With an estimated 15.5 million trucks operating daily on roads in the United States, it’s important to keep your drivers safe (TruckingInfo.net). Training drivers to be safe and careful while delivering loads is key to growing your trucking business, as it can impact your company’s finances, fuel costs, and truck maintenance expenses.

Here are just a few of the safety challenges for commercial drivers. Even if they seem routine or predictable, it’s important to make sure your drivers remember them.

Large Blind Spots

Limited visibility calls for extra caution in passing and being passed by other large vehicles on the road. Large trucks also need to maintain a longer following distance so they can see all of the vehicles behind them. Cars are often ignorant of the blind spots that trucks have, so it’s up to truck drivers to be vigilant about spotting where cars are moving. Extra side mirrors can be helpful in improving visibility.

Long Stopping Distance

Trucks traveling 65 miles per hour take up to two football fields to stop, so it’s important to have a ‘buffer zone’ in front to protect your drivers and your trucks. The more following distance in front of the truck, the more time drivers have to correct or slow down if other drivers cut in or stop suddenly.

Limited Maneuverability

The turning radius for a truck is 55 feet, so check for smaller vehicles that try to get by when you’re turning. Be aware of the impact a truck makes when accelerating, stopping, and maneuvering between lanes or making a turn. Slowing down significantly for curves and ramps is also a key point to remember – especially with a truck’s higher center of gravity.

Incentivize Safe Driving

To help ensure safe driving, many trucking companies offer small bonuses for driving without any speeding tickets or other citations for a certain period of time. By monitoring driving records – something you’re most certainly doing already – you can identify which drivers have earned bonuses or other rewards for their compliance.

The Financial Benefits of Safe Drivers

Training your drivers for better safety provides benefits not only for drivers, but for your trucking company’s finances.

• Reduced incident rates decrease crash-related liability costs
• Leveraging safety ratings to retain and hire more drivers
• Better productivity by keeping drivers on the road
• Lower insurance costs

Safe driving is good for your reputation, your finances, your drivers and their families. Additional FMCSA tips for CMV drivers can be found at: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ourroads/tips-cmv-drivers.

One of the top issues in the trucking industry is the much-discussed shortage of qualified drivers; a shortage that continues to plague the industry. The American Trucking Association (ATA) estimates a shortage of nearly 50,000 drivers, and projects that the shortage could increase to 175,000 by 2025 (2017 ATA study). Due to the driver supply shortage, demand for drivers continues to increase rapidly.

Here are some of the top recommendations to help you retain and hire the best drivers:

Set Preferred Schedules 

Find ways to keep drivers’ schedules manageable, keeping them home when possible. If you can provide drivers with more at-home days between runs, or adjust schedules to give them different routes they prefer, invest in those changes to give drivers their desired schedules. It’s important to be honest and clearly state expectations from their first day, so that drivers know their projected schedules and don’t get random changes down the road.

Connect with Your Drivers

By forming a drivers’ community with your business’ social media channels, you can create a place for drivers to connect. Post topics that matter to drivers, to gain their interest and their trust. If they feel you are working on ways to improve their livelihood — rather than only posting ads and recruitment offers — you can foster their loyalty.

Solicit Driver Feedback

You can institute scheduled surveys to get feedback from your drivers, listen to their suggestions, and gather data. Employees feel empowered when they feel their feedback makes a difference in the policies or the practices of the business. When drivers do leave, conduct an exit survey or interview to find out what motivated their departure. Take steps to improve the conditions they reveal, and examine what you can do make other drivers want to stick around.

Establish Feasible Bonuses

 Have your financial department or other resource help you determine the cost of hiring and training drivers. Then resolve to put those turnover costs into some type of financial incentive or bonus to help you keep the drivers you have. Many companies reward drivers for safe driving, on-time delivery performance, and more. The ATA found that trucking businesses offered an average bonus of $979 to attract qualified drivers to their fleet, and offered an even larger bonus ($1,143) to retain them in 2016.

Try assessing your current offerings and find ways to keep your best employees. This month, our Facebook and Instagram accounts will feature additional articles and ideas to maintain your driving workforce.

With the increase in use of digital technologies (many that we highlighted last month) unfortunately comes a surge of scams that are being run on trucking companies.

One of the top swindles running rampant these days is deceptive soliciting. A person may call or send official-looking emails or letters posing as a representative from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. In these letters, they’ll claim to be citing you for various violations and associated fines. The scammers will usually do research on legitimate Department of Transportation regulations, so that their scams seem extremely real. They may ask you to pay extremely high fees, or demand that payment be made through specific wiring instructions. This should send up a red flag and prompt you to investigate the claim. This could be as easy as a call to the FMCSA.

What is Being Done?

The Federal Trade Commission has filed a number of lawsuits against companies who’ve scammed thousands of truckers with these deceptive practices. But unfortunately, there are still many people running this particular scam. Your basic carrier information is publically available when you submit an application or update your information with FMCSA. This can leave you open for these fraudulent companies to get your information and target you.

