office and other electronic platform solutions and data, whereby motor carriers are inundated with information to absorb, understand and monitor both for compliance and safety.

The 4-wheelers on our roadways are driving more aggressively and distracted, our roadways are becoming more congested, and we are experiencing more extreme weather events. Truck parking availability is also a significant problem.

All these factors and variables impact on a motor carrier’s ability to improve their safety posture, and if they don’t have a good approach to properly and effectively resource, prepare and train their people on how to manage all of these issues, as well as taking action when necessary, safety is an uphill battle.

How should fleet execs prepare for upcoming changes to English proficiency enforcement?

Carriers should be reviewing their driver onboarding and qualification requirements and, if need be, provide training and assessments, particularly as it relates to common industry terminology and U.S. road signs. When drivers are put OOS, motor carriers should make every attempt to ascertain from the roadside inspector why the driver was put OOS so they can know what needs to be done to cure the OOS condition so the driver can drive again.

What's your No. 1 piece of advice to small business trucking owners to maintain and improve safe operations in their fleets?

Smaller fleets can often be resource-challenged when it comes to managing compliance and safety. Their staff often wear multiple hats. As a result, sometimes safety can get lost in the shuffle between everything else going on to keep the business running. Small fleets need to remember that they are potentially one crash away from going out of business. Therefore, safety needs to be a core value for everyone in the company and having a proper safety culture will help to minimize the chances of this happening.