Drivers Are No. 1 Concern
The Boston-based insurer interviewed more than 100 senior managers and found that more than half of them — 53% — worry most about recruiting, training and retaining drivers.
A little more than a third of the managers — 36% — cited insurance and its costs as their major concern, while driver safety and loss prevention headed the list of 32% of those surveyed.
In asking about overall issues, the survey showed that after availability of quality drivers and their retention, public perception of the trucking industry, government regulation and information technology also are major concerns for managers.
Driver issues appear to loom larger for smaller trucking operations (250 or fewer employees) than for big companies. Fully two-thirds — 67% — of the respondents from small operations said managing drivers was their top concern. That compares with a 38% response from managers at bigger carriers.
To reduce risks, managers are focusing more on driving training and improving the quality of life for drivers, John Ryan, vice president of commercial marketing for Liberty Mutual, said Oct. 27, as he discussed results of the survey.
Also, companies are taking a broader view of safety, he said, taking into account not only what happens on the highway but also what goes on in offices and freight terminals. That is where slips and falls and back injuries occur, which are major factors in workers’ compensation claims.
According to Mr. Ryan, safety is a growing issue with management, in part, because of the rising cost of accident litigation, and because of a widening disparity in insurance costs between the best- and worst-run carriers.
“Safety does have a price, but there is a return,” he said.
The most common way of measuring the effectiveness of safety programs is to look at the cost of insurance and claims as a percent of revenue.
Truckers need a way to measure loss that is more meaningful, such as accident cost per mile, he said.
On the topic of electronic commerce, the Liberty Mutual survey found that 66% of trucking executives used the Internet in the past year for their job.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents used the Internet to identify hauling opportunities. Seventy percent cited the Internet as a place for gathering information on competitors.
Sixty-seven percent said they used the Internet for obtaining regulatory information and 58% used it to recruit new employees.
Only 35% of respondents said they use the Internet for benchmarking their operations against industry standards.