How You Can Avoid Scams:

1. Recognize imposters. Before you send any money or give out information in response to a request, contact the actual agency or business that the request has come from, to determine whether or not it is legitimate. You can also sign up for free scam alerts from the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov/scams. You can get great tips and advice about scams that are going on through these updates.
2. Know the rules. The FTC will never ask you for money. Also, the U.S. Government does not endorse private businesses or vendors, and the use of a service provider is NOT required by FMCSA. For example, one scam is designed to get trucking companies to sign up for their service claiming to easily pay your annual Unified Carrier Registration fees. However, their “service” will actually charge truckers for more payments and higher amounts than their actual fees should be for the year. Remember: you are NOT required to use third-party administrators to take care of your compliance fees.
3. Report fraudulent practices. You can help stop these deceitful practices and avoid becoming a victim of scammers who target truckers. File a complaint for any aggressive or misleading marketers to the Federal Trade Commission at www.FTC.gov/complaint. You can also report a fraudulent request for information to the Department of Transportation through the Office of Inspector General via https://www.oig.dot.gov/hotline.

For the health of your business, it’s important to become aware of the scams that plague the trucking industry. Check our Facebook and Instagramaccounts throughout the month to learn more about cons you want to avoid.

After analyzing 2015 data, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reported decreases in both large truck injury crashes and large truck property damage crashes. One reason why these numbers are improving is because of new technology.

Advanced collision mitigation systems, for example, have sensing technology to monitor for crashes and can take emergency action to avoid them. Using this technology can improve truck driver safety on the roads, but technology may also be used to help trucking companies when it comes to earning better profits for their business. You may want to consider some of the following ideas to determine if investing in these technologies can help you grow your trucking company.

Trailer Tracking Technology

This type of system can offer real-time help with loss prevention, warning drivers of high-theft areas and giving law enforcement data to recover stolen trailers. But it also provides companies the ability to look at the utilization and productivity of their trailers, to see whether or not they’re being maximized in use. The maintenance of trailers is another benefit to trailer tracking, as new systems can attach the maintenance data and records to a specific trailer, creating more consistent inspection plans for companies.

Dynamic Routing Technology

This technology aids efficiency by using real-time traffic and weather information to help drivers adjust to the best possible routes. This can increase profits by allowing trucks to use quicker routes, avoid major collisions, or detour around traffic congestion for more on-time deliveries. And of course, more efficient routes can mean better customer service and lower fuel costs.

While technology hasn’t completely solved many of the problems the industry faces, such as driver shortage and infrastructure issues, there are ways to use technology for your benefit. Taking the time to look at the latest options can help you determine what technologies might help your trucking business grow and succeed.

Throughout this month, our Instagram and Facebook posts will highlight additional technology advances, including transparent and efficient ways to bid for loads that match drivers’ availability and preferences. We’ll also take a look at other software developments that focus on better ways for truckers to make payments for fuel and freight transactions. Stay tuned to ACC on social media to learn more.

Everyone looks forward to pay day. Sadly, it can be very frustrating for small and medium sized trucking companies to deal with customers who don’t pay their invoices on time — or at all. If your trucking business is dealing with this issue, here are a number of ideas you could implement to improve your invoicing process.

Take proactive steps prior to issuing invoices:

• Establish both credit limits and payment terms with each customer before you begin working with them. Payment terms of 15, 30, 45, or 60 days are common.
• Use a reliable invoicing system to track when invoices are issued, with automatic alerts that trigger when an invoice is past due.
• Once an alert is received, establish a standard process for collection emails or phone calls to be made immediately.
• Create a straightforward invoice format. Make sure each invoice clearly indicates the amount due including any detention time and lumpers, payment terms, load number, and where to send payment, so there is no misunderstanding.
• Determine if you want to offer early payment incentives for customers who have been consistent in paying their invoices. Some companies will offer a small discount for payments within a certain number of days.

Issue accurate invoices systematically:

• Issue the invoice to the customer as soon as a job is complete.
• Select a specific date each month or day of the week for invoicing, so you don’t get sidetracked with other business.
• Schedule follow up calls to confirm your invoices were received, and give customers a friendly reminder of when payment is due.

Collect on late payments efficiently:

• Make calls to inquire about late payments, maintaining a calm and polite tone as you issue the request for immediate payment.
• Establish procedures for when to involve a 3^rd party collection agency, and if the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs.
• Establish credit terms for all customers, but be flexible enough to make term adjustments for customers who consistently pay late. If problems persist, it may be time to consider terminating future business with that particular customer.

As you establish consistent, effective invoicing and collection processes, your payments can be collected more efficiently to improve your cash flow. You may also consider using Advanced Commercial Capital’s non-recourse factoring service to get immediate payment for invoices. This ensures that collection efforts don’t become costly or interfere with your ability to run your business.