If you introduce new technology to drivers without explaining its benefit, it’s a safe bet to assume most will resist. Think of a driver with millions of miles under their belt and no accidents told they now have an in-cab dash cam.
But, if you take the time to explain the tech, how the dash cam can make a great driver even better, you’ll see an easier transition.
We speak with Dominic Covello, Regional Transportation Manager at Quikrete, about new technologies and how it can offset the increased cost of driver compensation.
Join us as we discuss:
- An overview of technology being used recently
- Making great drivers better with an in-cab dash cam
- How industry driver compensation is improving & customer service
- Suggestions for decision makers & company positives
To make sure you never miss an episode of The Road Forward podcast, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Road Forward in your favorite podcast player.
Transcript
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We've seen significant decreases in the number
of accidents and the severity of accidents with
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all these technologies in place for our
drivers. Welcome to the road forward,
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a podcast for trucking industry leaders.
This is the show for industry that's like
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you, hard working, honest leaders
who know there's promise around the next bend
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and exciting future of the trucking industry
and a chance for your company to thrive.
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If you see the opportunity ahead but
don't want to travel the tough road
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alone, join us, as we
talked with business leaders finding their way forward
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and a changing industry. Let's get
into the show. Okay, welcome to
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the road forward podcast. I'm your
host this time nick. I'm here with
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Dominic Cavello. He is the regional
transportation manager for a large manufacturing company.
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You've definitely heard of them. Dominic, how you doing today? I'm okay.
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How are you today? Neck,
doing well, doing well, you
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know, just just moving down,
moving down the road forward. So we
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were chatting the other day, and
we're talking right now, about technology and
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it's place in transportation and logistics.
A couple of interesting topics we had and
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let's let's continue on those technology today
the key to mitigating market changes, and
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then also where technology meets people may
be the biggest area for operator impact.
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You had some opinions on these top
picks. You guys are doing some pretty
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interesting things with technology where you work
and you want to maybe overview those.
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What have you guys been doing here
recently? Yeah, absolutely so, just
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kind up on a high level,
over the last few years we've really invested
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in the safety technologies that have come
out to the truck and industry. Are
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Our fleet, which is technically a
for higher fleet, predominantly runs our own
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deliveries, like many of the private
fleets out there in the country, and
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we've we've really honed in on lane
departure, collision mitigation, adaptive cruise controls
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and all of those other features that
have kind of come out in the last
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half a decade. All of our
new builds are fully equipped with all those
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features and we've even put some incap
cameras as well, like most of the
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industry is done at this point.
We've seen significant decreases in the number of
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accidents and the severity of accidents with
all these technologies in place for our drivers.
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Yeah, that's fantastic. You know, just cure out of curiosity.
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You mentioned several things, daptive cruise
control and cameras and those type of things.
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What do you think is probably,
if you had to prioritize them,
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what do you think's been the biggest
impact to the least? Maybe that's an
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unfair question, but but what are
your thoughts on that? If I were
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to pick one, if we could
only have one, I think I would
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actually stay with the cap cameras.
So you know, whereas the other items
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are more tools for drivers, the
INCAP camera is a full system that gives
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us the ability to review gameplay footage
with a driver, so to speak,
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and make sure that they're learning continuously
throughout their career. So we're able to
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develop behaviors, hone in on exact
training measures that we need with specific individuals
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that may not be uniform across the
board and create a better, more defensive
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driving force. So during those conversations
or remedial training sessions, we may lean
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on our tools, like asking a
driver to use his adaptive cruise control,
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but those tools are only in place
to support the driver. It's up to
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the driver ultimately, and the camera
gives us that ability to really review that
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with them. That's that's interesting.
I think I heard particular behavior adapting.
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You say training and adapting behaviors with
your drivers is kind of the key.
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Did did Guini pushback when you when
you went to install these things or or
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is there any negative opinion of that? And people think that they don't need
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to change their behaviors? Absolutely,
you know, there's still a lot of
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those old school truck drivers out there
who grew up with none of this stuff.
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You know, heck, even when
we rolled out the automatic transmissions,
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it was a bit of a hurdle
for us to some degree, but the
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INCAP cameras were totally different game for
those drivers that had never experienced them before.
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You know, a lot of these
guys, although they may not have
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been in an accident their entire career
or over millions and millions of miles,
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that doesn't mean they can't improve.
And that's really where the we kind of,
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you know, bumped heads when it
first rolled out with some of these
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guys saying I've never had an issue, why are we making an issue?
