What became clear during the pandemic is how much we rely on trucking companies and their drivers to keep our food sources and essential goods, coming in and out of our country.
As imperative as our truck drivers are, it’s just as important for trucking companies to have the best and latest practices in safety procedures to ensure drivers and the public can co-exist safely on our roads.
Tom Boehler, Senior Director of Safety and Compliance for The Erb Group of Companies, has been with the company for the past 25 years, and is responsible for implementing innovative safety practices and enhancing programs to evolve with the every-changing industry regulations.
The ExeceleRATE program is The Erb Group’s latest safety initiative to keep their drivers and the public, safe on the road
At The Erb Group, they employ drivers that are experienced or at an entry-level who are adequately trained with good qualifications to learn about safety protocols and procedures.
The Erb Group implemented a new program from Impirica that goes beyond traditional hiring practices and provides clearer insights on an applicant’s capabilities without bias.
ExceleRATE, Boehler said, is a risk assessment program that allows a cognitive assessment of the driver that is two-fold: To detect any impairments that would be caused either due to substance abuse, or an underlying medical condition that would also disqualify someone to safely drive.
The first part of the program, Boehler said, has the applicant use an IPad to go through a simulation of a tasks while measuring things like memory, tracking, reactions and visuals. The second part is the commercial on-road evaluation (CORE) where a route is laid out with specific tasks and driver situations.
“When we marry this new evaluation together with our current practices it gives an overall risk assessment of that driver, and that has really helped us standardize the way the test is done throughout all the terminals and for the people doing the evaluation,” he said. “It’s something that’s really needed throughout the industry, I believe, because everyone has their own perception on what a safe driver is but with this program everyone is measured the same.”
Another program that has kept Erb at the forefront of safety is having implemented the Lytx DriveCam program in 2017. Boehler said, they were seeing trends from 2014 through 2016, around the time when smart phones became popular, where frequency and severity of accidents was on the rise.
Wanting to get a more accurate picture of how these accidents were occurring, they launched the program, and not only were high-risk driving behaviours lowered, but accidents and their frequency has since gone down over 60 per cent.
“Our primary objective is to coach our drivers on best practice and explain that safety is not the penalty box, we’re just here to ensure you get home everyday safely and everybody that interacts with you on the road gets home safely,” he said.
How communication creates new ideas for safety
Gauging how safe their drivers are and finding new ways to help them be as safe as possible on the road is important. Twice annually, Boehler said they have the Safety Team meet to assess individual driver development and brainstorm on ways to support their drivers when it comes to road safety. Like wise drivers are required to attend two live meetings annually in addition to other schedule training.
“We really gear up these meetings to be very informative in what the consequences could be, and how it could affect you the driver, as well as the company and other people around you,” he said.
These meeting are invaluable for feedback and looking at accident trends, which is then used to create new safety and training initiatives, as necessary.
If you are interested in a career at The Erb Group of Companies, call them at 519-662-2710 or contact them today!