The SmartDrive system was established with driver’s safety in mind. We are working to ensure that we are one of the safest carriers on our nation’s highways and we are doing everything possible to ensure that you get home safe to your families. This system helps to identify and eliminate the riskiest driving behaviors that lead to collisions. It also helps to exonerate our drivers and protect them when they are not at fault.
With that said, every system is not perfect and can be improved upon. In March we added SmartDrive to the bonus structure, which brought a lot of feedback to light. We heard your feedback and have identified several areas that we feel assigned points on events that do not increase your risk. Because of your feedback, we have adjusted the scoring to zero on several events and lowered many others effective immediately. We feel these changes will allow us to truly focus on the riskiest behaviors while still helping to keep our drivers safe.
We want to be as transparent as possible with you, so we have attached the scoring changes for each event as well as the SmartDrive definitions. You will also see an example of how SmartDrive works- which can be difficult to understand at times, however we wanted you to be aware.
We have also raised a few events, as you can see, to meet the coaching threshold of 150 points. Remember, just because the alert goes off, does not mean you will automatically receive points. Each of these events will be reviewed and allow us the opportunity to remove points if necessary. There are times that points are assigned that you may disagree with. We have decided to establish an unbiased review board consisting of drivers and safety, to contest any points you don’t believe you should have received in an event. Finally, we do not plan on lowering the target further from 75. We believe this is an obtainable number (shown by the high number already obtaining before this additional adjustments) and this is a good number the shows the efforts made to decrease your risk. All of these points changes are in effect now. A second component of the performance bonus that we will be changing is separating the 3 components as independent. The only gatekeeper will be accidents or incidents. Other than that you can earn any combination of the 3 components. These are payable as $.03 SmartDrive, $.02 On-time, $.01 fuel efficiency. We are working with the IT department to see how soon these changes can be programmed in and will let you know when effective
We will continue to work as a company to advocate for you as drivers and focus not only on your safety but making this a great place to work.
Brian Hall, Chief Executive Officer
