Dart Unlocks Owner-Operator Satisfaction

In 2015, the General Counsel for Dart Transit Company, Doug Grawe, had grown tired of the headlines. Grawe knew misclassification cases had led to $6.9 million in penalties for Pacific 9 and a $228 million settlement for FedEx. Would Dart be the next to make headlines?

Fortunately, the answer was ‘no’ because Dart had decided to take the leap to a new way of contracting with its owner operators. No penalties would be levied. No articles written. But the risk of continuing to use a hard copy paper contract system to manage the company’s 1,400 owner operator contracts was inescapable.

“My number one job at Dart is risk management. We looked at the way we were doing things, and we didn’t like what we saw,” Grawe says. “After that, we said, ‘We can’t do this. We’ve got to find a better way.’”

As the government encourages states to crack down on owner operator violations, many trucking companies who are still doing paper contracts may be putting themselves in jeopardy. And companies that continue using old school hard copy contracts may be more at risk. That’s because those outdated methods are mired in inefficiencies and inaccuracies. In fact, hard copy, hand filled-out contracts can be as little as 10 percent accurate.

With driver shortage an ongoing issue, getting qualified candidates onboarded and on the road fast is THE pressing problem to be solved in transportation.

THE SOLUTION

For Grawe and Dart Transit Company, that solution was Openforce, a cloud-based online onboarding, screening, and settlement solution that streamlines owner operator contracts in a single platform and helps ensure compliance.

Owner operators present unique challenges in risk, logistics, quality and compliance. The nature of owner operator relationships further complicates matters. For example, owner operators decide their own elections including:

• Occupational accident insurance
• Base plates and permits
• Heavy highway vehicle use tax
• Fuel services
• GPS service
• Maintenance reserve accounts

“For each contractor there are dozens and dozens of different iterations of how the contract looks based on their individual situation,” Grawe says. “There’s no standard one-size-fits-all contract packet that everyone signs.”

But the benefits of using a single technology solution to manage owner operator contracts go beyond those best practices. Putting together the system also helped Dart consolidate onboarding procedures across its four different locations. In fact, turnover in the office was one of the reasons Dart failed its internal review. Grawe says that with key people leaving over the years in our contracting departments, the intellectual knowledge was lost and the procedures along with it.

Ultimately, Grawe says the most important outcome of choosing Openforce may be how it has helped Dart better serve owner operators. In improving Dart’s management of onboarding and ensuring compliance, Grawe says Openforce is not only protecting Dart, but also owner operators’ rights to “choose the career path they want.”

“It’s not just about misclassification lawsuits,” he says. “Openforce’s service enhances the independence of the relationship between Dart and owner operators.”

To download the full whitepaper, visit https://www.oforce.com/dartsuccess  

Openforce is the leading third-party administrator for independent contractors with over 350,000 owner operators properly contracted, insured and paid. Entire industries, like transportation and logistics are redefining the conventional models of work that fall short on cost, efficiency and meeting customer demand. Which is why from our cloud-based applications to our superior services, Openforce helps transportation leaders achieve more sustainable, profitable growth by removing financial, operational, and compliance barriers to getting business done. Learn more at www.oforce.com.