8 Ways to Cut Your Insurance Costs

An excellent driving record and better driver training for all your drivers means enhanced business, maintaining good relationships with clients, and managing costs. It affects road safety, CSA performance, litigation, and interactions with law enforcement. It’s a pretty simple formula, but one that can make or break your trucking business.

Did you know driver training contributes to the success of your company by keeping your insurance manageable? How? And what kinds of training are going to cut to the quick of your most common problems the fastest?

First, let’s look at how the right or wrong kind of training can affect your insurance rates.

How training affects insurance costs

The cost of your insurance is based on what kind of risk the insurance company thinks your drivers pose. And that’s based on the frequency and severity of accidents and incidents.

This hinges on the behavior of individual drivers, but every driver is going to affect the whole. That’s the importance of making sure every single driver is getting the same quality and consistency of training, without exception. Consistency is key.

Let’s say one of your drivers starts racking up a few speeding tickets and, even though you are remediating consistently and doing your due diligence, he or she still has a speed related accident and goes to court. With proper documentation of all your training and remediation efforts, your company may manage to exonerate itself legally. But this single driver’s behavior will still affect your insurance rates. So, the main point of driver training is to actually change driver behavior. Only better driving with consistency can help manage insurance rates.

Repetition changes habits

It can be frustrating to deliver the amount of repeated training that drivers need, especially when you’re having to take them off the road or ask them to take their days off to do it. There will always be a need for face-to-face training, but adding online driver training to your toolbox is going to let you send important training to drivers, anytime, no matter where they are. Imagine if you could train drivers on accident prevention topics like speed, space management, and lane changes anytime they need. Consistent monthly awareness training can have a dramatic impact on driver performance. Keeping safety top of mind is key.

Think about any habit you want to change. What works better, a big, dramatic New Year’s resolution, or doing one little thing differently every day? Substantial change happens in little bites. Or, in the case of online driver training, little bytes.

You also increase consistency. You start building it into a driver’s regular habits, and with an online training system, you are guaranteed to deliver training to all drivers. There are no absences and no excuses. Short training sessions, when repeated consistently, also help drivers retain information better than infrequent, longer class sessions.

Top 8 Training Concepts to Manage Insurance Costs

However, you decide to train your drivers, what training is going to help you see the most change? Here are 8 major places you want to focus on.

1 – Staying alert

Cover and re-cover topics that deal with signage, distractions, fatigue, and driving in various weather conditions. You can never cover these basics too frequently.

2 – Defensive driving

This will cover topics that affect your most common moving violation issues, such as:

Traffic signs
Speed
Space management
Following too close
Lane changes
Common errors cars make around large vehicles
Intersections and railroad crossings
Backing a rig
Bridges and overpasses

3 – Special safety topics / “Best practices”

This is where you can get a little deeper into specific safety topics like distracted driving. For example, distracted driving training commonly covers cell phones, but how often do you train on handling road rage? The goal is not just to stay legal, but to promote top safety practices. Other special safety topics might include emergency triangle placement and safe route navigation.

4 – Cargo securement

Keep your haul safe. This kind of training will cover cargo door safety and properly securing all cargo. Different loads may require different training.

5 – Night driving

A common cause of violations and accidents is driver fatigue, and fatigue is more challenging in the night hours. Night safety and healthy night driving are paramount.

6 – Hazmat training

If you want to know what an insurance risk looks like, take a look at a semi truck carrying a load of hazardous materials. But your drivers can be trained to handle Hazmat safely, from general awareness of hazardous materials to loading and unloading, securement, and emergency response.

7 – Maintenance

Trucks that are up to date on maintenance reduce incidents. Topics should include brake safety, axles and tires, inspecting a driveline, troubleshooting vibrations, and winter weather readiness.

8 – Accidents

This is last on our list, but not least. Training should prevent accidents, but when and if they occur you can be the company who knows how to handle them. Properly handle collisions, rollovers, and jackknifing. By the time an incident is happening, drivers shouldn’t have to think. The right reactions should be instinct.

With online training modules, you can get very flexible and specific, and target topics directly to individual fleets and drivers.

Now get to work on your training plan, and start managing insurance costs!

Infinit-I Workforce Solutions offers over 700 online driver training modules to help you cut costs and keep the roads safe. Request a catalog today.