Sam Watts 0.2

Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to This Weekend Trucking. This is the podcast that talks to real trucking business owners and trucking professionals in this space to help you learn more about how to make your trucking business more profitable. My name is Caroline, and today we have an awesome guest.

Caroline: Sam Watts is the founder of Wattsmen Diesel House. He is a trucking safety strategist and he helps people be safer out on the road and make more money with their business. Thanks so much for being here, Sam.

Sam: Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Caroline: Can you tell me what it is that got you into truck safety?

Sam: Ooh, man. How long of a show do we got? Because it, I could go on forever, my father got me into it. So I’ve been in trucking my whole life and I’ve always been on the operation side, dispatching, director of operations, stuff like that. I’ve always been around trucks, trailers, all that kind of stuff.

Sam: What got me into the safety side of it was my father started his own trucking company a handful of years ago, and I was doing operations for him.

Sam: [00:01:00] When you’re in a small company and starting it out. You don’t have those departments, you are that department. I knew enough about safety to, be dangerous as they all like to say. But, I didn’t really pay much attention to it until the F-M-C-S-A came and paid us a visit for their, end of the first year little audit that they like to do. And we. Got smoked basically on that. We dropped from a satisfactory rating down to a conditional rating.

Caroline: Yikes.

Sam: we were like doing anything really bad. It’s a lot of people like what I see. It’s just we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And so from there I was like we gotta figure this out now.

Sam: And so I put myself in charge of that and really started to understand the safety piece and why people or why the F-M-C-S-A does what they do and what they’re looking for and how to do things better. And that’s really where it started with my journey and safety as I got from a conditional backup to a satisfactory and went on from there.

Sam: And that’s, that was how I got started in the safety piece of trucking and I haven’t looked back since.

Caroline: If you were to name some of the most common pitfalls that you see [00:02:00] common mistakes small carriers making in safety, what would they be?

Sam: Whew. That’s a great question because. There’s a couple different ones that kind of always pop to the top of my mind. The biggest

Caroline: I.

Sam: Is, and I get why small companies can’t do this, because a lot of times it’s just one person or two people that are trying to run it. And, sometimes here’s the dirty little secret with safety.

Caroline: We like secrets.

Sam: The dirty little secret with safety, it might not be, but in my eyes it that you can get away with stuff in safety and that’s what one of the biggest pitfalls with when it comes to small carriers is usually is that. They get away with being

Sam: And I’m not saying that they’re trying to but you can go over your e-log hours and not get caught. You can do a lot of stuff that you’re not supposed to do and not get caught. The problem is that when you do get caught, that’s what a lot of the issues really arise.

Sam: And here’s the thing is you never know when you’re gonna have to produce a logbook or you never know when you know when the FM CSA is gonna come look at you, but there’s, [00:03:00] you just never know really when it’s gonna come back to bite you. So a lot of times they ignore a lot of stuff that they’re supposed to be doing and just keep going with the mindset of we haven’t gotten caught, so let’s just keep going.

Sam: All of a sudden your CSA scores are starting to go up. If you’re not paying attention to those, you have no clue. And then all of a sudden you will get that letter from the F-F-C-S-A saying, Hey, we wanna take a look at your stuff, and all of a sudden you go. I have nothing. So that’s ultimately one of the biggest problems in the safety world is that you can get away with being unsafe in a trucking company.

Sam: That’s why I always like to preach of having a foundation of safety and the carriers that I work with, that’s what I really try to instill in them, is that you gotta have your foundation of safety. Now, if you don’t have it to begin with it, good news is that you can always pour it later. If you’re still a business, I. You can still get that foundation going. So that’s why people like me come into companies and help them out with that. But yeah it’s not getting caught. And then the other thing is maybe they know that they’re not supposed to do something, but they keep going anyways with it. Or they don’t [00:04:00] have someone that can monitor it. And they have these policies and these procedures in place, but they have no one to keep an eye on it. And that’s also

Sam: Deal too, because forbid if they get into a big, serious accident or crash the lawyers, DOT, they’re all gonna wanna see your policies and procedures. And if you say here they are, and they find out that you’re not following or enforcing any of them, then you’re gonna be in really big trouble when it comes to that as well.

Caroline: right, so you’re saying the inconsistency of the enforcement is what leads people to have poor safety practices and if they had a foundation said, we’re not doing this because it’s the law. We’re doing this ’cause it’s the right thing to do. It’s the right thing to be safe, right? And if that’s your foundation and then you just make sure that you’re compliant with all the laws on top of that’s gonna be a much better way of approaching safety as opposed to, let me see, what’s the minimum that I can get away with?

Sam: right, right there. [00:05:00] There’s a number of things that, that I do that aren’t necessarily ne necessary, for lack of better term. But it’s one of those where okay, so you don’t have to have a continuous MVR monitoring system in place, like a system that works on the backend to make sure that drivers licenses are still valid and things like that.

Sam: That’s not a

Caroline: Spell out MVR for us. For someone who doesn’t know, what’s an MVR.

Sam: Motor vehicle report. So you have to run those once a year. You run ’em, when you bring on a new driver, it’ll give you the, their basic traffic law information. So if they’ve got pulled over for speeding or things like that that, that will, the MVR will give you that information.

Sam: You’re supposed to pull that once a year to make sure that the driver’s still valid and whatever. However, there are a number of technology pieces out there that will continuously monitor those mvs for you. Because here’s the thing I’ve had this happen to guys that I’ve been watching where there’s a couple scenarios that a driver can [00:06:00] get himself into where if they don’t follow up with the state that their license is with, they can get their license downgraded. And they a lot of times don’t even know that has happened until they get pulled in at a way station or something and all of a sudden the officer runs their license and goes. You don’t have a valid CDL. And when that happens, then all of a sudden you get to step out of the truck in middle of nowhere, South Dakota and figure out A, how to get home, and B, how to get your license back.

