Steer your transportation operation in the right direction:
Screen drivers before you hire to build a safety-driven culture.
If you’re running a fleet, one of the most important hiring decisions you make has to do with the drivers sitting behind the wheels of the vehicles in your fleet. For starters, there are the financial considerations – the cost of a new 18-wheeler runs anywhere from $100,000 to close to $200,000, so you don’t want just anyone in control of such a significant investment.
Then there are the safety considerations. When a 75-foot, 80,000-pound semi is involved in a collision, the sheer size of the rig means that even the most minor incident will likely result in significant damage and injury. The average cost of a crash today is more than $90,000[1]. If a fatality is involved, that number rises to around $7.6 million. Offsetting a $25,000 crash requires an additional $1.25 million in revenues. It goes without saying that the impact of such a crash on your business – in both monetary and human terms – can be catastrophic.
Not surprisingly, growing numbers of businesses are starting to cultivate safety-driven business cultures. One of the keys to building such a culture? Making sure the people they put in the driver’s seat have safe track records. There’s a powerful correlation between a history of safety violations and crashes. Just one reckless driving violation increases the likelihood of a crash by 325%. Driving too fast for conditions accelerates the chances by 62%. A no-log-book violation ups the risk by 50%[2].
According to the Transportation Research Board, “there is clear evidence that experience (in years driving) and time spent working within a company’s culture are key to an organization’s ability to develop a safety culture.”[3] Clearly, it pays to find, hire and keep safe drivers. So how do you make sure you hire good drivers and keep the bad ones off your payroll?
Use the tools available to you to make informed hiring decisions
So how do you hire qualified drivers? Fortunately, a variety of tools and resources are available to help you make informed hiring decisions. Want to keep unsafe drivers off your payroll? Ask questions like these during your interview process:
- Have you been involved in any safety committees or programs in your previous employment?
- What safety-related organizations or activities have you been associated with outside of work?
- How do you prevent collisions and injuries on the job?
- What types of personal protective equipment did you use in your previous job?
- What types of safety work rules did you follow in your previous job?
- Do you have any speeding convictions? How many?
Keep in mind, regulations can change. Be sure to check the latest Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association regulations before hiring a driver.
Check backgrounds before you move forward
Once you’ve identified driver candidates, it’s a good idea to conduct comprehensive background checks to validate applicant information and develop a more complete profile of potential hires:
- Check Motor Vehicle Records (MVRs) and accident histories in every state where an applicant has held a license in the last three years to make sure driving records are clean.
- Screen applicants using the CSA Pre-employment Screening Program (PSP) – ask applicants to sign a release so you can access driver information records through PSP. You can get the last five years of crash data and roadside inspections/violations from the FMCSA MCMIS system. Enroll at www.psp.fmcsa.dot.gov.
- Run criminal background checks to see if drivers have clean legal records.
- Conduct pre-hire drug and alcohol testing to identify potential problems upfront and avoid the costs of property damage and lawsuits.
Hiring the right people goes a long way to getting safe drivers – and robust screening, interviewing and hiring practices can put you on the road to a successful fleet. However, given the current driver shortage – according to the ATA, driver churn for large truckload fleets is over 100% and at a five-year high for smaller truckload fleets – finding and hiring good drivers is tougher than ever.
Don’t have time or resources to source, recruit, screen, hire, and train drivers yourself? Consider outsourcing your fleet and off-loading driver shortage worries like recruitment, hiring and training issues. By working with a partner who knows the rules of the road, you can focus your time, attention and resources on what really matters – your business.
What steps do you take to screen new hires before you add them to your payroll?
To learn more about the importance of driver screening and the role it plays in cultivating a safety-driven culture, download our White Paper – “Safety Before the Wheel: Why it’s Critical to Screen New Drivers Before Hiring.”
[1] FMCSA
[2] CTSSB Synthesis 14: The Role of Safety Culture in Preventing Commercial Motor Vehicle Crashes, Sponsored by the FMCSA, Transportation Research Board, 2007
[3] CTSSB Synthesis 14: The Role of Safety Culture in Preventing Commercial Motor Vehicle Crashes, Sponsored by the FMCSA, Transportation Research Board, 2007
