Truckstops2004
2004-07-25 15:17:22 UTC
Baron Davis was on Interstate 10 heading for a Florida vacation when an
18-wheeler barreled past him, then cut into his lane and slammed on its brakes.
Davis, a Louisiana real-estate broker at the time, barely avoided skidding into
the truck's rear end.
"When the black smoke cleared," Davis recalled, "there was this 'How's My
Driving?' decal."
He pulled off at the next rest stop and, using a pay phone, dialed the number
listed on the back of the truck. The operator at the other end seemed less than
interested in his call.
"I felt like I was being a nuisance to them," Davis said. "I really thought it
was a great idea, but they didn't have a system in place to handle the calls.
"It stuck in my mind, 'Man, I could put together a system to take these
calls.'"
Several years later, in 1992, Davis did just that.
His company, Safety Alert Network Inc., is one of about a half dozen
driver-monitoring firms covering the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
Its operators handle complaints--and occasionally compliments--about truck and
van drivers all over North America.
The service can promote driver accountability, reduce accidents and lower
insurance rates, say Davis and others in the driver-monitoring industry.
Drivers themselves have mixed feelings about the decals. Roy Malcolm's
container truck doesn't have one--and he's not sure he wants one.
"A lot of drivers get in trouble on the road, and before they get in, their
boss knows about it," he said, chuckling outside Servicetown on U.S. 17. "I
know a lot of people call in."
And then there's the occasional irreverent message stuck to the back of a
vehicle: "How's My Driving? Call 1-800-EAT-$#*&."
Plenty of drivers chafe at the Big Brother nature of the legitimate decals,
said Wayne Grinstead, general manager of DriverCheck, an Atlanta-based
driver-monitoring company.
"Initially, drivers aren't really happy about that because they think someone
is going to be looking over their shoulder," Grinstead said.
"We generally tell them that most drivers in their fleet aren't going to get a
call," he said. "What we're looking for is the person who is getting repeat
calls, because those are the people who are about to cause you serious
liability."
'The accountability factor'
Safety Alert, DriverCheck and South Florida-based Driver's Alert estimate that
about 20 percent of the drivers bearing their decals generate 80 percent of the
complaints to the toll-free numbers.
Half of those drivers will probably get only one complaint a year, said
Grinstead. The rest may need extra training, he said.
"What we find is that most of the drivers will never get a report and that 10
percent will be getting a lot of reports," he said. "Generally, those are the
people you want to be real careful about counseling. Either they're aggressive
drivers or for some other reason they're about to be a big liability for you."
Though callers may be more likely to report the high jinks of a tanker truck,
most of the vehicles bearing the "How's My Driving?" decals are much smaller.
"[Large trucks] represent only 25 percent of our client base," said Richard
Lea, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Driver's Alert. "It's
air-conditioning repair people, bug killers, beer distributors, [companies]
that have intracity fleets operating in congested areas."
Those companies pay a per-truck fee to subscribe to the driver-monitoring
service. Sometimes, insurance companies help foot the bill.
Officials with all three companies interviewed for this story said they
generally guarantee their clients a 10 percent drop in accident rates the first
year.
"It's because of the accountability factor," Lea said.
The call centers take complaints and compliments from motorists, often calming
frayed nerves in the process. They forward the information to the drivers'
supervisors, who then review the information with the drivers.
"The goal is not to say: 'Ha! I got you,'" Grinstead said. "It's to change
behavior."
But those stickers can be abused by vengeful drivers, said Scott Braddy, a
driver for Oliver's Auto Transport of Suffolk. One woman in Jacksonville, Fla.,
called his company and claimed Braddy had rear-ended her three times at 45 mph,
he said.
"[She said] I scratched her bumper and if the company didn't pay to fix her
bumper she was going to call the cops," Braddy said. "My boss told her if I hit
her three times and she didn't call the cops, she was an idiot."
They never heard from the woman again.
There are plenty of bad drivers on the road, in both commercial and personal
vehicles, Braddy said. In eight years of driving, he said, he's received only
one nice comment from a motorist.
"That was when an elderly woman spun out and hit me, and she told the cops, the
insurance company and my boss that I did an excellent job of not killing her,"
Braddy said.