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And really, you know, after
a year or two in the program and
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we can show them that data to
support how much better we've gotten as a
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company and show them videos that occurred
elsewhere in the country, where accidents and
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collisions happened that had no fault of
our own driver and how that camera actually
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exonerated our driver in some of those
cases through litigation. These drivers quickly get
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on board of the program and I
think you know, even if you haven't
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had an accident in a decade or
a million miles, that doesn't mean that
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your behaviors are not as defensive as
they can be. So you know a
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lot of drivers have learned, but
there are still some that are not the
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top performers, of course, and
we're still working with them every day.
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Sure, sure, sure, and
that's really where where the rubber meets the
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road. On technology people, I
guess, working with your work force so
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so they understand that benefits as well, like you're saying, instead of just
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mandating top down. Absolutely. You
know it's tough to manage drivers, especially
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in today's world, but I often
feel like you just gotta treat them like
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you would want to be treated yourself. Let them know the big picture,
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show them the end results, show
them how it benefits the company, show
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them how it protects them. Don't
just put something in the cab and say
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you got to do it right correct
and you mentioned something to me recently about
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how you thought that driver in the
industry, driver compensation was improving and and
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some of the professionalism along with it. What was that you were telling me?
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Again, he absolutely on. That's
one thing I think has been,
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you know, kind of long overdue. You know, if you go back
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forty or fifty years, being being
a truck driver was a really honest living,
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something people sought after. is a
skilled trade. It always has been.
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It's a professional, you know,
position that I couldn't do myself.
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So I have a lot of respect
for these guys, and everybody really should.
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The guys are able to be out
there safe every day and let your
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family get home safe as you're driving
around them. So for the last decade,
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two decades plus, that's kind of
gone the opposite direction. Driving became
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less and less to something that people
were seeking as as a new profession due
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to a number of factors, compensation
being one of those, of course.
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And in recent history, as we've
seen the driver shortages and that's continued to
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get worse, compensation has started to
make a come back, for sure,
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but don't think that's increased rates across
the industry as well. Is that negatively
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impacted some some shippers? Absolutely,
you know, the number two cost and
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operating a truck is that drivers pay. So you know that is one hundred
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percent a driving force and rates and
that absolutely is impacting the supply chain and
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the cost of goods at that the
final customer. There's some unique ways,
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though, that we've leveraged those same
technologies to be able to benefit those drivers.
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So many companies, like us,
are using those incab cameras and other
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safety measures to do an incentive program
for your drivers, basically a safety bonus,
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so to speak. So you know
drivers that are performing and saving the
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company money and other ways, we're
giving that back to our drivers. So
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that's not directly hitting our line hall
rates, it's more or less basically still
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driving our bottom line to improve and
we're giving that back to our drivers.
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Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah,
definitely incentivising the right the right areas.
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Then would you say that any of
these these sorts of technologies you've mentioned?
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I know we've talked a lot about
safety up to this point, but what
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about are there things that you guys
have done to improve your operations, customer
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service. You know sort of of
how you guys interact with those above the
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chain and below the chain. Of
you absolutely you know. For us on
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the trucking side of our business,
rather, there are a lot of ways
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we utilized technology we use. We
use our our ability through our led provider
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to draw g offenses all across the
country and measure dwell times, which we
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can then go to and partner with
our operations team to figure out solutions in
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increasing productivity, getting our drivers loaded
and move through the yard so that we
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have less hours waiting more hours driving, and that in turn creates more deliveries
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per day per driver, driving down
our fixed cost proloade. So there's ways
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that we can fight a lot of
these increased costs out there on the market
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by looking at our margins a little
bit differently and improving our operations by leveraging
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these technologies. Well, time.
That's a that's a four letter word.
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That's nobody likes to hear that.
And you guys, are you definitely measuring
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that? Sounds like you got a
good beat on it. And then what
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are the some of the tools,
kind of ones? You know? Okay,
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maybe this area we're getting high dwell
times here. What do you guys
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do to it adapt to that?
I'll give you an example. Nothing better
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than a real story, right.
So just last week actually one of my
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actually my biggest facility that I have
actually in the in the southwest, we
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looked at that at a really granual
level last last week and we looked at
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a full thirty day measure. We've
been measuring it on a weekly basis for
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some time, but we wanted to
look overall where are bottlenecks? So we
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pulled thirty days of data. We
looked at it in several different ways.
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We looked at it by day of
the week to see if there was a
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dit specific day of the week that
had a higher average to all time,
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or loading time, so to speak. We looked at it by the hour
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throughout each of those days as well. So what we noticed was at three
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o'clock and four o'clock in the morning
we had about a twenty percent loader are,
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I'm sorry, twenty percent longer loading
time at our facility versus three and
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four o'clock in the afternoon. So
since we have two shifts there, well,
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we did. We kind of staggered
them in a different fashion so that
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we had more support in the morning
less support in the afternoon, so that
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that could actually kind of even out
across the day and we could maintain the
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levels that we wanted to throughout the
entire day. Oh Nice. Yeah,
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that's that's fantastic. So kind of
putting the resources where they need to be
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at the right time, and you've
got the day to prove it. It's
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all about the date. That this
you know this this point in trucking,
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for sure. Absolutely so. You
also spoke with me recently about some things
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in the industry. You Not really
thrilled upon. Your clearly a technologist.
