Safety

Incident Management Software vs. Spreadsheets: Which is Right for You?

It’s an unfair world out there. Transportation companies are seeing 20 percent to 30 percent year-over-year increases in insurance costs, caused by ge...

How Incident Management Software Can Lower Operational Costs

Accidents happen – how your drivers respond and manage the incident can make all the difference when navigating claims. As a Safety Director, it’s you...

Best Incident Management Software for Motor Carriers

As a transportation Safety Director, keeping your drivers — and other motorists — safe on the roads is tough. When you factor in your other responsibi...

8 Steps to Roll Out In-Cab Cameras at Your Fleet

Some business decisions are a tough call, while others are a no-brainer. In-cab cameras are one of the easy decisions. They pay for themselves the fir...

FMCSA Expands Crash Preventability Determination Program (CPDP): What Safety Directors Need to Know

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) expanded its Crash Preventability Determination Program (CPDP) to 21 crash types, including in...

What's The Best Fleet Maintenance Software?

Adding technology is one of the first things motor vehicle carriers can do to improve as they ascend from a good company to a great company. Technolog...

The Core 4 Metrics Safety Directors Should Be Looking At Each Week

You know the old saying: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure?”

3 Things Safety Directors Should Know About AvatarFleet

As a Safety Director, you spend a lot of your day as the Chief Firefighter. You have to grow the fleet, reduce accidents and remain DOT compliant, amo...

What Should You Use to Teach Online Bus Operator Training?

You’re probably reading this because you’re tired of planning bus operator training.

Overcoming Common Challenges of Truck Driver Training

When done well, training your CDL A truck drivers results in reduced accidents, a more efficient operation, lower cost of loss, and saved lives.

4 Reasons to Consider a Mobile Training App for CDL Drivers

Training CDL drivers often comes with wasted time, big budgets, and mixed results. Of course, not providing adequate training is an even worse option....

Hiring Drivers With No Experience: What Should You Do?

Here’s one of the most popular search terms from motor carriers: how to hire drivers.

The ABC’s of Defensive Driving

This blog was updated on December 15, 2021.

Safety and Compliance: Beat Nuclear Verdicts and Your Competition

It has never been more important to be safe and compliant. Such was the message driving Transport Topics’s webinar on nuclear verdicts and tort reform...

The 3 Biggest Mistakes Driver Trainers Make

Think back to your elementary school classroom. Was it a peaceful, controlled, and relaxed environment? Much to the chagrin of your teacher, probably ...

5 Topics To Be Teaching in Your Truck Driver Safety Training

I got a call the other day from a client who’s worked with us for many years. We first met him back in 1999. At the time he was senior vice president ...

Developing a Fleet Accident Response Plan

Accidents cost you money. Worse yet, they get people hurt or even killed. Your best bet is to work to prevent accidents from happening. But what’s you...

What is a Fleet Audit?

Like most people in the trucking industry, the idea of an audit probably makes your skin crawl. However, we’re not talking about the DOT. We’re talkin...

Fleet Vehicle Maintenance and Repair Tips to Keep Your Drivers Safe

You need simple solutions to reduce your fleet’s cost of loss. One way to do so is to focus on fleet vehicle maintenance and repairs.

Earn NATMI Certification Renewal Points for Training We Offer

Earn points towards NATMI certification renewal with AvatarFleet’s professional safe driving training programs.

Are Your Non-CDL Drivers Following These Steps Before Driving to a Job?

Your non-CDL light-duty vehicle drivers face tremendous risk out on the road. Other people, road conditions, and weather all create chances for seriou...

How Often Should You Do Safety Training?

If you want to get in shape and stay in shape, it’s not enough to spend a week lifting weights and running. You need to keep-up with an exercise routi...

Why Your Company Needs Monthly Safety Meetings

It isn’t enough to train your drivers when you first hire them. They need to be re-trained, re-trained again, and then re-trained some more. And here’...

The Importance of an LMS For Your Safety Training

Traditionally, training takes up a lot of time, money, and resources. You need to gather everyone together, pay a trainer to flip through a powerpoint...

6 Strategies For Effective Online Defensive Driving Training

Training your employees in defensive driving today isn’t the same as it was a year ago. What can you do to continue keeping your drivers safe in all t...

How to Build Safety Training into Your New Hire Orientation

Do you trust your new-hires to get behind the wheel? Do you trust them to avoid risk and prevent accidents on the job site? Or, are you holding your b...

How to Use Driver Mentors For Safety Training

One of the best ways to reduce your accident rates is to give your employees essential safety training right from the time of hire. However, it can be...

How to Create a Safety-Centric Culture

How can you influence your employees to care about safety as much as you do? What will it take to get your employees to think, breathe, and dream abou...