Sam: And now all of a sudden the company’s angry at you because now their truck and their trailer and their cargo is again sitting in the middle of nowhere South Dakota. And don’t ask me why I use South Dakota, because that’s where one of my guys got shut down one time

Caroline: Wow.

Sam: What are we gonna do now?

Sam: So to your point before, it’s not a, it’s not a necessary thing to have that continuous monitoring, but why wouldn’t you do it? And there’s a couple other pieces out there in the safety world. We have so much technology now, which is great. But it can also be bad too if you don’t, like we were

Caroline: Yeah.

Sam: before, if you don’t have someone [00:07:00] to monitor it, if you have all this data coming in that’s literally just coming in and no one’s looking at it, but you should have some if, and here’s the deal.

Sam: If you’re monitor or if you’re not monitoring something and that data’s continuing to come in, don’t have that data come to be quite frank with you. It’s better to not have that data and not. Monitor it then to have all this data coming in and not monitoring it. And that’s kinda the one misconception too, especially nowadays when there’s so much technology is we just want everything, just give us all this data.

Sam: If you’re not watching it, if you’re not looking at it, I guarantee if you get into a crash, the other lawyers are gonna look at that data and go, Hey, we saw this pattern here, why didn’t you? And then you gotta explain that piece.

Caroline: And it’s not just about, Ooh, when are you gonna get pulled over? It’s in the worst case scenario

Caroline: That something really tragic or. In the best case, in a crash, it’s inconvenient, it’s expensive, and in the worst case, it’s life threatening, right? And if you get into one of those, the added stress of knowing that you’re not really on top of your safety [00:08:00] for your business, that’s something that, that’s an optional thing that you’ve chosen over many months of not being careful about keeping track of that stuff.

Caroline: So why would you even take that risk?

Sam: right. I always tend to look at, everything that I implement or all the procedures that I help companies out with. I always look at it as at, can you defend this in a court of law because you don’t and I hate the scare tactic piece of safety. I really try not to lead with that.

Sam: But ultimately that’s where it falls down to is this defendable what you’re doing? Because I have seen some pretty bad accidents out there in my time with safety and just in trucking in general. I have yet to have a driver call me in the morning and say, Hey. gonna have an accident this afternoon.

Sam: They, you just never know when it’s gonna happen.

Sam: And if you’re being retroactive on everything, you’re just setting yourself up for for failure. So the best thing is to get proactive, be in front of it. Know that your driver qualification files are good. Know that your drivers are following the rules when it comes to logs. Policies and procedures [00:09:00] are in place, discipline policies. I know that some people try to shy away from that because then that means some of the drivers might get mad at you. what sometimes has to happen. But the good drivers will understand what you’re trying to do. And that’s a thing that I really try to get through.

Sam: ’cause I’m a millennial, I’m an old millennial but I’m still, I still fall into that category and my is like, why? Why do you want this? Why should I do it this way? Why we do this? So that’s what I really try to explain Hey, we’re putting, or maybe not even us, but like the F-M-C-S-A is putting these policies in place because.

Sam: For this reason. And so that’s why we have these discipline policies because we don’t want to even, go down that road. ’cause if you do, you are gonna be in big trouble. Not with us, per se, but with the F-M-C-S-A, with DOT, that screws up your livelihood. So that’s why we have this policy so that we’re trying to protect you.

Sam: And usually when you explain it that way they come around and understand and, fall in line.

Caroline: Yeah. Talk about the HOS regulations. I know that’s a big area [00:10:00] where people sometimes have misunderstanding, misunderstandings about it. Can you talk about how small carriers, owner operators, people who are running a. Maybe five to 10 trucks at a time. How can you best control that?

Sam: If you could figure that one out, you let me know too, because Yeah, there’s, there are definitely some guys that try to find every loophole out there. But the nice thing is now in, in 2025, we have this technology with the E-logs that I know a lot of drivers like to him and haw at that. A couple years ago, in fact, I was working for a company, a large company that was one of the first ones to put E-logs in all their trucks and that. Was terrible from a dispatcher standpoint

Sam: All day long we got calls saying, I’m throwing this thing out the window. And quite frankly, we wanted them to as well because it was impeding on our, ability to move them down the road. But now they’re here, the technology is great with them and they’re not going away.

Sam: So that’s why I always tell guys too, is that just get used to the e-log system, get used to the hours of service now, because it’s [00:11:00] not going away because it’s so nice as a safety guy that I can type in on my computer and say, okay, Billy’s got three hours left. He can go pick this load up or oh, he is only got three hours left.

Sam: He can’t make it all the way like. It saves us a conversation with the driver too, and say, look, he can’t do this one. We’re gonna have to figure something out. Or, yes, he can. A lot of drivers will get confused because there are some exemptions that come with hours of service.

Sam: So you can drive 11 hours a day you can drive or you can work 14 hours a day, and then you gotta take a 10 hour break. There are some exemptions in there, there’s adverse driving conditions exemption, which gives you some more time. There is, you can do a split clock, you can split your break.

Sam: And that gets into a lot of really fun math that I’m not gonna get into right now. But it can get a little confusing. And so that’s one of the biggest pieces I see with drivers too, is that trying to maximize their hours of service, which. I get that’s their livelihood. But sometimes they just don’t do it correctly.

Sam: And so continuous education, from a safety guy standpoint, [00:12:00] that’s what I always try to get through to ’em and say, Hey, there are some exemptions. This is how to properly use ’em. This is how not to use ’em. If you’re running local you sometimes don’t have to even use an eloc system. If you own a farm, it’s you’re in the wild West, basically.

