Lowering Insurance Rates

PTS Insurance - Miami Lakes, Florida

Interview between John Davis, Transport Safely and Corey Woinarowicz, NoCell Technologies

Video Transcript:

John - Hey, this is John Davis with Transport Safely and I'm talking to Corey from NOCELL Technologies. And tonight we're going to talk a little bit about PTS Insurance down in Miami Lakes, Florida. And talk a little bit about lowering insurance rights and that's a complicated discussion and we may have to talk about this on several videos. But what I wanna talk about tonight is a couple of different things that we offer from NOCELL or Transport Safely that can help, trucking and bus companies, lower their insurance rights. And it's really an ongoing process. And I'll talk just briefly to start us off a little bit about what insurance companies are looking for. So there Corey, they're basically looking for companies that have minimal violations.

Corey - Right

John- And minimal accidents is really what they're looking for. And for a commercial carrier there are scores on the CSA SMS website there's their loss history, all of this. And so when a motor carrier is trying to get insurance or trying to renew their insurance what the insurance company is looking for are good scores, meaning very little violations and very little accidents. Now, one of the things that I like partnering with NOCELL is they're focused on eliminating distracted driving. And that is a big area that insurance companies are looking at distracted driving violations, like cell phone and texting and holding a phone and all that are under the onsite driving basic score. If that score is high or above the intervention threshold you're more than likely going to pay more in insurance or you may not be able to get insurance because what an insurance company is looking at is, we have a lot of distracted driving violations which lead to more accidents, but they see those violations. Then they deduce, okay this carrier is a much higher risk of having an accident. And so Corey is a company's technology has a great solution to eliminate that and Corey tell the audience a little bit about what NOCELL does and basically how it would help them, eliminate those types of violations.

Corey- Okay, thanks, John. Thanks for letting me be a part of this. So NOCELL is a solution that's been in the work for five years. It's been out for about a year and a half and it's a hybrid solution. So there it's a piece of hardware that goes inside the cap an app that goes on the phone and then you have the back end portal. So you can control the app and the parameters for the driver with the policy that you're gonna get going for the driver. What it does is it, I mean, very easy. It removes the apps that caused distraction as you know listed by the Fleet Manager or the Portal Admin. And it physically removes any unauthorized apps from the phone while the vehicles in motion.

John- Okay, so the motor carrier had like dedicated dispatch apps or a mapping app or something like that. The driver could still have access to that. If those were, I think you call it white listed.

Corey- White listed yeah.

John - And so it's not like it's shutting the entire phone down but when it's a safety director and owner of motor carrier should be thinking about is it's giving more managerial control over that. So you know that they just don't have access to 100 apps that let's say let's say they have their notification set to a ding on everything. So yeah, they're driving down the road this ding Facebook, ding Instagram, ding what else? Send me a text, ding I got a voicemail ding I got an email, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding ding. Well, all of that is taking the attention away from the driver. Who's already dealing with so much on, you know watching their mirrors, their ELD, their mapping program, this and that. And I think that's, to me is one of the best benefits of NOCELL for a commercial driver is protecting the driver from the driver.

Corey - Right, protecting the driver from herself yeah. And what it does is as the driver uses the technology with the apps not physically being on the phone after a short period of time, the driver knows, hey, there's no reason to touch the phone because the social media is not there. And then my chat's not there. And you know, all these different apps are not there. So it trains them to only use the phone as your mapping or dispatch or something like that or you something that is geared towards productivity and not distraction.

John - Yeah, and as a safety and compliance person, I like to try technology, so I use your technology. And I remember the first time I was driving from Texas to Florida with it. And it was, I called you up and said I had a big a hard moment because I'm the Safety Director. And I didn't realize how much I picked up the phone and my phone is cradled but I have a smart watch that's connected to my phone. So I was getting alerts on the phone and getting alerts on my watch and all this. And it was interesting to have that ah ha moment and go, okay I didn't realize how much I was messing with the phone.

Corey - Yeah.

John - Part two of that was then, I had a 12, 14 hour drive, 12 to 14 hour drive on that trip. And so after a couple of hours, I had to as you said, retrain my brain to go, oh I can make a phone call from pushing the voice from a button on my steering wheel.

Corey - Right.

John - Oh, I can say to that Siri thing that, send my spouse a text message. So I'm not touching the phone. I wasn't handling the phone. And even to the point where, oh I need to change my directions on my GPS to find a rest area or finding it, pull over, stop and then handle that data change instead of on interstate 10, going 70 miles an hour

Corey- If a bunch of people aren't able to 100 yeah.

