You’re probably working on the budget about now. Looking at 2020 with tight margins, what do you do? Where do you cut? Do you negotiate better prices on tires? Fuel? Do you start eliminating positions or cutting back hours? The solution is not saving in dribs and drabs. You need to break through the pattern of diminishing industry returns. A decisive, comprehensive commitment to enhanced safety culture does this. Save money while reducing accidents and incidents and saving lives.
Ignoring Safety = Revenue Loss
Most owners and managers don’t tend to think of safety as something that saves them money. If “Keep the customer happy, cut corners, and pray” is how you’re doing business, it’s time to change. In a highly safety-conscious era, you’re paying too high a cost.
Putting “savings” before safety means:
Accidents and incidents get worse and more frequent. The average truck accident with significant damage easily costs $200-300K. If this doesn’t hit the threshold for insurance to kick in, you’re paying out of pocket. You’re paying damages and repairs in the best scenarios, lawsuits, and high human costs otherwise.
Insurance goes up. CSA scores are part of determining your insurance premiums. If your rate only goes up 10% this year, you’re lucky. Industry-wide, they’re going up 20-40%. And insurance companies are getting pickier about who they insure. Some major companies, like AIG, no longer insure trucking companies at all. And if you become uninsurable, you’re out of business.
Reputation declines. With a poor safety record, you won’t be able to attract the best employees or the best clients. You can even lose clients and drivers who don’t want to ship with an unsafe carrier or a carrier who can’t protect them.
Inspections, fines, and fees increase. When a company has a poor safety record, they get targeted for more inspections. Your chances of paying fines and fees go up. Drivers are put out of service more often. This pattern drains money and discourages drivers from wanting to work for you.
Expensive technology doesn’t pay. If you’re not harnessing your expensive safety technology to change behaviors, you’re only wasting money. All the technology in the world can’t guarantee you fuel efficiency, better braking, proper lane changes, and hands-free communications if your drivers aren’t doing their job.
Enhanced Safety Culture = Survival
Here’s the fact: improved safety preserves business. The FMCSA is preaching the safety culture gospel for a reason. All your safety issues are linked to business viability. Not only does safety protect the motoring public, but it also makes it possible for trucking to have a future.
Safety culture is no longer your “goal” — it’s your straight-up, base-level survival; non-negotiable:
- • You’ve got to have the resources to respond to increased vigilance of regulators and insurance companies.
- • You have to start building awareness and changing behaviors in drivers to avoid fines, fees, and lawsuits.
- • You’ve got to stay positively connected with drivers in order to reduce turnover.
- • To protect yourself in court, you’ve got to document your efforts and do it effectively.
These are the building blocks of an enhanced safety culture and major savings.
Cost Savings Breakdown
You can’t afford not to improve safety. But your ROI depends on how you go about it.
Training costs – Save up to 70%
Safety awareness training is most effective when it’s frequent, consistent, and keeps best practices top of mind. If you’re trying to train by pulling drivers off the road for several hours 4x a year, it’s like expecting your kid to clean his room every Friday because you asked him to once. Repetition and consistency build memory and response. That’s where online training provides exceptional ROI. Our cloud-based safety training solutions can save you up to 70% on training.
Violations and Accidents – Save a minimum of $80,000/yr
Industry statistics show that training your drivers yields a 70:1 ROI by reducing violations up to 50% and accidents up to 40%. For an average company of 100 drivers (who align with national statistics for accidents), our system can save you a minimum of $80,000 a year in preventable accident costs and reduce the severity of accidents when they occur.
Insurance – Slow, stop or reverse rising premiums
Insurance companies know that if you have a web-based training platform that allows you an increased frequency of safety messaging and training, you’re setting yourself up for better CSA outcomes. Underwriters see this as a positive checkmark when calculating your premiums, and it pays! Insurance partners and associations trust us to reduce their risk of lost revenue, which often translates into best possible insurance premium rates.
Safety technology – Get the most for your money
You can invest a lot in safety technology. When there’s an event, an online platform lets you turn it into a learning opportunity. Stop bad behavior, improve CSA, and avoid costly fines, fees, and lawsuits. You can train and remediate based on the data and footage you’ve captured. You can upload custom content, and have the driver who made the mistake teach other drivers, explaining what they did wrong. Train and re-train on the events that occur.
Commitment to Safety Is the Solution
One of our clients is the 2nd largest contractor for FedEx. After using our system, they’ve upped their game: if drivers don’t do their safety training, the dispatcher doesn’t give them work. That’s how serious they are about safety and about seeing outcomes. They know it saves lives, saves money, and saves equipment. In one year, they saved $100,000 on insurance. They’re committed to enhanced safety culture, and it’s paying off.
Download our free whitepaper to learn more about safety scores and savings and how to get better business outcomes with Infinit-I Workforce Solutions.
