TRUCKING RISK MANAGEMENT

TRANSCRIPT

[Bruce Silverman] Hey everybody welcome in once again a another episode of "Managing Risk for Tomorrow, Today" today with Henry Laville. You can reach Henry at 225-317-4265, hlaville@eliterisk.com. And this episode, this one is not only for the business owners, but I think it's also for the kids, because everybody loves trucks.

[Henry Laville] Absolutely do it for the kids today.

[Bruce Silverman] We, you know, I know when I was a kid, I had the trucks and I had the Matchbox cars and the LEGO sets and everything else and the trucks who transport the cars and do all that fun stuff. So you kind of live in the world that I used to play it.

[Henry Laville] On the sidelines of it? Yeah, for sure, though. Absolutely. 

[Bruce Silverman] Alright, so let's get into it. We got to mitigate the risks and the risk factors in trucking. Where do we start? 

[Henry Laville] Well, a great place to start is hiring the best drivers you can. So some of that just comes down to pay anymore. I mean, it's it's pretty simple. But the more you pay your drivers, the longer you keep them. And the longer you keep them, the less new drivers you have that have less experience. So you have a circular

[Bruce Silverman] Variation competitive market right now, is it not?

[Henry Laville] It is dry the the employment markets very competitive, it's really hard to find good drivers. And then you're

[Bruce Silverman] I hear the commercials on on the radio all the time come and work for us, here's your starting salary, you only work X amount of hours, we've got all these benefits, we'll give you a signing bonus. So it tells me that the trucking industry is very competitive, just in terms of drivers alone.

[Henry Laville] Trucking and transportation in general. So whether it's ready mix concrete, down here, it could be sugarcane, although those are a lot of foreign drivers, anything with heavy vehicles and, and drivers there, there needs to be some foresight, there needs to be some planning. I've seen companies that are hard up for drivers hire drivers of reckless operations to drive 90,000 pound vehicles. And you're just making bad situations more likely. Insurance carriers are not particularly forgiving on the back end after a claim. But they see things like that on the front end of a claim too. So certain programs want to know, hey, what's especially in trucking? What are your risk mitigating factors? Like? Do you have a safety book? Do you have things of that nature, anything with alternative risk transfer that exists like the wheels, group captains and things of that nature, are probably going to have some questions about that. So it doesn't only protect you from having a claim, it helps you market yourself better to the insurance industry. And it gets your drivers home to their families at night. And you can employ the same drivers for years without having to reinvent the wheel.

So there's a lot of upside to to to attracting and maintaining good drivers for your fleet. Beyond that drug testing to drivers, when they come in, you got to do the OSHA thing, or it's either after a claim or completely random, but the things of that nature. And then if your drivers are stressed out seem unhappy. I've talked to business owners who will check on the drivers and see things like that, because they saw a trend of when the drivers were having personal issues, there were more claims they were more distracted. There's of course, the technology aspect of that that kind of interfaces with drivers where you can have cameras that are driver facing. And if I'm the driver and I look away camera kind of makes a chime in, hey, you got to look at the road. It may also record it and let the employer know. So things things of that nature can be beneficial. But to answer your question, it starts with good drivers. I think from there you go to vehicles, but anyway. 

[Bruce Silverman] Well, you know, you bring up the point about drivers. And I think this is a point that can be made with just about any business. There is a trend and you'll talk to a lot of different business consultants, business coaching, where they are encouraging businesses, pay employees more, they have more options today than ever before. You know, you're they don't have to work for you. There are other things that they can do. There are other things they can do in their chosen industry, there are things they can do outside of their industry. So the better that you treat your employees, whether it is drivers or in this particular case, just stay in the trucking industry, people that work in the office, the operations people the logistics people because it takes a village and entire company is what is needed to move goods from point A to point B it's not just about the driver.

[Henry Laville] No absolutely. And I think for some businesses it can come off as almost like a let them eat cake situation. Hey, pay on that extra money you don't have But if you if you can spend it on your drivers, I think it's good to because if you don't spend it on your drivers, you'll quite likely spend it on your insurance. And that's, that's, I think everybody would rather pay drivers and pay insurance premiums. 

[Bruce Silverman] I would think that there's a better return on your investment. Shawn, when you invest in your employees, rather than investing in insurance, especially if you don't get into captives and some of the other things that we've talked about, you know, with you and Adam and Jeff, where you look, if you pay your employees, your employees, they're working for you, and you're gonna see a return on that investment, because they're, they're moving goods from point A to point B, insurance doesn't move goods, it doesn't move a truck, it doesn't pay, you know, the bills, in terms of keeping the lights on, it is a necessary part of doing business. But if you hire like you said, good drivers with clean records, you're going to mitigate your risks, see, brought it first full circle

[Henry Laville] Right And it's not an either or thing. So if you if you want to invest in your insurance in your insurance program by having risk participation, having a captive or being in any other sort of law sensitive program, even if it's just a simple, plain Jane High Deductible program, having better drivers makes that work better. The nature of a law sensitive program is we build you the best program in the world. Everything's perfect, we check every box for you, that's great, we can't drive your trucks. So if you have bad losses, the program's not going to work for you. So even the best programs only work as they work much better. With better performance, they they are limited. The only ceiling they have is generally is generally the performance of the business themselves. So So bet on yourself in that way to beyond that driver inspections, walk arounds are great making sure there's nothing coming off a vehicle making sure your loads are secured.

