The Secret to Driving 1 Million Safe Miles

Welcome to Driving What Matters! This monthly newsletter will share tips, insights, articles and more related to navigating today’s complex foodservice supply chain environment.

If you’re unfamiliar with National DCP, please allow us to introduce ourselves. We are a global provider of innovative supply chain solutions for the foodservice industry, currently serving over 10,000 quick service restaurants in the U.S. and distributing products to more than 40 countries. Our company’s expertise includes strategic sourcing of food and non-food items, distribution, manufacturing, business services, supply chain and full visibility, traceability, continuity, and sustainability of supply. You can learn more about us by?clicking here.

In this edition, we get exclusive insight from an accomplished National DCP truck driver about how to safely operate an 18-wheeler and ultimately achieve 1 million safe miles without a preventable accident.

Thanks for your interest and we hope you enjoy this newsletter!

The Secret to Driving 1 Million Safe Miles

Today, virtually everything you see, everything you touch, and everything you use was, at some point, moved by truck. If you bought it, a truck driver brought it.

Truck driving is more than a job – it’s a lifestyle. It requires self-discipline, constant focus, and a keen ability to adapt to new situations. It demands an in-depth understanding of your rig, taking pride in your equipment, and ultimately making the truck your home away from home.

But, truck driving is considered one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States.

According to GPS Insights’ 2022 Fleet Safety Report, there are approximately 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S., and there are an estimated 500,000 truck crashes every year. That averages seven crashes per truck driver annually.

Between long hours, isolation, inadequate rest periods, larger blind spots, and many more challenging factors, the opportunities seem endless for accidents to happens. The truth is – most of these accidents are preventable.

Just ask National DCP Driver Paul Piper. In his 37-year career, Paul has driven a total of 1,137,835 safe miles without a preventable accident. He spent several years driving the overnight route from Bellingham, MA to Caribou, ME, just a few miles from the Canadian border, during short summers and long and snowy winters – so doing so accident-free is an amazing accomplishment. And NDCP wasn’t the only one to recognize this feat. The National Safety Council honored Paul with the 2022 Joseph M. Kaplan Safe Driver of the Year award for New England. A well-deserved honor!

We sat down with the 2022 Safe Driver of the Year to learn more about how this milestone can be achievable for all drivers on the road. Check out the Q&A to learn more!

Q: What are the top safety challenges you experience as a truck driver?

A: Driving a truck of this caliber comes with countless hazards, whether it be environmental, mechanical, physical or mental. Spending hours on the road is typically coupled with driver fatigue, leading to distractions and losing focus on your surroundings. This is where accidents most commonly happen. Other common safety challenges include weather conditions such as rain, fog, snow, or ice that reduce visibility and affect vehicle control, lifting heavy loads causing physical damage to the driver, maintaining a secure following distance to ensure your vehicle has enough time to slow down on a moment’s notice, and larger blind spots when switching lanes or backing up. All these challenges amplify when you are driving narrow roads or through busy cities that call for tighter turns, heavy traffic and smaller parking lots.

Q: Do you believe most truck driving accidents are preventable?

A: I believe this is an accurate statement, but of course there are the exceptions. The bottom line is, every time you get behind the wheel as a professional truck driver, it is critical you methodically think through every move you are making. It sounds simple, but that alone can make the difference.

Eighty percent of NDCP truck accidents occur in parking lots or slow-moving incidents. Simple fixes such as double check your mirrors and blind spots, creating a enter/exit strategy in each Dunkin’ parking lot, or altering your route to make a right turn into the store rather than left turn across traffic are just a few examples of preventative measures that will continue to increase our safety scores.

The road, other drivers, weather, and so on can throw you unexpected challenges. However, you must stay true to your training, your knowledge, your instinct and your ability to stay calm. It’s easier said than done, but that is what separates good drivers from the exceptional drivers.

Q: Being on the road for as many years as you have, what is the most common mistake you see professional drivers make?

