AvatarFleet's Transportation Blog

Are Driver Health Problems Overstated? Take the On-Line Survey

Recently there’s been a rash of articles about big rig drivers and the poor state of driver health. In addition to the physical toll on drivers, these...

No One Wins But You Don’t Have To Lose | Part 2 | AvatarFleet

Some carriers have policies that ban any applicant, including drivers, with a criminal background. Based on EEOC guidance, this can create serious leg...

Do CSA Scores Matter? Shippers Say They Do! | AvatarFleet

CSA scores DO matter.

ApplicantCare / HireRight Integration - Speeding Driver Hiring Process

AvatarFleet and HireRight team up to improve hiring quality and driver retention for the transportation industry. Press Release AvatarFleet has a new ...

Pushing For Mandatory Training For Ontario Truck Drivers

There is a push for Ontario government to introduce mandatory entry level training for commercial truck drivers. The Ontario Trucking Association, ins...

Santafest Benefits Children With Donated Toys From Everyone

Part of the mountain of toys donated to Summit County Children's Services at Santafest.

Highway Safety: Are We Winning the Battle?

Highway safety is improving-- or is it?

4 Common Mistakes When Training Employees + 4 Best Practices

Part of being a hiring manager or supervisor is training employees. Too often, though, training employees fall short of expectations. Trainers are dis...

Driver Shortage: Is It the Number One Problem?

Driver shortage, turnover, churn, and the heavy hand of the government with programs like CSA and HOS were conspicuous topics at this year’s ATA Confe...

Getting A Positive Return On Driver Training

This month, CRST announced that in addition to its biggest increase in driver pay ever, it’s also spending $25 million to train drivers. That’s a huge...

Superior Selection or Excellent OTR Training?

Do you build a high performing team through superior selection or excellent OTR training? Remember the old proverb: you can teach a squirrel to fly bu...

CVSA Sponsors Brake Inspection Blitz | AvatarFleet

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, the folks that bring Operation Roadcheck to you every June, is sponsoring the North America-wide Brake Inspect...

Best Professional Driving Course Ever Conceived

Professional Safe Driver Course

Fantasy Football Parallels Driver Selection

What can you learn about driver selection and CSA from fantasy football?

Lawyers Exploit CSA Data to Target Trucking--Trucking Tales Ep14

How lawyers exploit CSA and PSP data was the topic as Bright Mountain Trucking managers ate lunch at their outside picnic table.

Axing Paperwork and Unintended Consequences

Double-edged sword. Cuts both ways. Mixed blessing. Unintended consequences. These contrast-evoking expressions come to mind when I read about the int...

Final Ruling on HOS Challenges

The United States Court of Appeals ruled today that the new HOS rules will stand, with one very inconsequential exception. Short haul drivers do not h...

Nine “Reasonable” Years–Trucking Tales Ep13

The changing nature of laws and compliance is once again a topic at Bright Mountain Trucking’s monthly staff meeting.

Don't Fall Victim to Zombie Recruiting

Operation Roadcheck Begins Today

Starting June 4 and running 72 hours straight, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) and its members across the United States, Canada and Mexi...

Strengthen Your On-line Presence to Win the Driver Recruiting Game: Part 2

In our last Blog, we discussed how bemoaning the circumstances arrayed against the trucking community is not very productive. What is productive is co...

Strengthen Your Online Presence to Win Driver Recruiting

Actions that the government takes in the interest of trucking safety (CSA, HOS) seem (and often are) incomprehensible, counter-intuitive and, well, cr...

HOS Changes Hard To Digest–Trucking Tales Ep12

"Look, all we gotta' do is make sure the drivers record their detention time as off-duty and the new half-hour-break thing is no big deal," said Bud.

Oil and Gas Boom: What It Means For Trucking

Recently our partners at Benesch issued a white paper entitled:

How Not To Treat Truck Driving Customers | AvatarFleet

Despite the general craziness of the world we live in, it’s always seemed that there are some givens.

Ten Safety Lessons: #10 Take a Look In the Mirror

For some carriers, to call their safety strategy “fatally flawed” is a huge complement. For some, it’s not even that good. That’s because they have no...

Ten Safety Lessons: #9 Use Root Cause Analysis

When things go wrong, what was the real cause? You can ask “Why” five times and go back to the source of the problem. That’s the type of thinking that...

Ten Safety Lessons: #8 Grasp Six Truths About Safety

Truth One Safety is freedom from risk. Accept this truth: you will never be safe. The best you will ever do is reduce risk. "Safety" is relative, not ...

Ten Safety Lessons #7: Treat Distracted Driving As a Canary in the Coal Mine

Hot topics in transportation rise and fall. One of the hottest issues for trucking companies today is how they deal with distracted driving. Distracte...