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You're kind of leveraging the latest.
But there was something about hours of service.
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He said. You wish that.
If we have any lobbyists here or
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any you know, politicians listening in
that you had some some suggestions for yeah,
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absolutely. You know, I just
first and foremost I I love with
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the FMCSA does they keep our drivers
safe? They keep people around them safe
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out on the roadway. But something
that's just kind of sat with me since
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I started in this industry sixteen years
ago. Go local drivers are very different
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than over the road drivers in many
ways, not just the way that they
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perform every day, but the way
that they rest so they're off duty hours
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are much different than a driver that's
crawling into a sleeper berth at a truck
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stop somewhere most days of the week
right. So I think the FMCSA would
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benefit by really identifying that, recognizing
it and setting some different parameters. Today
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we have the local kind of exception
and you can run under that exemption and
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not have a log book, but
you still need to operate within those same
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hours that are regulated really in a
manner that is focused around the over the
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road drivers. So you know you
have a driver who has a terminal that
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he needs to get back to and
in our world these drivers may be doing
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five or six deliveries a day.
The likelihood of something going wrong over six
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different customers is pretty hot. So
when guys are running a couple minutes short,
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it's I think we need to give
them some benefit to get back to
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that terminal safely instead of making them
shut down on the side of the road,
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and my opinion that could be less
safe to some of three then getting
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them back to their terminal and then
letting them get home to their family appropriately
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getting the right rest that they need
before back out of the roadway the next
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day. Sure, what off the
top of your head, but would you
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change? You think that there's a
mileage limit that you could we can institute
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that if you're under this certain model, Ledge certain number of days a week
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or what you think would be the
actual lever that you might pull. There's
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a couple things we could look at. Mileage is one. We could probably
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reference some of the verbiage that they
have in the personal conveyance exception, because
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that does outline amount of time and
that's able to be used at amount of
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miles it's able to be used.
We could also reference some of this stuff
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that's in the adverse conditions exception,
because that reference is it not being known
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at the time of dispatch. So
you know if a driver's coming back and
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you know he's going to be pushing
it, you shouldn't be sending them out
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to begin with. We need to
own that as a company as well.
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Can't just be on the driver.
Sure makes sense. Okay, you mentioned
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you started in this industry sixteen years
ago. Yes, sir, it's a
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little bit about your background. If
you've been on which side of the industry
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you've been on? Most of the
time. Just fongus. So I've been
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on both sides of the industry.
The majority of my career has been on
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the manufacturing side, where I am
today. I started my career in the
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dray age side of the business,
though I've spent about think, nine of
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those years now and on the manufacturing
side and the other seven on the drage
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side. Gotcha, and you know, in that time you've seen a few
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things, few initiatives come and go. I'm sure what what's been? Maybe
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something that you've done in your company
over the last year or so that's that's
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been really positive? Could maybe talk
to others in the manufacturing side. You
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know, what's mets, maybe one
thing that you guys have done recently that
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you'd say, you know, definitely
take a stab at that. You know,
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we we kind of move with the
market and the best thing we've done
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recently really is just build out our
fleet. So we've grown our fleet tremendously
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over the last two years, but
a lot of that's in a product of
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what's going on with rates out on
the market and US being able to insulate
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ourselves from that impact passing on to
our customers. So by increase in the
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size of our fleet, we've been
able to reduce our costs as compared to
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the open market, whereas, put
the market was a couple of years ago,
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it made more sense to outsource more
of our more of our deliveries than
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we do today. Got You it? So the manufacturing side, you guys
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have invested to bring your marginal costs
down, and this has been in a
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fla shery market, so you haven't
seen any pushback from your customers on price.
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You know, fortunately, our market, which is building materials, it's
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up across the board. So it's
not like we're the only people going out
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and saying we need to pass this
Hanto you. It's been pretty universal.
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So we even had as much of
a hard time as we may in other
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markets where we are trying to pass
that on. Sure, sure, sure,
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well, I guess rising tied across
the board helps all ships. Maybe
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and and sounds like you guys have
really position yourself. Well, let's see,
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I wanted to touch in on couple
of industry specific things that you mentioned
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as well some some industry favorite conferences
that you you like to attend every year
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for those interested maybe in technology and
and working on improving some of their their
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processes like you describe. You know
where you learn getting some of this information?