Keeping track of drivers
Loomis, Fargo & Co. has as many as 5,000 vehicles a day on roads throughout
North America. Each of those trucks has one of Safety Alert's decals on the
back of it.
Those stickers generate between 300 and 500 calls a month, said Danny Pack,
senior vice president of loss prevention for Loomis, Fargo. The company focuses
on four "critical" complaints: speeding, unsafe lane changes, tailgating and
failing to stop or yield.
"We pride ourselves on driver performance," Pack said. "This tool is used--in
addition to a number of other tools--to verify that what we're doing to train
people is working."
If a driver receives two critical complaints within six months, company
officials will follow that driver to see if extra training is warranted, Pack
said.
Often, the calls are positive. So far this year, 19 percent of the calls
generated by those decals have provided praise of Loomis, Fargo drivers, Pack
said.
Has the program reduced accident rates?
"We wouldn't be doing it otherwise," he said.
Home Paramount Pest Control also provides a toll-free number for motorists to
call, said Tracy Smith, the company's branch manager for the Fredericksburg
region.
It's probably been two years since he received a complaint about a driver,
Smith said. But he likes knowing motorists can reach out to the company if they
need to.
"I'd recommend it for pretty much any company," he said. "It makes everyone
accountable."
The decals have produced unintended consequences, as well. The call centers
have occasionally recovered stolen vehicles for their clients after motorists
have complained about trucks in places they shouldn't be.
Once, said Grinstead, a driver for a meat company in Tennessee simply
disappeared with his truck. Motorists called DriverCheck to complain about the
man's erratic driving, and the company tracked him to Louisiana.
"Finally, we got a call from New Orleans at Mardi Gras saying, 'We got a truck
parked on the sidewalk and a guy grilling meat.' He'd parked at Mardi Gras and
was grilling steaks," Grinstead said. "We called the cops, and the police went
and picked him up."
Most drivers want to do a good job, said Grinstead. The "How's My Driving?"
program encourages praise for those who do and helps pinpoint those who need
more help, he said.
"The goal of all this is not to get anybody fired or in trouble," he said. "The
goal is to save lives and save money for the company, and ultimately when we do
that, we save jobs."
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2004/072004/07252004/1428614
18-wheeler barreled past him, then cut into his lane and slammed on its brakes.
Davis, a Louisiana real-estate broker at the time, barely avoided skidding into
the truck's rear end.
"When the black smoke cleared," Davis recalled, "there was this 'How's My
Driving?' decal."
He pulled off at the next rest stop and, using a pay phone, dialed the number
listed on the back of the truck. The operator at the other end seemed less than
interested in his call.
"I felt like I was being a nuisance to them," Davis said. "I really thought it
was a great idea, but they didn't have a system in place to handle the calls.
"It stuck in my mind, 'Man, I could put together a system to take these
calls.'"
Several years later, in 1992, Davis did just that.
His company, Safety Alert Network Inc., is one of about a half dozen
driver-monitoring firms covering the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
Its operators handle complaints--and occasionally compliments--about truck and
van drivers all over North America.
The service can promote driver accountability, reduce accidents and lower
insurance rates, say Davis and others in the driver-monitoring industry.
Drivers themselves have mixed feelings about the decals. Roy Malcolm's
container truck doesn't have one--and he's not sure he wants one.
"A lot of drivers get in trouble on the road, and before they get in, their
boss knows about it," he said, chuckling outside Servicetown on U.S. 17. "I
know a lot of people call in."
And then there's the occasional irreverent message stuck to the back of a
vehicle: "How's My Driving? Call 1-800-EAT-$#*&."
Plenty of drivers chafe at the Big Brother nature of the legitimate decals,
said Wayne Grinstead, general manager of DriverCheck, an Atlanta-based
driver-monitoring company.
"Initially, drivers aren't really happy about that because they think someone
is going to be looking over their shoulder," Grinstead said.
"We generally tell them that most drivers in their fleet aren't going to get a
call," he said. "What we're looking for is the person who is getting repeat
calls, because those are the people who are about to cause you serious
liability."
'The accountability factor'
Safety Alert, DriverCheck and South Florida-based Driver's Alert estimate that
about 20 percent of the drivers bearing their decals generate 80 percent of the
complaints to the toll-free numbers.