Sam: You got that agriculture exemption. You can do whatever you want under 150 miles, basically. There are some rules. I just as a disclaimer, you can’t do anything you want. I wanna make sure that’s clear. You get some farmers out there just going everywhere. But no. So there are different exemptions for d I work with some tanker companies that they’re sometimes fuel exemptions, especially when it gets really cold, they gotta get that fuel moving, the propane moving. So it’s just a matter of knowing what you’re pulling. And then knowing the exemptions because like with the tanker stuff, sometimes the guys will be in Illinois, they have an exemption, they hit the state line.

Sam: In Iowa, they don’t have the exemption. So it

Sam: On the driver to then understand as well where they’re going, what they’re getting into. And just things like that. And as a safety guy, and even as dispatch and operations, I always tried to try to teach them [00:13:00] about hours of service.

Sam: ’cause you’d be amazed at how many people responsible for moving the trucks don’t know, the hours of service. And a big thing too, with brokers, I talk to a lot of brokers that just have no idea how hours of service work, you know? So they’re trying to give these drivers an 800 mile run overnight. It’s guys that doesn’t work. It’s it’s only, this far. It’s I know, but he legally can’t run that. And then you have to instruct them. So the hours of service is good. I know they’re looking at maybe tweaking some things here and there, but from my opinion, for what it’s worth I think it’s, I think it’s good.

Sam: I, I wholeheartedly agree that 10 hours is a good break maybe even a little bit more if they can get away with it. But I think the hours of service is in a good spot right now, and I don’t think it’s gonna change too drastically one way or the other.

Caroline: You mentioned upfront that one of your first experiences managing. Or witnessing a big compliance and safety project was your new carrier safety audit when you were working for your dad’s business. That didn’t [00:14:00] go so well at that point. So can you give us a guide to what went wrong when you were doing that and how you now consult businesses on how to do that audit?

Sam: Yeah. What went wrong with that? Was everything okay? We didn’t have, we didn’t have anything in place really. We basically hired on a driver or two or three drivers and said, go And and from there they just we had them drive. We were making money. Everything’s going great on that standpoint, but we the biggest one that we got hit with was we didn’t have a driver qualification file for these guys there.

Sam: Every driver needs. To have a driver qualification file. We had an application for, some of ’em, we had a copy of their license, but like we didn’t have med cards in there. Because we didn’t know to ask for med cards. That’s one of the biggest things that I see with a lot of companies is that again, they just don’t know what they don’t know.

Sam: These small companies that I work with, it’s a former driver that did very well, bought a second truck, did well, bought another truck, and all of a sudden now he’s got a truck of [00:15:00] five or six, up to 10, 15 trucks, still has that driver knowledge. He can drive that thing up and down the road all day, but he doesn’t know the back end piece of it. And so that’s where guys like me come in because it’s like, yeah, you gotta make sure you have your med card in there. Application driver’s license. The big one that a lot of people miss is the, with the med card is the medical examiner register on, on the registry that the F-M-C-S-A puts out. You have to have proof of that. So that was our biggest deal is that we just did not have the stuff that we needed to in place. And then the other thing too is we weren’t monitoring hours of service. Like we had one guy. It was always the joke with us to say get it there. I don’t care how you do it.

Sam: Wink, nudge, nudge. And a lot of guys took us seriously with that. And so one guy just ran personal conveyance everywhere and it’s he is doing really good. He is making us a lot of money. Let’s keep going. That’s the attitude that will get you in a conditional rating, if not worse. And so when the audit came in and they looked at stuff, they go, guys, you are doing terrible right now. We probably, for. We probably should have had a [00:16:00] non a non satisfactory rating. I think we sweet talked him. My father is an excellent salesman and so he probably sweet talked him into, giving us a little bit more of a chance and got the conditional.

Sam: But even with the conditional rating, it sucks because brokers will stop working with you. Banks will stop working with you. All of a sudden, you have this great lane that the shippers will ’cause. Everyone’s got access to all your safety data. None of it is private

Sam: For good reasons, you don’t want bad actors out there on the road.

Sam: So as soon as we had got hit with that conditional rating, it was like everything dried up until we had to get it fixed. And so that’s, so we got the D DQ files in order. I went onto so many webinars and and websites and talked to anybody I could find. About safety stuff and just said what do we gotta do here? I had a friend of mine that was doing safe, some safety stuff, and so he came in and he helped us out with some of it. When you are trying to get back up to satisfactory rating, you gotta submit stuff to the government. If you’re going from a conditional to a satisfactory or even a non satisfactory to [00:17:00] satisfactory, you have to basically present a plan to them and like an official legal looking letter and saying, Hey, we want to be considered to be back at satisfactory.

Sam: Here’s what we’re gonna do. And they’ll kinda keep you on the ball with that. And luckily we did all that. We were said we would and we got back to satisfactory. But it’s not a great process. And, to be quite honest with you, they could say no if they want to. They don’t have to bump you back up to satisfactory.

Sam: So it was not a fun process, but it’s something that a lot of people have done now. There are trucking companies out there that have been in conditional ratings for years, and it works for them, like they have customer freight. It’s just, it’s working for them. So some of those guys really don’t even have an interest to go back to a satisfactory rating.

Sam: And to be quite honest, sometimes it actually, if conditional is working for you and you’re still being safe out there. Sometimes it’s not worth going back up to satisfactory. ’cause then you get the feds looking at you again. So it’s a complicated world in safety.

Sam: But yeah, the biggest thing was not having the backend piece. ’cause the F-M-C-S-A wants to [00:18:00] know that the trucking company knows that the people they have out there on the road should be out on the road. And that’s where the driver qualification files come in saying, look, we’ve done our due diligence.