That can negatively impact you even without an accident. You get pulled over by the state troopers that can go against your safer scores and things of that nature. And it can prevent accidents. If you notice damage tires that need to be replaced prevent a blowout. That's awesome. And there are vendors that a lot of the specific this is more specific to truckers but you'll you can see it and readymix you can see it in other things there are super Hall in which is short haul trucking for extra math and things that make up two lanes of traffic. But tire maintenance and having a vendor available to bring tires out on site. So if you have a blowout on site on a tire that looked good, but you can get that tire a new tire back on on site rather than trying to let the rest of your out that makes it a lot safer. But that's just another example on the vehicle side

[Bruce Silverman] He is Henry Laville, this is "Managing Risk for Tomorrow, Today," 225-317-4265, hlaville@eliterisk.com. Servicing vehicles and keeping a regular schedule on that must mitigate as well.

[Henry Laville] It's us, it's us, things coming off your vehicles pieces falling off your vehicle. That's that's not great tires coming off your vehicles as I've already harped on pretty heavy, but finding those maintenance issues sooner rather than later. You don't want to find out about them after they cause an accident. So that's that's that's good for numerous reasons outside of just third party risk of injury and other people and getting into a lawsuit or litigation situation, your vehicles will last longer. But that should that should be a no brainer. However, it's not always beyond that. Having your your technology maintained on your vehicle, having your E logs be up to date, having your cameras be up to date making sure all the cameras are functional and all your vehicles all the time. That's huge. A lot of the camera companies that come out, have warranty programs there and that's very beneficial as well. But shoot that. That brings me to a whole nother topic and just cameras. I can't tell you how many times I've seen cameras prevent what would have been fraudulent lawsuits and in insurance. There was a dirt work company that was also into logging and numerous other verticals. And in North Louisiana.

They showed me on this on the safety managers cellphone, a video of a gentleman pulling up to a red light on a bicycle and taking a picture of the DoD number on the side of the truck and then laying on the ground next to his bicycle and taking a picture like that. And then saying he was sideswiped by the truck and the truck didn't notice. Well he makes he makes a lawsuit happened and the cameras made the declination happen the cameras made the lawsuit go away. So that is huge. So that's that's another great one that not just for heavy trucks for law. Trucks to it could be a pest control or roofing operation, it really doesn't matter if you have your business advertised on the side of the truck as good as that is for for visibility. It's a double edged sword. Because there are those folks who want to be plaintiffs for a living and sue people as if it's their job. They see that as a target. Oh, that's a commercial insurance policy right there. I'm gonna I'm gonna go after those limits and I know an attorney who's going to help me. So that's, that's just another arrow in your quiver to protect you from from those folks.

[Bruce Silverman] As a consumer, I've seen him I've seen him in Ubers you start seeing cameras in multiple cameras in Uber, so it's Uber drivers that are trying to protect themselves against lawsuits as well. "Managing Risk for Tomorrow, Today". He's Henry Laville, elite risk insurance 225-317-426, hlaville@eliterisk.com. Always a pleasure, and I'm sure we're gonna have more conversations, we could probably have an entire episode just on the equipment to mitigate risks, like cameras. So yeah, talk about that one.

[Henry Laville] Sure, sure. So other other equipment to mitigate risk could be as complex and nice as a camera or an E log with a GPS system. That's high end. But there are things that are more simple, that have a much lower entry entry entry point for a cost of the cost of utilization bases. The simplest and one of the best I've ever seen was a sticker. So this was a concrete pumping operation where they put a sticker that said do not use the boom until the outriggers are deployed. And I think it said outriggers must be deployed next to where the boom handles were. Well, that's great because you have a boom whether it's concrete pumping, or a crane, or mobile crane, you're taking weight and you're leveraging it out beyond your wheelbase.

So you're creating a situation where your vehicle is likely to tip that little sticker which is front of mind you cannot use your your your joystick to operate your boom without seeing that sticker is gonna prevent people from not using their outriggers. I've seen two claims that were I've seen one where they pulled down a mile of power lines in a city luckily it was after a hurricane. So the power lines were alert and no one was electrocuted and there weren't any fires. But that was still a very large claim. And I've seen another one where there was a fatality and multiple serious injuries from not having proper outrigger protocol. So even a little sticker like that can be great.

[Bruce Silverman] Well, these are these are topic topics. And I love the tease. But these are topics that we can work on for further episodes. So let's let's table that for now. We'll tease it and in the meantime getting get in touch with Henry and "Managing Risk for Tomorrow, Today", today with Henry Laville. Henry, always a pleasure.

[Henry Laville] Thanks, Bruce. Great to talk to you.

[Bruce Silverman] You too.