Why Driver's Ed Isn't Enough: The Importance of Professional Driver Training

Do your employees drive in order to fulfill vital job duties? If the answer’s yes, you have professional drivers.

How to Build a Safety Training Program in One Month

Maybe you’ve just been tasked with quickly developing a safety training program for your organization. Or, in the most unfortunate of circumstances, m...

When Does It Make Sense to Outsource Safety Training?

Do you spend time and energy creating your own in-house driver safety training materials? Or have you outsourced safety training?

Light-Duty Fleet Safety Tips: What Your Drivers Should Know

Driving is the riskiest thing your employees do.

Why You Need an LMS for Your In-House Safety Training

How many hours out of your week does your in-house safety training program eat-up?

Why You Should Provide Online Driver Training

You care about the safety of your employees. It’s why you host safety meetings, correct your employees’ unsafe behaviors, and read our blog posts. How...

Introducing LLLC Remote

Online defensive driving training used to be watching a video to check the box. The goal was to prove in court that you tried. We always thought it wa...

Updates To The Hours Of Service Regulations

In May, Congress elected to make changes to the existing hours of service rules in order to give truckers more flexibility in their work that will go ...

Solving The Driver Problem, Episode 7: John Liberatore

John Liberatore from Primacy Risk Services sits down with Scott to talk about how companies can protect their drivers and themselves from lawsuits bro...

Preventing Your Nuclear Verdict

Foster v. Landstar Ranger is an infamous case in the trucking industry. The 2011 case was filed by a Georgia woman in 2007 who was looking to hold a t...

Professional Driver Safety is a Way of Life

Brian Fielkow wrote a terrific article on the rising cost of liability insurance and the negative impact it’s having on the trucking industry. Fielkow...

Tax Credit for CDL Training Expenses

Finally, a tax break for the trucking industry! This is big. Unlike the old joke that begins with, “Hi I’m from the government and I’m here to help yo...

Solving The Driver Problem With Recruiting & Retaining Part 2

In December of 2019, AvatarFleet President Scott Rea joined podcast host Chad Hendricks on an episode of Recruit & Retain: Trucking Edition. The e...

Better Dispatchers Lead to Better Retention

Your dispatchers could be causing you turnover. Of course, they don’t mean to, but we hear it from drivers time and time again. Drivers often quit bas...

Building A Safety Culture Builds Safe Drivers | AvatarFleet

This blog post was updated on March 31, 2021.

AvatarFleet Hosts LLLC Certification with OTA on October 15

Telematics - Where To Look For ROI

How to Train Your Drivers to Avoid Distractions

Distracted driving is, simply put, risky. By definition, risk is the possibility of suffering harm or loss. You risk a lot when you drive distracted. ...

Prevent Distracted Driving and Save More Lives

Summer is here and with so much sunshine, driving has suddenly become enjoyable. The grey skies and wintery conditions are gone. Everyone is rolling d...

Grand Champion, Ralph Hamilton, Headed Back to Nationals

Ralph Hamilton won the South Carolina Truck Driving Championships on May 5 in Columbia, South Carolina. The Grand Champion will be headed to Pittsburg...

CDL Finishing School Is a Necessity

The average age of an over the road truck driver is 55 years old. Swapping 55-year-olds from company to company in an endless shell game will get you ...

How To Prevent Technological Distractions

If you’ve been in the transportation industry for a long time, you know as well as anyone that things have changed a lot. The days of paper logs, road...

Safety Leadership: Can Do / Will Do

Safety Leadership: Behaviorism

How to Prevent Accidents at Your Terminal

At AvatarFleet, we love safe drivers. That’s why we always have our ear to the ground when it comes to accident data. It’s also why we hate to see FMC...

Safety Leadership: Management and Safety

Safety Leadership: Norms and Safety

Safety Leadership: Rules and Safety

This is a continuation of our blog series on Safety Leadership. In the last article, we explained Avatar’s five-step risk management model and said mo...

Safety Leadership: The Risk Management Model

This is a continuation of our blog series on Safety Leadership. In the first blog, we defined safety as “Freedom from risk.” And, based on that defini...

Safety Leadership: What We Can Learn From Accidents

Safety Leadership: You Break It, You Buy It

Creating Viable Career Paths for Truck Drivers

Driving a truck can be a stable lifelong career but the lifestyle has contributed to the driver problem in America today. More than any other element,...

Safety Leadership: Getting Started

For several months my team has been asking me to write an ebook on Safety Leadership. At first, this would seem to be an easy task. After all, we’ve c...

How to Choose a Driver Training Program: Typical Challenges

This article serves as Part 3 of 3 in a series on Choosing a Driver Training Program

9 Keys To Safe Professional Driving

Professional driving is a tough gig. It’s also one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. That’s because driving any kind of vehicle is a dangerous ...