Sam: Here’s the drug tests, here’s the negative results. Here’s a CDL that is valid. Here’s the MVR, here’s the med card. All that stuff has to be in the DQ file, which we didn’t have hardly any of that. And that’s usually the first thing I look at with other companies is, let’s see your DQ files.

Sam: What do you, what are you gonna, what do you got in there? And about 90% are usually. Almost there, like they’re at 90%. Very few actually have a full complete DQ file. And a lot of ’em have here’s a piece of paper. I’m like, okay, we’re starting at zero. Okay, cool. But again, that goes back to that safety foundation, even if you don’t have the DQ file, so you can build that.

Sam: Okay. And that’s something that you should have, because if a driver were to get in an accident and lawyers wanna see that stuff, you gotta present it to ’em. And if you don’t have, or if you, if they’ve got. If they’ve got a failed drug test in there and you put ’em in anyways, Ooh, now you’re in big trouble.

Sam: So [00:19:00] it’s best just to go through the process and onboard the driver in the correct way. And then, then you have that in the back. And then you gotta make sure you keep it updated too, because, CDLs expire, med cards expire, MDRs expire. That’s the other piece too, is guy’s here’s my DQ file.

Sam: I’m like, CDL is eight years old. Like, where’s the new one? So that, that’s also the other piece too, is that making sure you keep it updated.

Caroline: We have a report, a blog on our website about DQ files, so we’ll link that in the description here with all of those. And Sam, maybe I’ll send it to you so you can critique my understanding. Of DQ files there’s a lot that goes in there. It’s not just something that can fit on a piece of paper.

Caroline: And I think one of the other mistakes that people make is that if they’re an owner operator, they just have one truck and they’re the driver that they think they don’t need one and still definitely need one. And you don’t have to apply to a job for yourself, but everything else applies to you. So you have to make sure you have all of those records ready for you.

Caroline: And

Sam: I did some work for a company that, that [00:20:00] the owner didn’t have a dec, everyone else had one, but the owner day’s like, why I own it. I’m like, you still need one buddy?

Caroline: doesn’t matter, you’re driving 40,000 pounds down the highway at 65, 70 miles an hour. You, the government wants to make sure that all the people doing that are highly qualified and safe.

Sam: Yep. Yep.

Caroline: Yeah, talk about vehicle maintenance compliance. So how regularly should people be checking up on those compliance requirements when it comes to vehicle parts, tires brakes, things like that.

Sam: Sure. Yeah, no, that, that’s one piece that a lot of people don’t understand how safety and vehicle maintenance actually are close together. ‘Cause there’s a lot of times that a vehicle will be put outta service for a safety reason. And that’s why pre-trip I always recommend post trips as well, making sure that you just are checking out that vehicle because, a lot of guys will say pre-trip are required.

Sam: Okay, I do a pre-trip, great, but then you drove that truck 600 [00:21:00] miles down the road for that day. Something could have gotten knocked loose or a trailer like could have gone out. I’ve seen wires get disconnected and, it’s best to get that looked at. Before you take your break.

Sam: So we know, and maybe we can even get you to a spot before your break’s done. But that’s a vehicle Maintenance and safety really do go hand in hand. Now, I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m a expert on vehicle maintenance. I’m not a mechanic when it comes to this stuff.

Sam: But the guys that, that do that are, and here’s the plug that I’ll make to you guys too. If you wanna be a diesel mechanic, this would be a really good time to get into it because those guys that is expensive work to to do. I think, I was just talking with a friend of mine, I think their shop is over $200 an hour now, to have anything done, which, and he said that’s a bargain.

Sam: So I’m like, that is incredible.

Caroline: I’ve heard three and 400.

Sam: I wouldn’t doubt it. Wouldn’t doubt it at all. It it’s really getting outta hand. But like I said, the vehicle maintenance piece and safety really do go hand in hand because you go into a weigh station, they [00:22:00] do they do a level one inspection, meaning they’re gonna look all around your vehicle, they’re gonna get underneath of it. They put you outta service. Okay, now that outta service mark or any sort of violation, even if you’re not put outta service, they, you got a taillight out, you got something done wrong with the vehicle that goes right over to your CSA data. Because as there’s the basic categories and that’s seven different categories.

Sam: And one of those categories is vehicle maintenance. And if you’re high on that, you know the DOT is gonna wanna know why, what’s going on with your vehicle maintenance piece. Yeah, it’s extremely important to take care of your stuff and I know different. Makers of the trucks have different recommendations for when to do preventative maintenance, but I highly suggest you do not ignore your preventative maintenance because yes, right now a PM might cost you 6, 7, 800 bucks, maybe 500, whatever. and you go, man, that’s a lot of money. I’d rather just keep it rolling, make, go down the road. If there’s something that could have been caught in that preventative maintenance that happens out on the road, now all of a sudden you’re looking at thousands of dollars. And so that was, that’s always one of the biggest [00:23:00] pieces I recommend.

Sam: I’m not a mechanic, but I highly recommend you get a good one because they will save you thousands of dollars down the road by just taking a look over it. A lot of drivers too are very good when it comes to mechanics of their truck. They know if something’s not quite right and I always tell owners who maybe don’t have that mechanic background to definitely listen to the drivers if there’s something not right with that truck. They of all people will know they’re the ones driving that thing, hundreds of thousands of miles. they’re gonna know if it’s got a shimmy to it, they’re gonna know if it’s pulling to the right, they’re gonna know if it doesn’t sound right. And so I always say, make sure you listen to the drivers too.