John - Yeah. So that was the a hard moment for me and then for the motor carriers there for owners or safety directors, my drivers will never do that. Trust me. If, you are really wanting to solve the distracted driving problem, then this is what needs to happen. It's just training. It's just training and afterwards they say, okay, this is what we're gonna do we're just here to protect you from you. And here's what we need to do on that.

Corey - Well, I mean, all it takes is one slip up right? One, five second, look at a text or whatever. And all of a sudden, you're on the guard rail, you've gone over the median, you T-boned somebody. So where like you said we're protecting the driver from themselves. And we don't--

John - It's always funny when I'm driving down the road too. If I see a truck and a trailer going rumble strip to reflect a rumble strip to reflector, hello

Corey - On the phone.

John - You're on your phone, I love you're on your phone. I mean, if I know it, the highway patrol knows it.

Corey - Right?

John - So that's something to be thinking about. And then my other point I didn't mean to interrupt you there, but is having a written cell phone policy is not gonna stop distracted driving.

Corey - No.

John - Unless the Safety Director can ride with all 200 drivers or however many drivers you have hang on hand.

Corey - Right, yeah, I mean a cell phone policy that's not enforced is more dangerous than not having a cell phone policy at all.

John - Correct, I think about that in a witness stand predict. So ladies and gentlemen, is it true Corey that you had a written cell phone policy? Yes, exhibit A here's the cell phone policy. Is it true that you did not monitor that cell phone policy and then ensure that they were staying over your phone? Well, they monitor it, they didn't get any violations. That's not--

Corey- Let's validate

John- That's not gonna work.

Corey- No

John - It's not. It's not, it's different from being in the witness stand to say do you have a written cell phone policy? Absolutely, do you enforce it? Absolutely, do you have technology that will keep them from using their electronic devices? Absolutely. How can you prove it? Well, here's the log right here. Every time they handled the phone as they dropped a pin, there you go. Absolutely that's the difference on a distracted driving case and talking to my drivers if there's any drivers that are watching this or any owners talking to your drivers I am amazed on social media whether it's TikTok or Instagram or Facebook how many drivers are doing live social media videos.

Corey - Yeah, do an 85 in a big rate, right?

John - Yeah absolutely a driver on some social media today, female driver, good driver. She's doing a live question and answer.

Corey- Wow!

John - On her social media where she's having to read the question and go, hey, Corey, thanks for the question from I want to go and I know she's doing, she's doing this as she's driving and I'm going to stop doing that.

Corey- Yeah.

John- You know, all it's gonna be is a social media alive broadcast the crash.

Corey- Right, exactly.

John - You know, so stop watching movies stop watching TV, stop watching, you know doing live broadcast it's as bad enough to, you know when they're holding their phone up, they owning, you know it's really snowy conditions. Well, don't drive in snowy conditions, holding your phone up. It's one thing to pull the video from a dash camera.

Corey - Right.

John - It's another thing to be holding up your phone give them play by play commentary as you're going down the highway. So anyway, it's crazy. So I highly encourage motor carriers to really think about their distracted driving program. And you know, what technology and you have a great saying on this, what is the saying?

Corey - We got us into this problem and technology is gonna have to get us out of this problem.

John - Absolutely, and other than taking the cell phones out of the commercial vehicle which is not gonna happen.

Corey- Not gonna happen.

John- Then you gotta have some controls and it's just having that patience and that buy-in from your drivers that you're really there to protect them. And you always say about making sure they come home to their family.

Corey - Yeah, we get up every morning to make sure the drivers get home every night.

John - Yeah, so, I mean that's important. So going back to lowering rates, that's a big deal the other thing I'll talk about real quick on violations under the Unsafe Driving, if you get a texting violation. Okay so that's a rate of 10

Corey - Right.

John - Then you're gonna get the cell phone violation for holding a cell phone. That's another 10, you'll get another violation for a rate of five per inattentive drivings' code. And one instance of holding a phone and texting. You've got 25 points, which is gonna be on your record for 24 months,

Corey - Yeah, two years.

John - There's two insurance renewals, which means that you're gonna have to deal with whatever that cost is.

Corey - Sure.

John- You've fired, the driver is gone. Two years.

Corey - Two years the company has to engage. And the insurance companies wanna see that you're taking proactive steps. So this happened, right. We can't do anything about what already happened but we can do something about, so that doesn't happen again.