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Is it's conferences? Is IT industry
newsletters or sources? What are some
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of the places You keep up today? A little bit of both. You
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know, I subscribe to a lot
of the standard stuff that you're Morgan Stanley,
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your and PTC, your your normal
dat and cast study stuff that most
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people in the industry would be subscribe
to. So I get a lot of
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updates there. But as far as
really getting in person and listening to speakers
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and different people from the industry and
seeing new vendors that I may not have
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heard of in person and seeing what
they have to offer, I love going
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to our tms provider, McLeod,
their their annual user conference. They have
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a pretty big event every year last
a few days and there are a ton
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of vendors that show up, guest
speakers, key notes that you can take
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away from big players in the industry
or influences on the industry, whether from
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a governing agency, etc. That's
probably my favorite one that I go to.
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I do also like the NPT see
user conference every every year down in
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Jacksonville. That's a really good one
as well. Those coming up or we
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already passed those. Jacksonville, WAN's
every January, so we did pass that.
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Usually the mcloud conference says early queue
for perfect. Okay, okay.
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Well, the last thing I have
for you to day, Dominic, is
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what's something maybe you have your eye
on for the road forward in your company,
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in your work over the next the
next year? WHAT'S THE NEXT INITIATIVE?
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For us? We have all the
technologies and plays that I think we
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need in today's world. So for
us it's really starting to be able to
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cross utilize those technologies. There's so
many different things going on and trucking right
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now you'll have a different eld provider
than you're in cab camera provider, then
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your tms platform, then you're you
know, telematics that are delivering documents to
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your drivers to use from their tablets. All kinds of different things going on
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right now. So for us it's
really about streamlining those work processes, not
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just for our drivers but for our
dispatchers as well. We want to make
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sure that we're going from three clicks
to one click in every piece of this
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workflow moving forward. So we are. We are really working hard at building
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Apis and edy eyes to make our
systems talk so that we only have to
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update things in one place today,
whereas it might take twice as throw or
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thrice as long to do some of
those tasks today, whether from the driver's
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tablet or from our desk in the
office. Sure, sure, so,
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you've got the technology. You're trying
to kind of find a way to make
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it all in one make the workflow
the day to work for you. Exactly.
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Yeah, and we're leveraging, you
know, power be eyes, a
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big one for us. I know
there's a couple other big names out there
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that I'm familiar with as well,
but we're leveraging those business intelligence software is
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now to bring all that into one
place so that we know what's going on
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in our business. But that doesn't
change the end user and how they use
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those software. So that's where we
really need to focus. I think fantastic.
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Okay, Dominic will, I appreciate
your time for the listeners. Remember,
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00:20:07.799 --> 00:20:11.880
if you subscribe to our email newsletter, you're going to be able to
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00:20:11.880 --> 00:20:17.200
get the the fast five questions were
about to ask dominicure, so be sure
267
00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:21.480
to join our subscription list on that. It's on our podcast page. The
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00:20:21.559 --> 00:20:25.400
road forward, but again, Dominic, we appreciate your time. We're going
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to jump to the fast fight and
and for everybody else, you guys,
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00:20:30.119 --> 00:20:34.000
keep up the good work. Will
we'll talk to you next time. If
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00:20:34.039 --> 00:20:37.440
you manage a truck fleet, you
go to bed every night driving that three
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00:20:37.559 --> 00:20:41.119
am phone call, because that call
is never a good one. Either your
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00:20:41.160 --> 00:20:45.240
drivers tell you they have a flat
tire and the shipment's delayed, or they
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00:20:45.279 --> 00:20:48.119
were shut down and take it it
at the way station. If the thought
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00:20:48.119 --> 00:20:51.480
of those middle of the night calls
keeps you up at all hours, truckspy
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00:20:51.599 --> 00:20:56.359
can help. Trucks by gives managers
total visibility into what's happening on the road.
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00:20:56.359 --> 00:20:59.920
Companies use our hardware to make sure
their fleets are productive and safe,
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00:21:00.079 --> 00:21:03.960
so that managers like you can see
in real time where their trucks are and
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00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:07.200
what they're doing. More trucks make
it on time and without issues or losses,
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00:21:07.359 --> 00:21:12.440
helping you rest easy. Learn more
at trucks by DOT IO. You've
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00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:15.960
been listening to the road forward,
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you. If you want to hear
from other business owners who've seen trends come
283
00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:25.720
and go, all the while building
lasting businesses that keep America running. Make
284
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sure you're subscribed to catch more episodes. To easily find the show on your
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favorite podcast player, go to the
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keep your eyes on the road forward.