Trucking companies worry daily about mitigating risks their company, from potential fuel fraud to nuclear verdicts and beyond. And right now, in the height of summer, yet another concern is the literal hot topic that is extreme temperatures.
Temperatures above 90 degrees were reported across the U.S. Monday, some reaching above 100 degrees, according to data from The Weather Channel. While those temperatures may not be unusual for this time of year, they’re lasting for longer stretches of time, posing greater risks to trucking companies and their most valuable assets: drivers… and trucks.
“In recent years, trucking companies across the United States have really been faced with unprecedented challenges due to these heat waves,” said Stephen White, assistant vice president of business development at Geotab. “It seems like every summer, we keep talking about warmer and warmer weeks or months throughout the summer months across the United States, and it's east and west, north and south. Climate change continues to push temperatures to record highs; seems like every time you turn around, there's a new record high in some state the last couple of weeks.”
With an already aging and crumbling infrastructure, heat waves across the country are causing roads and bridges to buckle and lanes to close, which could result in damages to trucks at best and accidents harmful to drivers and others at worst, while also delaying shipments. The heat is affecting drivers’ health beyond potential accidents. Drivers are experiencing heat exhaustion and fatigue, affecting their cognitive function and resulting in slower response times.
All these issues affect a company’s bottom line.
“It’s not only the safety piece of it but then also the additional costs – the replacement of tires, the replacement of wheels, the downtime of the truck, the payment of the driver (for unproductive time) – are real strains to the trucking companies,” White said.
Driver down
The Workers Compensation Research Institute found in a May study that compared to temperatures between 65 and 70 degrees, the overall number of work-related injuries increased between 5% and 6% when the daily maximum temperature rose above 90 degrees. Direct effects of excessive heat include fatigue, and White said fatigue is one of the largest killers of truck drivers.
“Drivers can have a much more increased risk of heat-related illnesses,” White said. “A lot of drivers aren't the healthiest specimens in the world. They could be older; they could have health issues, so heat exhaustion, heat stroke, becomes much more of a possibility with them.”
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This affects mental acuity and cognitive ability, which could lead to a greater risk of accidents, said Jeff Borgman, director of transportation programs at Aon, which owns transportation and logistics insurer CoverWallet.
White said fleets, shippers and receivers need to provide hydration stations and air-conditioned rest areas for drivers. From an insurance perspective, Borgman said trucking companies need to ensure their drivers have access to health insurance. They also need to check their policies as it relates to worker’s comp to determine how to respond to heat-related incidents as they are on the rise.
Beyond driver health insurance and worker’s comp insurance, Borgman added that, while there aren’t many specific insurance policies that respond specifically to climate-related impacts, it has become a bigger topic in the insurance community in recent months.
“We do see a lot more integration of that language into auto liability policies, general liability policies (and) cargo policies, depending on what you're hauling,” he said. “We’ve definitely seen a bigger uptick in that, especially third- and fourth- party logistics providers like brokers that are more sensitive to when they can and can't deliver loads because of various different climate-related items.”
Climate, Borgman said, is affecting the supply chain on a macro scale as heat-related incidents like buckling roads are causing shipment delays, which could damage cargo that was never meant to withstand such high temperatures for prolonged periods of time.
Telematics can help on all fronts: drivers, equipment and greater supply chain.
Borgman said CoverWallet partners with several telematics providers to help fleets control insurance costs. He said more fleets are buying into telematics technology to help manage the effects of the elements like extreme heat.
Telematics provides tools for driver behavior that can help identify signs of fatigue or distress due to heat before they become an issue, White said. Another benefit of telematics, Borgman said, is optimized routing that can help drivers avoid poor road conditions, averting potential problems that could affect the health of the driver, equipment and load.
“You can handle a few days when it's 95 to 100 degrees, but when it's stretching for weeks and months, that has impacts on people … and it has impacts on equipment,” Borgman said.
Equipment equation
White said one of the biggest impacts to equipment is tire blowouts, which could cause a truck to lose control, or pieces could hit other cars on the road. But the possibility of an overheated engine is accelerated too in such extreme temps, leading to expensive repairs and tow bills. A truck on the side of the road is a hazard in and of itself to the driver and fellow drivers.
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Preventative maintenance becomes so much more crucial to the financial health of a company, he said. Maintenance costs of heavy trucks have increased by over 50% in the last 10 years, according to Geotab’s data.
That’s why not only preventative maintenance but predictive maintenance is so important.
“The other big thing telematics can do is leverage data for predictive maintenance, allowing fleets to address potential vehicle issues before they become critical,” White said. “Some examples of that include monitoring engine health, tire pressures and other vital components of that vehicle that can be affected by high heat.”
It also includes optimized routing to help avoid lanes with poor conditions that can impact vehicle health either immediately or over prolonged periods of time.
Geotab, with over 4.3 million active subscribers, can provide near-live statuses of routes. Those 4.3 million subscribers serve as monitors as Geotab collects data from their vehicles: temperature, barometric pressure, humidity and even wiper codes, so they can tell whether it’s raining or snowing on a particular side of town based on moisture and temperature hitting the wipers. This data is input into an optimized routing and dispatch system, providing the ability to adjust routes based on existing circumstances, including current weather or road conditions, like buckling, and therefore reduce vehicle wear and maintenance needs.
