Stop hiring generalists: The solution to risk reduction at your fleet

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By Shefali Kapadia | for The Inside Lane

Leaders know that hiring the right—or wrong—people can make all the difference in your business. In trucking, that conversation often focuses on drivers, but safety, compliance and HR managers are just as critical. 

We chatted with Rob Carpenter, Vice President of Compliance and Managed Services at Trucksafe Consulting, for his tips on hiring the right people and reducing risk in your fleet. -Shefali Kapadia

What are the biggest compliance mistake that you see small trucking companies make? Are they avoidable?

Licensing standards, hiring criteria and qualification validation are huge. We see a lot of fleets in litigation that face huge exposure for unqualified or unlicensed drivers. Many [compliance mistakes] are for not self-certifying their medical certificate with their respective DMV. The second most common mistake I see is child support suspensions. Continuous licensing monitoring like Samba Safety makes this completely avoidable and promotes a participatory vs. reactive driver monitoring and qualification program. 

What's your no. 1 piece of advice to trucking executives to reduce risk in their business?

Hire the right people to develop and manage defensible programs. Environmental health and safety (EHS) managers seldom know fleet. EHS is typically occupational safety, industrial hygienist, etc. They often do not specialize or even comprehend fleet compliance and defensible risk. HR managers seldom know fleet; HR is vastly different for regulated fleets. Practical fleet compliance and defense programs are best led by fleet experts. Stop hiring generalists that have no fleet or transportation industry experience.

If you could change FMCSA's regulation to help improve trucking operations, especially for small fleets, what would it be?

Driver-Vehicle Inspection Report (DVIR) completion only for defects was a great step and eliminated the unnecessary documentation of every pre- and post-trip inspection, regardless of whether a defect existed or not. I think changing the ELD requirements under 49 CFR 395 adding facial recognition, or DL insertion into the system as they do in Germany, would eliminate a large portion of wasted labor being allocated to admin who have to assign unassigned drive time manually.

A good reg to add is continuous monitoring. Fleets are required to run motor vehicle records once a year, and this leaves huge gaps of exposure that's unnecessary. 

What's a lesson you learned as a truck driver that you'll never forget? 

Don't just take any role with any carrier or fleet due to a lack of options or just because you've been offered the role and need personal cash flow. Focus on your needs, values and wants and choose the right mode, the right cultural fit, the right money, the right location, home time, etc. Driver turnover is high often because drivers play the short game when selecting a driving position and don't research the role, the company or what they personally want or need out of an employer. 

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