Sam: If they’ve got a concern, get it in there. Bite the bullet, pay them mechanic fee, and get that thing done. Because like I said, I’d rather spend five, 600 bucks at my shop versus two, three, $4,000 out on the road by a mechanic. I don’t even know. Or sometimes, here’s the beauty part. If you get put outta service by a DOT officer, now you gotta get the mechanic come out to you. So now there’s automatically like a $1,500 charge just for them to come out to you. And [00:24:00] anything on top of that is just, yeah it’s painful. So don’t ignore the maintenance piece because that directly does tie in with your safety piece of the company.

Caroline: Yeah. Mechanic fees, fines, all of those are really obvious ways that poor safety and compliance management can hurt your bottom line, but one that may be underestimated is the way that it can affect your insurance. I’ve. Heard of lots of carrier businesses going out of business just because they couldn’t afford the renewal of their insurance.

Caroline: Can you talk about the relationship between CSA scores? Maybe talk a little bit about what that is, the safety information that’s available on the internet for all to see and how that can affect insurance.

Sam: Yeah, that’s a great question. Not a lot of people really put those two worlds together. And that’s why I try to preach this foundation of safety because it does connect with so many different worlds out there. It connects with your maintenance, it connects with your [00:25:00] operations, and yes, it connects with your insurance as well, because like I said before, I. All of your safety data is publicly available, especially to insurance companies. They have their own reports that will grab that F-M-C-S-A data and they’ll get to you. Like we, before I was concentrating on safety, we would have our insurance guys tell us our safety scores, and it’s wow, how are you figuring this out?

Sam: That’s amazing. And said it’s out there. You should probably look at it, but yeah, they grabbed that CSA data, which CSA is basically the program that the FM CSA puts into place now, the Fed F-M-C-S-A, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, they’re. They’re the people in Washington, they’re the guys underneath the direct or the Department of Transportation. They concentrate on the highway stuff. The CSA is the program that the F-M-C-S-A puts into place to judge the trucking companies basically. So they have their seven different categories and each, in each category are different violations that you can go. Now if you any sort of speeding ticket, any sort of driver on their cell phone, any sort of outta service, [00:26:00] mechanical issues if your driver gets pulled over without a valid CDL, all that stuff gets registered in the CSA. And then when your insurance renewal time comes, your insurance company will take a look at all of your CSA data. And they really there’s good insurance people out there, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of times insurance companies, ’cause there’s so many trucking companies, they’re just looking at the data.

Sam: They’re not looking at the story. They don’t really care about the excuses behind it. So they’re just purely looking at the data and they’re feeding that data to the underwriters who, again, I don’t mean to demonize underwriters. They’re doing what they do, but they don’t care about a story.

Sam: Okay. They’re just literally looking at, is this good? Is this not, they don’t want to ensure risky companies. And so if you’re CSA data in those seven categories you’re ranked, a lot of times people will say, what’s your CSA score? really a score per se, it’s a percentage. And in all those categories, usually it’s at 65%. If you get enough violations, you will go above that threshold. And if you go above that threshold, you’re deemed a risky [00:27:00] carrier. Now, if you’re over the threshold in one category, get it back under, it’s, there’s probably not gonna be too much happening. You’re not probably gonna get audited or anything like that.

Sam: But if you start going over in two categories and go to three categories, that’s when the DOT, the FM CSA are really gonna be stepping in going, what are you doing? We need an intervention, we need an audit. We need to look at you. thing with the insurance companies though. If they see they, they have even less of a sense of humor than the F-M-C-S-A, if they see that you’re elevated in categories. They might not touch you. Or if they do, they’re gonna say, Hey it’s this much upfront, it’s 10 times more than it was last year. Yep. Take it or leave it. I’ve seen the same thing where companies are going fine, renewal time comes, they say, Nope, you got elevated. That one, and they’re gone.

Sam: They can’t get insurance. And that’s it’s a little unfortunate because sometimes there is a story behind some of those numbers but sometimes there isn’t. And you know that’s a really good indicator to insurance companies insurance companies to say, this is a risky company. If they get into an accident, they’re more, more likely gonna be in a big accident, or they’re [00:28:00] more likely to get into multiple accidents. We don’t even want to touch ’em. Insurance companies have lost their sense of humor when it comes to insurance and they really don’t like paying out, which I understand. And so they, if they’re deemed risky by them, they’re not gonna insure you.

Caroline: Another thing that I have heard from other safety trucking safety professionals is that sometimes the problem is that if you’re not monitoring those violations, maybe your driver knows that they’ve had a couple of violations, but they’re afraid of losing their job. They’re afraid of losing their livelihood.

Caroline: Then how do you communicate that to the rest of your team? And then how do you deal with these situations where you get violations that aren’t even yours?

Sam: Yeah. Yeah, that that’s a good point. The CSA website, there’s a, the safety management system, the SMS, there’s a website for that, and you can log into that via your FM CSA portal, and you can look at every violation that was that occurred, and you get where it occurred, what happened, who the driver was.

Sam: All that data is there and if you are surprised a couple months [00:29:00] later when a driver comes and say, Hey. Couple months ago, I got a violation. That shouldn’t be a surprise to you. You should be monitoring that information and Yeah, it gets updated once a month and and you can go in there and take a look and there were numerous times where drivers I was watching.

Sam: I would always say, it’s just like my kids. Okay, I got four boys. There are, they’re rambunctious.

Caroline: wow.

Sam: get it. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. They’re rambunctious kids, and I always say this, if you do something wrong, come and tell me. Okay. ’cause the punishment gonna be less severe if you tell me versus if I find it out. Okay. And sometimes there’s not even gonna be a punishment if whatever. That’s parenting 1 0 1, that’s later on. But I always tell drivers that too. If you get a violation. Tell me. Okay. Because if I find out that you got a violation, it looks like you’re trying to hide it, then what else are you trying to hide?