Ten Safety Lessons: #6 Make Change Management Work For You

Every executive wants to get better results. After all, better is better. Producing “better” is part of the job description. In many ways, the busines...

Ten Safety Lessons: #5 Understand Risk Compensation

In 1982 John Adams of University College, London, published a paper called The Efficacy of Seatbelt Legislation: A Comparative Study of Road Accident ...

Ten Safety Lessons: #4 Hire the Right Drivers

Safety pioneer H.W. Heinrich introduced his domino theory of accident causation in 1932 in his breakthrough paper, Industrial Accident Prevention. The...

Ten Safety Lessons: #3 Install a Safety Resource Center

You need a place for all things safety. This home makes it clear that you are serious about the durability of the safety initiative. It’s a process no...

Ten Safety Lessons: #2 Post No Bills

In the old days, a big part of communication was via posters. That’s how Billboard, the company that ranks top music hits in a plethora of categories,...

Ten Safety Lessons For The Trucking Industry

1. Be Solid, Look Solid Let’s say that a group of investors and entrepreneurs opened a bank on a busy street corner but rather than a stately, columne...

Our Business On Hold?-Trucking Tales Ep11

The deadline for finalizing yearly budgets for Bright Mountain Trucking has come and gone yet little progress has been made.

A Cosa Nostra Pundit Explains CSA–Trucking Tales Ep10

Fritz ate a late dinner with his wife, Mollie, after spending all day at a CSA conference and driving home for two hours. Watching an old Godfather re...

Great Conference – Great People

Wow! Just got back from the ATA Management Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas and it was nothing if not impressive.

Lower Standards to Meet The Driver Shortage?–Trucking Tales Ep9

Hiring and retaining drivers has become much easier for Bright Mountain Trucking since it began employing a systematic approach to hiring and retentio...

What’s Really Going On In The Trucking Business? | AvatarFleet

Change blindness is an amazing phenomenon that demonstrates our perceptual limitations. It refers to incidents in which people fail to notice seemingl...

Plumb the Depths of Youthful Brains to End Driver Shortage?

Bud was perplexed. “What does this mean: ‘Research the cognitive functioning and behavior of 18-25 years-olds that could serve as the basis for gradua...

Sorting Out Health Care Options–Trucking Tales Ep7

Belinda is presenting her findings on health care options to the management team at Bright Mountain Trucking:

CSA: Promises to Keep and Miles To Go

In our 2010 White Paper, The Perversion of Safety in the Transportation Industry, we shared a model for how government intervention causes negative ef...

Roadside Checks: One Down, One To Go

As we predicted in our post below, government roadside checks took a toll on busing companies. "Earlier this month, FMCSA and its state and local law ...

Spring: Roadside Inspection Season Blossoms

It’s Spring. And along with the colorful blooming of azaleas and rhododendrons, it’s that time of year for roadside commercial vehicle inspections to ...

Doubt Cast On Regulator's Effectiveness in Cutting Accidents

We’ve asserted all along that regulations have little if any impact on the frequency of accidents in the transportation sector. Now, researchers at We...

Tax Day Causes More Driving Accidents! | AvatarFleet

You've heard the Kinks song: "The tax mans taken all my dough And left me in my stately home Lazing on a sunny afternoon"

50,000 Motor Carriers Get CSA Warnings...And Counting

When we wrote our White Paper, "CSA 2010: Pain and Suffering", in Summer, 2010, little did we know how predictive it would be.

All of a Sudden: Success-Trucking Tales Ep6

All of a sudden, Bright Mountain’s truck driver staffing problems are getting better. Naturally, this is a prominent topic at the weekly staff meeting...

The Brainstorming Conference-Trucking Tales Ep5

“Okay, let’s review where we’re at.” Jack, head of Bright Mountain Trucking, stood beside a flip chart pad. Several more sheets torn from the pad clun...

Advice From the Presidents-Trucking Tales Ep4

Jack is anxious to get his management going after returning from his monthly Presidents’ Council meeting, a voluntary business group where improvement...

Enlightenment at Annette's Diner-Trucking Tales Ep3

Every Friday, Jack and his management team from Bright Mountain Trucking head to Annette’s for lunch. The food is always top-notch, service is fast an...

So What’s the Problem–Trucking Tales Ep2

Suffering from hiring and turnover problems with truckers, Bright Mountain Trucking has decided to dig deeper. Cary gives his report to the management...

Tractors & Trailers Doing Nothing–Trucking Tales Ep1

“We got tractors and trailers sitting around doing nothing.” Jack, head of Bright Mountain Trucking, reflected on what Fritz told him this morning. It...

Fleets Boost Retention Efforts

The age-old driver shortage has once again become a spotlight issue for the industry. Experts, and others purporting to be experts, are ramping up the...