Trucking Companies: Safety Programs Are Worth the Cost

As highway safety advocates, we believe that every transportation company (especially trucking companies) need a well-rounded safety program. Why?

1. If every company employed such programs, our highways would be much safer. By putting safety first, professional drivers would understand that their lives and the motoring public are more important than the bottom line.
2. Safety programs make financial sense for trucking companies in the long run.

Safety programs save trucking companies money in the long run

Accidents are expensive for trucking companies, and not just because of the obvious costs. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) conducted a study on trucking companies’ accident costs across the U.S.

According to the study, the average accident costs $91,000. When the accident involved an injury, the average cost more than doubled to $195,000. When the accident involved a fatality, the motor carrier’s cost skyrocketed to an average of $3.6 million.

Many accident costs are fairly obvious. They include vehicle property damages, repairs, cargo damage, lost business due to the truck being out of service, and the costs of defending a lawsuit.

Other costs, though, are not as obvious and are more difficult to quantify.

What indirect costs do trucking companies pay after a truck accident?

If a truck driver is injured after a crash, he may be unable to work for a period of time. As a result, the trucking company loses profits while its driver is out of work. The trucking company may also have workers’ compensation obligations to that driver.

Truck accidents also cost significant administrative work and expenses. Commercial insurance premiums may rise as well.

After a truck accident, the Department of Transportation (DOT) will investigate the trucking company’s safety procedures. The DOT investigation may reveal that the trucking company or the driver didn’t have adequate safety procedures in place. If this happens, the trucking company may be ordered “out of service” until it becomes compliant.

Even if a trucking company isn’t ordered out of service, the DOT can lower the company’s Compliance, Safety, and Accountability (CSA) score. CSA scores hold motor carriers and drivers accountable for their role in safety.

A truck driver with poor safety performance and compliance records will have trouble finding work. Trucking companies with poor CSA scores will likely not be hired by shippers or logistics brokers, which arrange thousands of shipments every day.

For those shippers and logistics brokers, hiring a trucking company known to be unsafe is not worth the risk. When shippers and brokers aren’t calling, the trucking company loses business and revenue.

What can trucking companies do to prevent accidents (and save money)?

While trucking companies cannot completely prevent accidents by having a robust safety program, they can certainly mitigate the risk. Trucking companies can mitigate the risk of accidents and lower their accident costs by doing the following:

1. Hiring only qualified and experienced drivers
2. Thoroughly training all drivers on safe driving practices
3. Proactively detecting unsafe driving behaviors and implementing systems to correct those behaviors
4. Using available technology for training and preventing dangerous driving
5. Employing an experienced Safety Manager that ensures compliance with the FMCSRs and that the company’s own safety policies are being followed by every employee

In our experience, we have seen many trucking companies cut corners when it comes to safety. When we investigate truck accidents with serious injuries or fatalities, we discover that the crash is often preventable if the trucking company had implemented a reasonable safety program.

For each of these crashes, it cost the trucking company hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. Had that money been invested in a safety program, the trucking would have saved a lot of money in the long run. More importantly, our clients would have never been seriously injured.