AvatarFleet's Transportation Blog

Alfred E. Neuman & COVID-19

MAD Magazine came out in 1952 and, for the next 57 years, successfully lampooned just about everyone and everything in the world. The magazine’s carto...

Professional Driver Safety is a Way of Life

Brian Fielkow wrote a terrific article on the rising cost of liability insurance and the negative impact it’s having on the trucking industry. Fielkow...

Tax Credit for CDL Training Expenses

Finally, a tax break for the trucking industry! This is big. Unlike the old joke that begins with, “Hi I’m from the government and I’m here to help yo...

AvatarFleet President Scott Featured in FreightWaves Video

Why Should You Care About Driver Retention? | AvatarFleet

Mark your calendars: The OTA Annual Conference, held by the Ohio Trucking Association and the Ohio Association of Movers, is taking place September 16...

How to Influence Your Drivers to Stay

One of our clients was telling us a story that we hear a version of all the time. This particular story was about a top performing driver named Nancy....

Prevent Distracted Driving and Save More Lives

Summer is here and with so much sunshine, driving has suddenly become enjoyable. The grey skies and wintery conditions are gone. Everyone is rolling d...

Why Is Driver Turnover So High?

Follow the Data Last month, I read an interesting article in the NATMI monthly newsletter. It was written back in September 2018 by Stephen V. Burks a...

Truck Driver Shortage Argument R.I.P. | AvatarFleet

Well it’s finally happened. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics just published a lengthy report suggesting that there is no evidence of a driver sh...

Restaurants and Driver Retention

What if you ran your trucking company like a restaurant? What if you treated your drivers like customers? Sound like a strange comparison? Maybe, but ...

Truck Drivers Stop The Insanity! | AvatarFleet

I apologize if this title is politically incorrect. However, it comes from none other than Albert Einstein who defined insanity as “doing the same thi...

Safety Leadership: Can Do / Will Do

Safety Leadership: Behaviorism

How to Prevent Accidents at Your Terminal

At AvatarFleet, we love safe drivers. That’s why we always have our ear to the ground when it comes to accident data. It’s also why we hate to see FMC...

Safety Leadership: Management and Safety

Safety Leadership: Norms and Safety

Safety Leadership: Rules and Safety

This is a continuation of our blog series on Safety Leadership. In the last article, we explained Avatar’s five-step risk management model and said mo...

Safety Leadership: The Risk Management Model

This is a continuation of our blog series on Safety Leadership. In the first blog, we defined safety as “Freedom from risk.” And, based on that defini...

Safety Leadership: What We Can Learn From Accidents

Safety Leadership: You Break It, You Buy It

Safety Leadership: Getting Started

For several months my team has been asking me to write an ebook on Safety Leadership. At first, this would seem to be an easy task. After all, we’ve c...

How to Choose a Driver Training Program: Typical Challenges

This article serves as Part 3 of 3 in a series on Choosing a Driver Training Program

How to Choose a Driver Training Program: Desired Outcomes

This article serves as Part 2 of 3 in a series on Choosing a Driver Training Program

How to Choose a Driver Training Program: Learning Domains

This article serves as Part 1 of 3 in a series on Choosing a Driver Training Program

Creating a Career Path for Drivers: Why It's Important

Distracted Driving - Why I Chose to Die | AvatarFleet

Online Driver Safety Training: What You Need to Know

If you want quality, outcome-based online driver safety training, you need to understand what goes into creating a successful design. It’s all about y...

What is Defensive Driving? And How We Teach It

During the past 27 years we've developed professional driver education and training for dozens of leading transportation companies. Most of the curric...

What is Behind-the-Wheel Training?

The Annual CVSA International Roadcheck: June 5-7, 2018

Bad Bosses Cause Driver Turnover

Being "Better" In Trucking Means Change

Broken Windows and Driver Safety

In 1993, Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor of New York City based, in part, on a “get-tough-on-crime” platform. Although he was a controversial characte...

Similarities Between Marriage and Truck Safety | AvatarFleet

Are you married? Odds are, yes. Currently in America, 52 percent of all adults are married. That means at least 121,600,505 of them chose to say “I do...

Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers And Truck Safety

AvatarFleet exists to make the world a safer place. It’s in our DNA. It’s the fire in our belly when we come to work each morning. But what does it me...

Safety Requires Insurance

You will never be 100% safe at your company. It’s a harsh thing to say, but it is a fact of life. Even if you have the best safety team in the world, ...

Keep Your Drivers Without Breaking Routine

Truck driver retention continues to be one of the biggest challenges you face on a day to day basis. If you have read our other blogs on retention, yo...

Trucking Accidents What Are They & How To Prevent Them

There are too many trucking accidents out on the road. According to the most recent data from the FMSCA, there were 97,000 truck/bus injury collisions...