John - Correct, correct. And that's the whole proactive approach to this is, you know, and I see so many times with a commercial motor carrier that their entire training and safety program is reactive. When was the last time you had a safety meeting? Well, I had a meeting with a driver that got a violation. No, let's say all the fable, the ambulance and the Valley versus the fence on the cliff that just does it work with the insurance companies anymore? It just doesn't, you know they want you to have no violations, they want you to have no accidents they don't wanna deal with any of that stuff. And then the motor carriers that have, you know their scores under the threshold of their accident, rate. As real low they're golden, you know, they got low rates the insurance companies are loving them the courting them they're fighting over them. But if you're over the intervention threshold, and most of my motor carriers are over on hours of service and vehicle maintenance and then driver fitness. So, and if you're over the Unsafe Driving forget it because they, they attribute that to you leading to having more accidents. Anyway, I think going segue into that, a little bit about what we do we work with Corey in insurance agencies. And so we were trying to help a select group of insurance agencies help their clients by lowering their cost. That's really what we're trying to accomplish with all this. So, with us it's a training and as compliance and as driver recruiting but all of that still segues into NOCELL. So if you're a motor carrier that buys NOCELL then you'd wanna get a Transport Safely involved to help with the training and all that to develop the safety program

Corey - They work hand in hand, they're very complimentary to each other, one leads to the other one. And as a pair, they help the company being a better position for insurability.

John - There's several other vendors that offer training. So one of the things that is unique with us is like one of the big training vendors, they have online training. So they sell to motor carriers and say, hey, we have this great online video library of 800 videos. The problem is as we talked with Safety Director after safety director at the safety director that uses that program and they go haven't done any safety training, no we don't do any of that. I bought it, but I don't use it. And the issue is this it's overwhelming to them. There's 800 videos on there, what the heck am I supposed to tell my driver to take? Am I supposed to have them do this? And the other problem is with the drivers. I don't wanna do this.

Corey - No,

John - Am I getting paid for this? Are you feeding me for this? Nah, nah, not doing it. So we took a different approach and you know like I have a motor carrier, 203 trucks tomorrow. And so we're doing custom program doing, shooting up, pre-trip inspecting video on one of their trucks we're doing a training video for their dispatcher. So they can work better with the drivers on checking on their health and their safety and their no distractions, working with their maintenance personnel and developing training to be a check and balance on the safety line versus the pre-trip inspection. I am on the border of Mexico The border is four miles that way the majority of our drivers at this company do not speak English as their first language. So that's all in Spanish, you know, and that's imperative that they learn better in their own language. So got a lot going on there.

Corey - Yeah, absolutely.

John - So the other thing I wanna mention we have a new driver recruiting website and the idea there is trying to get pre-qualified drivers to motor carriers. You and I talked about this recently

Corey- Yeah great service.

John - Just I talked to most of the motor carriers. I go, how do you attract drivers Craigslist, Indeed.

Corey - And a sign on the back of the truck.

John - And yeah, that on the back of the truck. So having those ads with the other thousand motor carriers and to give you an idea. So I'm down in the Rio Grande Valley and 50 miles from where I'm sitting here in this little house that I'm renting our 2022 motor carriers with active authority, 50 miles. Okay, so they're all on the same Craigslist. They're all the same Indeed. And so you're putting that ad out there. You get, all of these applications are all over the place. They're not really applications are just hey, I saw your ad on Craigslist I wanna be a driver. Versus what we're doing is the drivers are filling out a commercial driver application and we're pre-qualifying them before they actually go to the motor carrier. So it's a lot different experience on that that we're hoping that with the motor carriers, at least a good selection of them again, I think you and I talked about in Texas there's over 26,000 active motor carriers. Well, it gets diluted again with all 26,000 in there, but how about 26,000?

Corey - What do have in Florida, how many in Florida?

John - 12,000. So, and that's yeah, our home base is in Florida. And so when you have that, it just turns out to be noise. It's just, like you said, the sign on the back of the trailer while they're going down the road. Oh, great home time, great benefits, great this, great that, call 1-800 and talk to our recruiter, they're not gonna do that.

Corey - Talk to 300 so you can find one.

John - Yeah, they're not gonna do that. So, the idea on the CDL Hiring is to get them with a good commercial driver application and then have good matching skills that said, okay I need a motor carrier is doing an ad for a flatbed. It's not easy to take a dry van driver and make him a flat bed driver. You can make a flatbed driver, a drive van driver but even driving into reefer has this difference. I mean, you have to have a different mindset as a reefer driver because of speed. You gotta get the frozen food from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible. Flatbed is more keeping the goods secure and dry and drive van is just keeping going all of that is a full-time job.

Corey - It's all a great bundle though, for select or for insurance brokers and carriers that we're talking to. Carrier or make their motor vehicles, the commercial vehicles more insurable and less risk.

