As you may know, the safety of a
trucking company is tracked on the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Safety
Measurement System (SMS). Performance is
divided into Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASIC) scores,
which inform the DOT if intervention is necessary. It is important that companies actively manage
their BASIC scores to avoid attracting unwanted attention from the DOT. Watching and improving BASIC scores can also
result in lower insurance costs, but how can a company improve these scores?
The
vehicle maintenance and driver fitness BASICs are two of the easiest areas to
improve. Most of the violations that a
company will receive in the driver fitness category are for drivers having
expired DOT cards. Make sure that
someone is keeping a running list of medical card expiration dates. Sure drivers should be responsible for
keeping their DOT cards up to date but, it becomes the company’s problem when driver’s
medical cards expire. Now let’s talk
about vehicle maintenance.
There
is the old saying that “a camel is just a horse made by committee,” but
committees can be helpful. Creating a
maintenance committee that is comprised of drivers, dispatchers, and the head
of maintenance could help improving the company’s vehicle maintenance
BASIC. Allowing employees to identify
and solve maintenance issues will give them more ownership of maintenance. One note of caution about committees is that they
can become a forum for complaints and morale killing, so it is important that
management be present to steer the clear of becoming counter-productive.