Truck Driver Training

Is truck driver training old school? Is it no longer relevant in 2017? Hardly, but some trucking companies seem to treat it that way. In the never-end...

Truck Driving Is Dangerous, Learn How To Decrease The Risk

The National Safety Council recently issued a report that traffic fatalities were up 9 percent in the first half of last year. The numbers show nearly...

Stopping Driver Turnover During The First Six Months 

Most of the trucking companies we work with have a solid core of veteran drivers who have been with them for years, but almost everyone seems to suffe...

Driver Turnover: Death by a Thousand Cuts 

The trucking industry has struggled with excessive driver turnover for years and has made very little progress solving the problem, but everyone is lo...

Driver Retention and Communication 

Excessive driver turnover has nagged the trucking industry for decades. There are several reasons retention proves challenging, but some of these are ...

The High Cost of Driver Turnover

Andy wanted to spend more on driver retention, but first he had to justify the extra spending to his uncle, so he decided to do a study on the high co...

What Is Driver Turnover? And How to Avoid It | AvatarFleet

Our recent webinar with the Ohio Trucking Association discussing driver retention has had a lot of people asking us just what is driver turnover and w...

The Top Ten Reasons Why Drivers Quit and How To Fix It 

The Ohio Trucking Association recently asked us to present our research findings on the Top Ten Reasons Drivers Quit and How to Fix It. Our blog forma...

Improve Truck Driver Recruiting & Retention | AvatarFleet

Truck Driver Retention Strategies   

Andy started in operations his family’s trucking business right out of school, but he was quickly promoted to Director of Recruiting and Retention. Hi...

The Real Job Title of Safety Director: Director of Impossible 

Mark had enjoyed a meteoric career, quickly rising through the ranks of terminal operations. He’d set records for productivity, load average and on-ti...

What To Do About Increasing Truck Driver Turnover Rates 

A recent CCJ Article featuring the results from the MarketPulse Survey confirms what we already know: truck driver turnover rates rank as the industry...

Truck Driver Training Saves Lives 

We’re passionate about driver safety. We live to reduce the frequency of accidents and injuries for our client trucking companies. That’s why we produ...

The Answer to the Driver Problem (Shortage) 

Is it Otto, or Auto?

The Best Time To Prevent a Driving Accident 

Have you ever wondered when is the best time to discuss an accident? I wanted to do just that a number of years ago. I wanted to dig into the details ...

Don't Be A Victim of Safety Fatigue

There is such a thing as "safety fatigue".

Truck Driver Shortage: Fact or Myth?

You’ve seen the headlines since deregulation in 1980 about the truck driver shortage in America: it’s bad and getting worse.

The Safety Professional’s Paradox: Rules Versus Risk 

We have written extensively on safety and risk management, and the impotence of federal regulations on highway safety. You read that right: impotence,...

Reduce New Hire Driver Turnover By Setting Expectations 

I was waiting for a flight at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport the other day, when I decided to take a pre-emptive strike at the restroom. The airport was bu...

How To Increase Driver Pay Without Paying More Cents Per Mile

This blog post was updated on May 26, 2021.

Vetting Professional Drivers in 2016

Here at AvatarFleet, we’ve often wondered how Uber and Lyft were allowed to come into existence. We’re not quite sure how they have thus far escaped t...

Are Truck Drivers Really Different?

Would you drive a truck for your fleet?

GOOD INTENTIONS - WRONG ASSUMPTION

The Truck Safety Coalition is arguing against the current transportation bill that would eliminate an ancient old rule that has been outdated for deca...

Truck Driving Would be a Great Job if You Got Paid

Truck Driving Would be a Great Job if You Got Paid Fleet Owner

BUILD A SUCCESSFUL TEAM IN TRUCKING

What an incredible article in Wired Magazine on the right way to build a successful team. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-google/

Young Drivers Wanted | ATA Working to Change Age Requirements

Once again, we see the trucking industry, through its chief lobbyist, the American Trucking Associations (ATA), attempt to influence the federal gover...

RISK OF DEATH DOESN’T SEEM TO FAZE TODAY'S DRIVERS LEARN WHY

Fleet Owner

There Are Still Self-disciplined Millennials | AvatarFleet

A talented safety professional and friend of mine, David Guess, posted an article on this month’s NATMI newsletter. He’s a smart guy, good writer, Exe...

Safety begins and ends with leadership

SOMEONE GETS IT! Safety begins and ends with leadership.

Prevent tragedies by reducing or eliminating risk

Common sense might just be another term for regulations. Instead, the transportation industry could prevent tragedies by reducing or eliminating risk....

Swift Kick in the Pants, Class Action Lawsuit | AvatarFleet

Swift Transportation has agreed to pay $4.4 million to settle a federal driver class action lawsuit over claims it failed to inform prospective driver...