Sam: Okay. How does your truck look?

Caroline: Right.

Sam: how’s your hours of service Look, all of a sudden I don’t trust you. Okay? But that has to go both ways. And one of the things I always try to do with drivers is actually make a relationship with them. Okay? That a lot of times I see safety guys and. [00:30:00] I’ll have hear stories from drivers saying, uhoh, the safety guy’s calling me. Because in the past, the safety guys only reached out when they were in trouble. That was the only

Sam: They had was you screwed up. Now the safety guy’s coming to you. I always try to make it with any driver. I watch I try to write down their birthdays and watch when they do something good, send ’em out a text message on their birthday.

Sam: Hey bud. Hey, happy birthday. Or Hey I was looking at your hours of service. You haven’t had one single violation in that for a month. Awesome. Thank you very much. You’re making my li life a lot easier, it’s always a good idea to reach out to those drivers when they’re not doing bad either.

Sam: In fact, praise ’em when they’re doing good. You would not believe the camaraderie you get from saying Happy birthday Jimmy. And then all of a sudden Jimmy’s now your best friend because you just took that 10 seconds

Caroline: Yeah.

Sam: something about it. That’s all they really want. They want the recognition.

Sam: They want a lot of cash too, but they’ll take the recognition and the positive feedback and all of a sudden you got a best friend and now all of a sudden you got that line of communication open. Now all of a sudden Jimmy calls, you say, Hey man, ah, I screwed this thing up so bad.

Sam: I was [00:31:00] doing 10 over. And I can say, okay, thank you for letting me know. This is, maybe there’s a discipline policy in that. Maybe you have a one strike, two strike warning. I don’t know what every company’s different, but at least you have that communication open and they’re not afraid to come and talk to you, which is. You have to make sure that they’re not afraid to talk to you as a safety guy. But yeah, you’re also correct too in that sometimes the DOT guys get it wrong. And so with that, there’s a system called the data queue system, which if there is an error in your CSA or in your violation inspection report, you can go on there and data cue it.

Sam: Now, it’s not the easiest thing to do. As far as like it, it takes time and it’s a 50 50 shot in my opinion. There’s some guys out there that do it pretty good that claim that they can do it, better than others. But in my. In, in, in my experience with it’s 50 50 sometimes, like the officer will say, yeah, e especially if there’s an actual egregious error, like they put the wrong mc, they did something wrong like that.

Caroline: Right.

Sam: that. And a lot of times I see that with owner operators where if they just recently switched they, they’ll still [00:32:00] sometimes have their old MC number on the truck, and

Sam: That down and all of a sudden I get calls from another company saying, your guy just got us a violation. So that, that’s what that’s for. But yeah, you can make your case on the data queue system. And I’ve done that. I’ve won some, I’ve lost some. It’s up to them as far as I’m concerned. But yeah, it is nice at least, and they’re constantly tweaking that system as well. So hopefully, they can get it down the line.

Sam: But, DOT officers are very well trained out there. They know what they’re looking at and sometimes, a lot of times they are pretty accurate. It’s tough to refute what they say and just go from there. But yeah, they do have that system in place should you want to use it.

Caroline: Something that you said made me think of drivers love cash, who doesn’t, who in the world doesn’t. What about incentives for staying safe, safest driver awards or bonuses for no violations in six months? I’m making those up off the top of my head. Are, is that something that you’ve put in place before and is it something you would recommend to carriers?

Caroline: I.

Sam: I recommend it to carriers as long as you can keep up with [00:33:00] it. So when I say that, like there’s some carriers that will put some stuff in play that it’s you’re gonna have to have a full-time accountant keep an eye on this. ‘Cause they’ll be like, if you don’t get, if you do this and this, then we’ll raise your last quarter’s wages by one penny on.

Sam: It’s oh my goodness, this is so convoluted.

Caroline: too complicated sometimes.

Sam: The, one of the best programs that I saw that they had in place, which was nice, was if they failed the DOT inspection. So they get pulled in for a DOT at a way scale, whatever. They failed it. It was, I think it was like 300 bucks a fine that they do to it.

Sam: Yeah. It was pretty steep. I didn’t like the amount of the steepness of that, but wasn’t my

Sam: I made my voice, I made my opinion clear. They made their opinion clear. We move on. But if they passed, if they got a clean inspection, they would get a hundred dollars bonus.

Sam: So it’s it really tried to incentivize ’em to say, make sure you get that a hundred dollars bonus. And there were times too, this is where that line of communication comes in. ’cause there were times where a guy will say, Hey, this happened, but here’s the reasons why. And I would listen to that sometimes.

Sam: I would say, yeah, that’s a legitimate [00:34:00] reason. You’re not gonna get the 300 bucks. But then there are other times where it’s you missed that. Okay. That should have been caught in a pre-trip. You’re doing 10 over. That’s completely on you. A lot of times they would be, overweight, they’d be like we were under 80,000 pounds, but you were, 38,000 pounds on your rear axle.

Sam: Overweight, bud. There’s nothing I can do about that. So tho those are the times where it’s yeah, that, that’s a painful lesson to learn. But then you do get the incentive if you pass it. And I liked handing out those incentives a lot more than the penalties.

Caroline: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that’s something that just reminded me. If you only give the carrot and there’s no stick, you might be in a situation where, the driver says I don’t really need that a hundred bucks, so I’m just gonna slack off. Or, you don’t really care about that. So you do wanna make sure that the consequences of violations or failed inspections are clear.

