Why You Should Get DOT Compliance Software

You run a trucking company the best that you can. You’ve hired and trained qualified safety personnel to deal with DOT regulations and nonsense. You take every precaution to ensure you’ve done everything in your power to be DOT compliant. So, why should you bother getting DOT compliance software?

Humans Tend to Make Mistakes

The answer is actually quite simple. Your safety people, while perfectly nice and capable, are only human and humans tend to make a mistake eventually. It’s the nature of all things run by people. A document slips between the cracks or a date is entered wrong. It’s nobody’s fault; it just happens.

Accidents happen, and that’s why we have insurance for everything – our cars, our homes, ourselves. It’s better to pay a little bit to be covered in case of an accident or slip up. That’s exactly what DOT compliance software is. It’s insurance against the possible wrath of a DOT auditor. Compliance software is an extra level of defense that arms your safety team with an extra weapon to safeguard against inadvertent errors that get you slapped with unwanted fines.

But maybe that’s not enough to convince you. You have your way of doing things that have worked so far. Maybe it doesn’t seem necessary to put in the investment and effort to incorporate this kind of system into your process. You should ask yourself: Can our record maintenance system be more organized? More readily accessible? More user-friendly? Of course, it can. Compliance software is not a one trick pony; it has practical value beyond just keeping the DOT off of your back.

Weird situations come up all the time that require your safety manager to pull old records or double-check something. Chances are your safety manager is a busy person with plenty of other to do each day. Compliance software saves time and effort because everything is a few keystrokes and clicks away. No poring over spreadsheets or digging through filing cabinets for a half hour to find one MVR or permit. Your safety manager can appreciate not having to do that anymore, I’m sure.

Built-In Out-Of-Compliance Alerts

Beyond that, there are other practical uses as well. Most compliance software, like AvatarFleet’s A-Suite Comply, has an alert system in place to let you know when a document is expiring or missing. Not only will you never have to remember an expiration date again, but even if you run that document and forget about it, the system will always remind you that something still needs to be done about that document. It covers your safety team for the one document out of a thousand that they don’t remember to run that day or the new hire didn’t fill out. That’s a nice peace of mind to have even for the best safety team on the planet.

The most practical of use for compliance software, however, is that nothing can ever go missing. Once a record is scanned and put in the system, it’s there forever. It can’t be misplaced or accidentally shredded. No matter what happens, those records will always be there where you put them. You can’t say that about most things you do, whether it’s your car keys or a file.

Integrate with Your Hiring Process

An added bonus for having compliance software is that you can seamlessly integrate it into your hiring process. That’s the way A-Suite Recruit works with A-Suite Comply; all the application and pre-hire materials get handled electronically and then they are imported to the compliance system if that driver is hired. Just another way that compliance software can save you some time and money, and from having to buy so much paper for the printer as well.

By now, you may have realized that it’s not a question of if DOT compliance software is worth it, but if you want your life and your safety team’s lives to get easier and less stressful. If you’re interested in DOT compliance software, be sure to check out AvatarFleet’s to see if it’s a good fit for your company.