A: I would say the most common mistake in this industry is driver complacency. With complacency comes distraction, and the driver loses focus of his or her surroundings and the potential hazards that could lead to an accident – backing into an object, improper lane change, etc. I believe the most common type of accident is on backwards miles because being complacent can result in skipping the basic driver training steps.

It is easy to gain this mindset, especially when you have been on the road for over three decades, but you can never fool yourself into thinking you’ve mastered this profession.

Q: What would be your advice to other drivers in your field to achieve 1 million safe miles?

A: I won’t pretend to have all the answers, but my humble opinion is this job must be a lifestyle. You have to be committed to better, even on your off days. Driver fitness is key to being successful and safe. This means staying refreshed on training, getting adamant rest prior to shifts, and assessing your head space to make rational, logical decisions. If you’re not personally in a position to be behind the wheel, it will show professionally.

Backing into a parking lot to unload product takes patience, strategy, and focus, but to do so during a Dunkin’ morning rush where people are caffeine deficient – well, that takes bravery.

Committed to Safety

There are always new and improved safety solutions being rolled out, and it is important to investigate those while also sticking to the basic safety measures.

At NDCP, our key solutions encompass continuous defensive driver training, annual in-cab coaching, 360-view cameras, electronic log devices, pre-and post-trip inspections, air disk brakes, and individual driver scoring. Efforts include:

• Defensive driving training and in-cab coaching are continuous throughout drivers’ employment at the organization to keep safety top of mind, offer refreshers, or introduce new technology. These trainings are mandatory minimum once a year depending on your driving data.
• To hold your drivers accountable, you need to know what’s happening behind the wheel. Electronic log devices monitor hours of service to prevent driver fatigue and track driver behavior telematics such as hard breaking, speeding, and seatbelt detection to spot areas of improvement and create a training to specific to that driver’s weaknesses. All that information is tracked on a dashboard that our Transportation Managers and Supervisors have access to.
• 360 Omnivue Surround View camera system results in NO blind spots for Commercial Motor Vehicles, reducing collisions, financial risk, personal injury and ultimately saves lives. This has been a game changer for both the drivers and the organization to capture video evidence of any incidents on the road and understanding how or why it occurred.
• Pre-and post-trip inspections are essential for spotting your equipment's defects before they threaten your safety. These inspections are so important that federal regulations require you to perform at least one every day and record the inspection.
• Fleet air disc brakes on our trucks allow a much shorter stopping distance and limits brake fade, unlike the standard drum brakes. If traveling at highway speed, an 18-wheeler takes the length of a football field to come to a complete stop.
• With the help of a third-party workplace safety vendor, JJ Keller, NDCP created an individual driver safety score database that records all information for every single driver in our system. All their individualized telematic behaviors captured in the electronic log are pulled into separate reports, which then provides them a safety score.

Specific to NDCP, continuing to implement and practice these safety measures has statistically shown major advantages in our safety numbers. We track safety statistics in two ways – the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Recordable Accident report and NDCP’s in-house operations safety scorecard.

According to the DOT recordable, NDCP has seen a reduction in accidents over the last four years. At the end of 2022, for every 1 million miles, we had 0.1915 DOT Recordable accidents.?This is well below the National Private Fleet Average of 0.504 DOT Recordable accidents.

Based on the NDCP safety scorecard, which is a much more in-depth analysis of traffic accidents, we saw an 11% reduction of preventable accidents from 2021 to 2022. We have continued to reduce this year over year since 2018.

Numbers don’t lie, our safety strategy for transportation is working. But until we achieve 0 accidents, we can’t rest. The more we emphasize a company-wide safety culture and continue to invest in training, and new technologies, the safer we can keep our employees, our communities, and our customers.

So how do you prioritize safety in your fleet? We would love to hear from you!

Call To Action: Curious to learn more about National DCP or foodservice supply chain best practices? Visit?https://nationaldcp.com/.