Distracted Driving PSA From A Crash Victim | AvatarFleet

Last week, I celebrated my 24th anniversary of surviving a near fatal head on collision. I suppose I could feel sorry for myself, but instead, I treat...

TCA Annual Convention Wrap-up 2014 | AvatarFleet

In partnership with Benesch, Attorneys At Law, we recently presented, “How to Stay Legal & Avoid Risky Drivers,” at the National Truckload Carrier...

Do CSA Scores Matter? Shippers Say They Do! | AvatarFleet

CSA scores DO matter.

Highway Safety: Are We Winning the Battle?

Highway safety is improving-- or is it?

Driver Shortage: Is It the Number One Problem?

Driver shortage, turnover, churn, and the heavy hand of the government with programs like CSA and HOS were conspicuous topics at this year’s ATA Confe...

Getting A Positive Return On Driver Training

This month, CRST announced that in addition to its biggest increase in driver pay ever, it’s also spending $25 million to train drivers. That’s a huge...

Superior Selection or Excellent OTR Training?

Do you build a high performing team through superior selection or excellent OTR training? Remember the old proverb: you can teach a squirrel to fly bu...

Best Professional Driving Course Ever Conceived

Professional Safe Driver Course

Fantasy Football Parallels Driver Selection

What can you learn about driver selection and CSA from fantasy football?

Final Ruling on HOS Challenges

The United States Court of Appeals ruled today that the new HOS rules will stand, with one very inconsequential exception. Short haul drivers do not h...

Don't Fall Victim to Zombie Recruiting

Strengthen Your On-line Presence to Win the Driver Recruiting Game: Part 2

In our last Blog, we discussed how bemoaning the circumstances arrayed against the trucking community is not very productive. What is productive is co...

Strengthen Your Online Presence to Win Driver Recruiting

Actions that the government takes in the interest of trucking safety (CSA, HOS) seem (and often are) incomprehensible, counter-intuitive and, well, cr...

How Not To Treat Truck Driving Customers | AvatarFleet

Despite the general craziness of the world we live in, it’s always seemed that there are some givens.

Ten Safety Lessons #7: Treat Distracted Driving As a Canary in the Coal Mine

Hot topics in transportation rise and fall. One of the hottest issues for trucking companies today is how they deal with distracted driving. Distracte...

Ten Safety Lessons: #5 Understand Risk Compensation

In 1982 John Adams of University College, London, published a paper called The Efficacy of Seatbelt Legislation: A Comparative Study of Road Accident ...

Ten Safety Lessons: #4 Hire the Right Drivers

Safety pioneer H.W. Heinrich introduced his domino theory of accident causation in 1932 in his breakthrough paper, Industrial Accident Prevention. The...

Ten Safety Lessons: #3 Install a Safety Resource Center

You need a place for all things safety. This home makes it clear that you are serious about the durability of the safety initiative. It’s a process no...

Ten Safety Lessons: #2 Post No Bills

In the old days, a big part of communication was via posters. That’s how Billboard, the company that ranks top music hits in a plethora of categories,...

Ten Safety Lessons For The Trucking Industry

1. Be Solid, Look Solid Let’s say that a group of investors and entrepreneurs opened a bank on a busy street corner but rather than a stately, columne...

What’s Really Going On In The Trucking Business? | AvatarFleet

Change blindness is an amazing phenomenon that demonstrates our perceptual limitations. It refers to incidents in which people fail to notice seemingl...

CSA: Promises to Keep and Miles To Go

In our 2010 White Paper, The Perversion of Safety in the Transportation Industry, we shared a model for how government intervention causes negative ef...

Roadside Checks: One Down, One To Go

As we predicted in our post below, government roadside checks took a toll on busing companies. "Earlier this month, FMCSA and its state and local law ...

Spring: Roadside Inspection Season Blossoms

It’s Spring. And along with the colorful blooming of azaleas and rhododendrons, it’s that time of year for roadside commercial vehicle inspections to ...

Doubt Cast On Regulator's Effectiveness in Cutting Accidents

We’ve asserted all along that regulations have little if any impact on the frequency of accidents in the transportation sector. Now, researchers at We...

Tax Day Causes More Driving Accidents! | AvatarFleet

You've heard the Kinks song: "The tax mans taken all my dough And left me in my stately home Lazing on a sunny afternoon"

50,000 Motor Carriers Get CSA Warnings...And Counting

When we wrote our White Paper, "CSA 2010: Pain and Suffering", in Summer, 2010, little did we know how predictive it would be.

Fleets Boost Retention Efforts

The age-old driver shortage has once again become a spotlight issue for the industry. Experts, and others purporting to be experts, are ramping up the...