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Name: Hogan Transports Location: St. Louis, MO Actively manages driver fatigue during overnight operations and uses a monthly meeting of top management to identify safety challenges and brainstorm solutions. Committee meetings typically cover what’s happened in the previous month – significant accidents, cargo claims, stolen equipment or cargo, workers’ comp experience, roadside inspections and reports of internal and third- party safety observations. The sessions are data intensive; charts and graphs abound. Managers look both for long- term trends and sudden, unexpected problems. The committee develops new programs and drives changes in policy and approach. Managers wanted to enhance Hogan’s efforts to identify and correct bad habits before an accident happened, so the committee adopted the Hogan Observation Safety Team. Under the HOST program, a select group of drivers observes peers’ safety behavior – such as speed, following distance, signaling or maintaining three points of contact when entering or exiting a truck – and coaches them on proper technique. Hogan uses the information HOST drivers collect to track critical safety behaviors but not for discipline or enforcement purposes. The safety of the driver, truck and load take precedence over schedule.This “safety first” attitude also drives Hogan’s most unusual initiative: A system for managing driver fatigue. “Fatigue has always been an issue, but the industry didn’t always recognize it in those terms,” Lansing says. The management safety committee discussed possible solutions. “Finally, it was [President] David Hogan who said that in order to continue to improve the safety of our drivers and the motoring public it was best to take the decision out of the driver’s hands,” Lansing says. So the committee decided to hire a fatigue supervisor to keep tabs on drivers who drove during late night hours. He would have authority, if necessary, to order a driver to shut down and rest. |