Caroline: And adding a carrot can help it be less, maybe adversarial, right? If the safety persons, or maybe it’s the business owner that’s running [00:35:00] safety, especially if you only have a couple trucks, right? You’re the business owner themselves is likely running that safety program. And then it makes, that, probably makes that job a little more fun, that you don’t always have to be the bearer of bad news.

Caroline: You can also make safety some somewhat of a pleasant experience for your drivers.

Sam: Yep. Yep. Make safety fun Again that’s the motto. Yep.

Caroline: Nice. Nice.

Sam: fun, but hey, why not

Caroline: Make it, just make, yeah. Why not make it fun? Hey, it saves lives. Who doesn’t like doing that? That’s something that a lot of people dream of. And there’s so much risk involved in driving trucks. And if you frame it that way, I think if you frame it that way, instead of this sort of adversarial relationship that a lot of people will have with safety or compliance, oh, that I’m just checking a box, that this isn’t, this is just a hassle for me.

Caroline: If you can reframe it as this is just the right thing to do, this is the role that we have in our economy, in our society. It comes with so much responsibility and [00:36:00] managing that responsibility is serious. It’s serious business, and it saves lives. And there’s no reason that we can’t. Make that part of the purpose of our business.

Sam: a hundred percent. Yep. I agree with you. Like trucking is such a risky business to be in. Like you said we’re moving a lot of weight really fast down very public roads. And anything that I can do to help. Teach these, teach the drivers, teach the operations, just teach the general public even like how to do this safely.

Sam: Yeah. There’s always, there’s gonna be crashes there, there’s nothing I could do about that. Things are gonna happen. Drivers aren’t gonna be paying attention. Drivers are gonna fall asleep. We’re gonna have cars running into us. I, a lot of times you wouldn’t believe how many times a car will run into a massive semi-truck.

Sam: It’s just they just won’t see ’em. They we’re so distracted

Caroline: Yeah.

Sam: the wheel anymore. And drivers, truck drivers are as well too. They’ve got, dispatchers calling ’em all the time. They’ve got the GPS going. There’s just a lot of distractions out there.

Sam: So anything I can do to help the industry show that, yeah, it’s a risky [00:37:00] industry, but we can make it as safe as we possibly can. Like

Sam: What I wanna do. And that’s what my whole mission is with doing all my safety stuff now.

Caroline: I also liked what you said, bringing the spotlight. I do think that drivers are often under a magnifying glass when it’s not always, that’s not always the person that’s creating that risk. A lot of the time it’s people in the operations department or the, it could be the dispatcher. It could be the broker themselves that’s really pressuring something to get delivered in an unreasonable timeframe and.

Caroline: Zooming out and seeing it, it’s not just a driver problem. Yes there’s a lot of responsibility on the driver because that’s the very end of the whip if you wanna call it that. But there’s so many other things in the chain that are going to affect how the driver might behave.

Caroline: And oftentimes the driver might have to push back. And I imagine that they do. And comment below, if you’re one of those drivers that’s had a situation where you have had to push back on someone else in your [00:38:00] organization or your company to say, Hey, I’m not gonna do that. ’cause that’s not safe. And empowering drivers to do that.

Caroline: I bet that there’s, that can be a challenge because they’re often, the end of that chain.

Sam: Yeah. Yeah, it, I mean there’s a lot of times drivers will literally put their job on the line to push back. ’cause there, there’s some unscrupulous owners dispatchers stuff out there that will say, you do this. And they say, no, that’s dangerous or illegal. And they say, then get outta my truck. Unfortunately it does happen and that’s why I try to. Educate the dispatchers, the operations, so that they understand too, if a broker

Caroline: Right.

Sam: load saying, Hey, this has to be here tomorrow and it’s X amount of miles, so the dispatcher can quickly do the math and go no, he can’t do that. And now all of a sudden the dispatcher’s the advocate for the driver and then educating the broker on their end.

Sam: It’s like this is not possible to do. I worked with brokers, I’ve for a number of years and there are a lot of times where that conversation would happen. Like I wouldn’t even get to the driver piece of it yet because I’m like. [00:39:00] They don’t need to be burned with this. I know what the rules are.

Sam: You don’t know. So now I’ll tell you what we’re doing. But yeah if a dispatcher doesn’t know, and that’s, that’s one of my things too with, I don’t understand why is seen as an entry level position into trucking. I.

Sam: I get like everything, every, if you go to a trucking company like it’s dispatcher, we’ll put you as a dispatcher.

Sam: Do you know how much information you have to know as a

Caroline: Right.

Sam: the trucking industry to really do a good job at dispatching? It’s a pretty thorough job if you’ve never been in trucking. And I see a lot of that where they’ll bring in and to no fault of their own, they’ll bring in these 22, 20 3-year-old kids outta college and they just, they don’t know it’s the same thing.

Sam: They don’t know what they don’t know. And so

Sam: Educate them like, Hey your driver can’t drive 24 hours a day. You gotta give ’em a break. And so it, it’s, it really, that’s why safety, it just can’t be a safety person and the driver. It’s gotta be through the whole company.

Sam: Like the whole company has to understand safety and why it’s important and what the rules are. Now, they don’t have to get, they don’t have to [00:40:00] be intricate, they don’t have to tell me what the seven basic categories are that they’ll be judged in, but they need to know that. This driver only has 11 hours to drive today.

Sam: After that, they got three hours to work If there’s something in there, and then they gotta take a break. And when they’re on their break, you don’t bug ’em. Okay. Let them get their break. Make sure don’t mess around with their home time. Don’t mess around with their paycheck. Okay. That’s two big things that a lot of, I see a lot of dispatchers kind of toy with. And it’s those are two things to really make a driver upset. And I don’t blame the driver at all. Because they’re out there on the road, they’re trying to make money, and all of a sudden you’re saying you can’t go home and your paycheck’s gonna be different. I’d be upset too. But yeah, it’s just it’s just that knowledge of this is how a trucking company works, this is how the safety piece works. Be an advocate for the driver out there against people who don’t know what the rules are. That’s why I try to teach everyone what the rules are.