John - Well, and you got a good point and I'm glad you brought that up because the insurance agencies that we're working with are insurance agencies that really want to be different.

Corey - Correct.

John - There are many many trucking and bus insurance agencies. I can oh yeah, I can get you a policy. Sure, I can get you a policy, sure, I can get you a policy, but I have only found a couple and we're only operating you're operating nationwide. We're really just operating in the Southeast. But we have found two insurance agencies that are really taking their client's best interests at heart. Meaning that motor carrier you have a conditional rating, come to us. We are people that can fix that. You have high rates on your CSA scores, come to us. We can have people work on that. You have numerous accidents, come to us we can work on that. It's not a guarantee that they can put fairy dust on you and get a better rate year one, year two more than likely, year three definitely year four. Most definitely, and it's a process. You can't come to us as a train wreck and then expect a different insurance rate. And I see that with motor carriers go, oh I'm shopping this agent to this agent that this agent folks, these agents go to the same insurance companies in Texas and Florida. There's only a handful in both States and South Florida, there's only a couple. And in parts of Texas, there's only a couple. So you can go to a hundred different insurance agents and--

Corey - They're making the same block

John - Name to insurance companies and get you the rate. The difference with the insurance agencies that we work with is they want to fix your problem. And they have the ability they've worked with us for years now that they had the ability to I can say, this is what's going on with the motor carrier. Here's what we're doing to fix it. Write a letter on that insurance agent's behalf to send up to the insurance company to give them a more favorable rate or at least a favorable light to get them on the right track versus yeah, we just sell insurance.

Corey - Yeah, now the guys that we work with, the companies that we work with go the extra mile, they do the homework, they do everything that you're supposed to do. Do you mean the elite company to get these guys to, I mean the investments that they're making are gonna pay off second year, third year, fourth year, for sure.

John - Right, but the thing that they have to do the motor carriers I'm talking about is you got to start, and the number one thing that I notice is they don't have time. I've talked to the Safety Directors down here in the Rio Grande Valley and Miami. And I go, when was the last time you updated your handbook or had a safety meeting or this dude I don't have time for that. Well, your insurance company don't wanna hear that. So you got a choice, you either do it and make the time or develop the resources or you hire us, you know no selling us Transport Safely to handle that for you and make a custom program. Even with your stuff, even though your technology works one way, there's custom ways of doing that depending on, okay we got a set of bad drivers. We can use the NOCELL technology to lock it down. So you can go back to the insurance company oh, I got that dude locked down now. Don't worry about him on a cell phone anymore he has locked. Even if he has a rouge device in the vehicle I'll know about it.

Corey - And I think we'll talk a little about it.

John - And then you can put them on probation and not fire them. I mean, look what it costs to hire a driver now or even get a driver back to the Craigslist and the Indeed ad. So salvage a driver get them with that program. And then on my program is, okay we need to do some defensive driving. We need to do this, or how to actually do disciplinary a program, whether it's training your safety director, training the manager, training the drivers, training, whatever we do that. And I think with these insurance agencies that we're working with that's something the motor carrier should think about when they're out shopping for an insurance agent. I can tell you how it worked live both of these insurance agencies, the one in Miami Lakes and the one in Pharr, Texas I've worked one with Pharr for 10 years. And the one in Miami Lakes for almost the same amount. So I mean, I can vouch for these guys.

Corey - Absolutely.

John - Yeah, so I mean, again what are you getting out of your insurance agent? If you gotta the other thing I always is interesting with insurance. Well, we have an in-house safety person. Okay, ex-DOT probably. Well, what did they know about insurance companies and what an insurance company is looking for to actually reduce the insurance cost? They may can tell you how regulation 363.63, subsection one, subsection a, this, this and this. I can look up any regulation. I look them up all the time but what I do of programs and working with you and working with programs is, well your insurance company, doesn't like because you have these five violations here. I'll eliminate that whether it's ELD or the cell phones or vehicle maintenance and stuff like that we got to show them proactive work that we're doing.

Corey - Absolutely.

John - Anyway, I appreciate you talking with me tonight.

Corey- Thanks John.

John - We covered a lot I'm gonna include a transcript on this. And so people wanna download that, they can have that. And and I'll put in the links for NOCELL, Transport Safely and I'm also gonna put in the links for the insurance agencies that we highly recommend and I encourage you to reach out to them. And if you're a motor carrier and you reach out to one of these insurance agencies you tell them John Davis and Corey sent you there. Then that way they'll know that you're serious about fixing your program or improving your program. Anyway, I appreciate the time tonight and I will get us out of here.

Corey - All right, thanks John.

John - Thanks.