Half of those drivers will probably get only one complaint a year, said
Grinstead. The rest may need extra training, he said.
"What we find is that most of the drivers will never get a report and that 10
percent will be getting a lot of reports," he said. "Generally, those are the
people you want to be real careful about counseling. Either they're aggressive
drivers or for some other reason they're about to be a big liability for you."
Though callers may be more likely to report the high jinks of a tanker truck,
most of the vehicles bearing the "How's My Driving?" decals are much smaller.
"[Large trucks] represent only 25 percent of our client base," said Richard
Lea, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Driver's Alert. "It's
air-conditioning repair people, bug killers, beer distributors, [companies]
that have intracity fleets operating in congested areas."
Those companies pay a per-truck fee to subscribe to the driver-monitoring
service. Sometimes, insurance companies help foot the bill.
Officials with all three companies interviewed for this story said they
generally guarantee their clients a 10 percent drop in accident rates the first
year.
"It's because of the accountability factor," Lea said.
The call centers take complaints and compliments from motorists, often calming
frayed nerves in the process. They forward the information to the drivers'
supervisors, who then review the information with the drivers.
"The goal is not to say: 'Ha! I got you,'" Grinstead said. "It's to change
behavior."
But those stickers can be abused by vengeful drivers, said Scott Braddy, a
driver for Oliver's Auto Transport of Suffolk. One woman in Jacksonville, Fla.,
called his company and claimed Braddy had rear-ended her three times at 45 mph,
he said.
"[She said] I scratched her bumper and if the company didn't pay to fix her
bumper she was going to call the cops," Braddy said. "My boss told her if I hit
her three times and she didn't call the cops, she was an idiot."
They never heard from the woman again.
There are plenty of bad drivers on the road, in both commercial and personal
vehicles, Braddy said. In eight years of driving, he said, he's received only
one nice comment from a motorist.
"That was when an elderly woman spun out and hit me, and she told the cops, the
insurance company and my boss that I did an excellent job of not killing her,"
Braddy said.
Keeping track of drivers
Loomis, Fargo & Co. has as many as 5,000 vehicles a day on roads throughout
North America. Each of those trucks has one of Safety Alert's decals on the
back of it.
Those stickers generate between 300 and 500 calls a month, said Danny Pack,
senior vice president of loss prevention for Loomis, Fargo. The company focuses
on four "critical" complaints: speeding, unsafe lane changes, tailgating and
failing to stop or yield.
"We pride ourselves on driver performance," Pack said. "This tool is used--in
addition to a number of other tools--to verify that what we're doing to train
people is working."
If a driver receives two critical complaints within six months, company
officials will follow that driver to see if extra training is warranted, Pack
said.
Often, the calls are positive. So far this year, 19 percent of the calls
generated by those decals have provided praise of Loomis, Fargo drivers, Pack
said.
Has the program reduced accident rates?
"We wouldn't be doing it otherwise," he said.
Home Paramount Pest Control also provides a toll-free number for motorists to
call, said Tracy Smith, the company's branch manager for the Fredericksburg
region.
It's probably been two years since he received a complaint about a driver,
Smith said. But he likes knowing motorists can reach out to the company if they
need to.
"I'd recommend it for pretty much any company," he said. "It makes everyone
accountable."
The decals have produced unintended consequences, as well. The call centers
have occasionally recovered stolen vehicles for their clients after motorists
have complained about trucks in places they shouldn't be.
Once, said Grinstead, a driver for a meat company in Tennessee simply
disappeared with his truck. Motorists called DriverCheck to complain about the
man's erratic driving, and the company tracked him to Louisiana.
"Finally, we got a call from New Orleans at Mardi Gras saying, 'We got a truck
parked on the sidewalk and a guy grilling meat.' He'd parked at Mardi Gras and
was grilling steaks," Grinstead said. "We called the cops, and the police went
and picked him up."
Most drivers want to do a good job, said Grinstead. The "How's My Driving?"
program encourages praise for those who do and helps pinpoint those who need
more help, he said.
"The goal of all this is not to get anybody fired or in trouble," he said. "The
goal is to save lives and save money for the company, and ultimately when we do
that, we save jobs."
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2004/072004/07252004/1428614