Everyone talks about shop safety. But how serious is your fleet about it?
Nobody wants accidents in their shops. Besides the physical harm they might cause, they’re also expensive in countless ways: Lost time and productivity, medical bills and workman’s compensation are just a few of the immediate costs. That’s not even considering more debilitating regulatory fines and legal costs.
By all accounts, creating a safe working environment for technicians makes good business sense. But everyone talks about safety and insists it’s a priority for their company. Is it really?
Safety is indeed a stated priority for West Brother’s Transportation Services. Ralph Clemons, vice president of safety for the Durham, N.C.-based fleet, says that while safety always has been addressed, it always wasn’t part of the company’s culture the way it is today.
It was the same story at CFI in 2000 when Bruce Stockton and Randy Cornell began to look hard at the Joplin, Mo.-based company’s safety practices. Today, the company now known as Con-way Truckload is recognized industrywide as a leader in progressive safety programs. But 10 years ago, Stockton – who now is vice president of maintenance – says the emphasis was quite different. “It was in our culture to be safe if you were a driver,” he says. “But it wasn’t in our culture to be safe if you were anybody but a driver.”
Ten years ago, the fleet was outsourcing its maintenance work but was in the process of bringing that work in-house – a perfect time to address shop safety.
“One of the things I noticed that was missing right off was any kind of awareness toward safety,” Stockton says. “It seemed like every week somebody was getting hurt. The injuries weren’t serious – primarily cut fingers and things getting in peoples’ eyes. So we talked about safety, but in reality, it was a program without any principled practice.”
Starting at the top
Changing the culture at any company is never easy. Tradition, habits and simple human nature – “We’ve always done things this way” – conspire to undermine even the most well-intentioned safety program, especially when it’s just getting started.
For those reasons, both Clemons and Stockton believe any fleet manager who is serious about putting an effective safety plan in place must have the full support of the company’s owners and upper management.
West Brother’s was serious about setting up a safety plan and did so in a rather plain-spoken manner. Clemons had the full backing of the owners at that time, Craig and Tommy West. “Our approach was very simple: We announced that we were developing a culture where our employees were simply not going to have accidents,” Clemons says. Over time, that basic philosophy has been stressed repeatedly. “Today, our technicians do their job every day just like somebody was watching them, when really nobody is. They have adopted a culture of not wanting to get hurt.”