Caroline: We’ve talked about this on the show before of dispatching services too, for smaller companies. So a lot of bigger companies will have their own dispatchers, in-house. Some smaller carriers might have that too, but a lot of [00:41:00] times if you’re an owner operator or you’re running just a couple of trucks, then you might be tempted to hire a dispatcher that’s gonna charge you a percent of your loads.

Caroline: And that can be good. It can work. We always recommend that you dispatch your own loads, at least for the first couple of months or year, because then you’ll really learn what it means to book loads and do that. But if you are gonna hire a dispatcher, drill them on HOS regulations first. So before you sign any agreement, before you say, yeah, why don’t you come and dispatch for my company?

Caroline: Hey, if you don’t know the answers to these questions, go home, look it up, learn it, and then let’s talk.

Sam: Yep.

Caroline: That’s gotta be a basic thing. Not can I get $4 per mile? And all of that should come after. Do you understand what it means to dispatch a truck for this many days, this many miles?

Caroline: What does all of that actually mean? And then we’ll [00:42:00] talk about what rates we want and all of that.

Sam: And even to that point too of okay, do you know the HOS stuff, but do you just even know the trucking in general? Okay, I’m getting four bucks a mile to go from, I don’t know, Indianapolis to Jackson, Mississippi. Okay, great. But the loads coming out of Jackson, Mississippi are paying 97 cents a mile.

Sam: So it’s like even just that common knowledge of where the

Caroline: Totally.

Sam: where should I be going? Don’t ever send a guy to Florida. I’m kidding. I like Florida, but it’s got a reputation of just not having anything coming out of it. So

Caroline: Yeah.

Sam: but it’s just that common knowledge.

Sam: And

Caroline: right.

Sam: like I said, I don’t understand why dispatch is the entry level position because again they need to know. Now, some bigger companies will have planners and I get that, and then, dispatch is just relaying the information. But again, you still have to know

Caroline: Yeah. Even in relaying the information though.

Sam: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred

Caroline: I don’t need, I don’t need somebody as someone who hires people, I don’t need someone to just repeat what somebody else said like that. That’s not useful to me. If you, a dispatcher needs to be [00:43:00] really good at critical thinking and and consequential thinking, if I do this, then what happens next?

Caroline: If the driver does this, what happens next? Yeah, I agree. I think that the idea that it would be a entry level position, the problem is that there’s no dispatcher license, right? Somebody who drives a truck has to have a CDL a semi-truck, right? If you have a Class eight truck, then you need a CDL.

Caroline: And that weeds out people who don’t know how to do it and don’t know what they’re doing. But there is no license. And not necessarily saying that there should be a license for a dispatcher, but yeah, the qualification for it the bar should be higher.

Sam: I think so, but that’s, I’ve been in trucking for 25 years, so I’ve

Caroline: And maybe you should have to be a safety intern first

Sam: there you

Caroline: before you can do that.

Sam: We need more people in the safety world. So yeah, I can get behind that.

Caroline: Awesome. Anything else that you wanna share with our listeners?

Sam: Oh boy. No, I you asked a lot of great questions. I think we had a good conversation, how safety works and why it’s important. That’s always my biggest thing, is telling people why you should pay attention to safety. Because [00:44:00] again, a lot of, if people look, there’s, we have the green book in safety.

Sam: It’s the rules of regulations from the F-M-C-S-A. It is this thick. And I think there’s, like, when all said and done, there’s 950 rules to follow in trucking.

Caroline: Wow.

Sam: not all apply to everything, that’s, there’s a lot of regulations out there. And my whole thing with that is these are the regulations and this is why it’s important.

Sam: Now, I will say in full disclosure. I don’t agree with every regulation out there. I don’t agree with every rule that the F-M-C-S-A puts in place. We didn’t even touch like personal conveyance and all that kinda stuff, which I think is extremely a gray area, and that’s for a whole nother pod podcast. But there are some things that, that kind of bugged me about it, but at the end of the day, it’s like these are the rules that are set up and this is why you need to follow and not even say you have to follow ’em because this is the rule. It’s, this is why it’s in your best interest to follow these rules and regulations.

Caroline: Sam, tell us about Watchman Diesel House. Where can we learn more? How can people get in touch with you?

Sam: They can go to my website, wattsmen.com, that’s [00:45:00] watts men m e n.com. And that’s because I have four boys at home and anytime I would need them to gather, they were big Avengers fans. So I’d always say Wattmen comever.

Caroline: I love that.

Sam: Yeah, so

Caroline: that’s great.

Sam: came from. And but yeah, go to watman.com. You can all my contact information is there, but yeah I, it’s called Watman Diesel House because it’s all your safety needs under one roof. Okay. So if you need help with HOS stuff, you need help pouring that safety foundation, I can help. You need help monitoring it. I can help you with that. You’re in big trouble and you’re a conditional rating. I can help you out without help you out with how, help you with that as well. There we go. I’ll get it there. But yeah, watson.com.

Caroline: Awesome. If you have questions for Sam, go to his website, contact him or leave them in the comments because we will send him questions that you leave us in the comments, and I’m sure he’ll be gracious enough to help us answer them in those comments. If you learned something about trucking safety on this episode of this Week in Trucking, please hit subscribe.

Caroline: Hit the like [00:46:00] button and that way you’ll never miss out on another episode. We’ll be back next week. Thanks again, Sam, for joining us. Drive safe, everybody.

Sam: Thank you for having me.