How to Choose a Driver Training Program: Desired Outcomes

This article serves as Part 2 of 3 in a series on Choosing a Driver Training Program

How to Choose a Driver Training Program: Learning Domains

This article serves as Part 1 of 3 in a series on Choosing a Driver Training Program

Why You Need Driver Finishing School

Distracted Driving - Why I Chose to Die | AvatarFleet

Online Driver Safety Training: What You Need to Know

If you want quality, outcome-based online driver safety training, you need to understand what goes into creating a successful design. It’s all about y...

What is Defensive Driving? And How We Teach It

During the past 27 years we've developed professional driver education and training for dozens of leading transportation companies. Most of the curric...

The Truck Driving Championships: A Great Driver Retention Tool

3 Steps to Enhance Your Safety Culture

Where Does Truck Driver Safety Start? | AvatarFleet

How Build a Culture of Safety Leadership

Broken Windows and Driver Safety

In 1993, Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor of New York City based, in part, on a “get-tough-on-crime” platform. Although he was a controversial characte...

Similarities Between Marriage and Truck Safety | AvatarFleet

Are you married? Odds are, yes. Currently in America, 52 percent of all adults are married. That means at least 121,600,505 of them chose to say “I do...

The Only Acceptable Goal is ZERO Accidents | AvatarFleet

Professional driving is a dangerous business. By the simple fact that professional drivers spend eight to twelve hours on the road each day, they find...

6 Tips To Keep in Mind When Backing Up Your Semi | AvatarFleet

We have a saying here at AvatarFleet: Parked cars don’t have accidents, people do. If you back into something, it’s your fault and yours alone (not to...

How to Conduct a Successful Safety Meeting

Safety meetings can be a powerful asset in your toolbox for a strong safety campaign. In trucking however, it’s difficult to get everyone in the same ...

Driving in Adverse Weather Conditions

In Northeast Ohio, we make small talk over weather because it changes like a playlist on shuffle. We know what we’re going to get, but we don’t know w...

3 Safest Truck Drivers on the Biggest Subjects in Trucking

Safe Driving Begins With Behavior, Not Technology

What To Think of Self-Driving Trucks

One of the hottest topics in trucking the past couple of years has been the self-driving truck. We’ve all heard or read about beer trucks driving them...

5 Reasons To Road Test New Drivers

It’s one of the most common things that happens when you hire a new driver. A driver used to drive for the company down the road. He or she decided th...

Ten Things Truck Drivers Get Pulled Over For

Join The Push For Better Driver Safety

Refocus on Safety During High Accident Periods

4 Keys to a Safer Trucking Company

Our friend Brian Fielkow published this great article on tips to build a strong safety culture for Inbound Logistics. The article makes several points...

Confident Drivers Are Safe Drivers 

You have a group of drivers beginning their orientation this week. They have all passed their written tests and have been cleared to get started. Some...

Solve Driver Turnover By Teaching Your Team Problem Solving 

By now, this blog has taught you that to solve driver turnover takes practice, effort and time. One answer isn’t going to cut it for every trucking co...

Tracking New Driver Progress

Few things are more critical to driver retention than communication. It is so important that you establish effective communication with your new drive...

Train Your Drivers To Help Other Drivers

Trucking companies have taken great pains to help new drivers get used to their jobs. They have upped bonuses, splurged on extra training, maybe even ...

Trucking Accidents What Are They & How To Prevent Them

There are too many trucking accidents out on the road. According to the most recent data from the FMSCA, there were 97,000 truck/bus injury collisions...

Truck Driver Training

Is truck driver training old school? Is it no longer relevant in 2017? Hardly, but some trucking companies seem to treat it that way. In the never-end...

Truck Driving Is Dangerous, Learn How To Decrease The Risk

The National Safety Council recently issued a report that traffic fatalities were up 9 percent in the first half of last year. The numbers show nearly...

Highway Deaths Spiked! This Should Impact Your Fleet Training 

Despite efforts by the government and safety agencies, highway deaths continue to rise, reversing positive trends from past decades. No extra rules or...

Truck Driver Training Saves Lives 

We’re passionate about driver safety. We live to reduce the frequency of accidents and injuries for our client trucking companies. That’s why we produ...

The Best Time To Prevent a Driving Accident 

Have you ever wondered when is the best time to discuss an accident? I wanted to do just that a number of years ago. I wanted to dig into the details ...

Don't Be A Victim of Safety Fatigue

There is such a thing as "safety fatigue".

Technology Can’t Prevent 94% of Accidents 

Our loyal readers know that safety is freedom from risk, which means you’re never completely safe. Putting trucks on the road means your company is al...

The Safety Professional’s Paradox: Rules Versus Risk 

We have written extensively on safety and risk management, and the impotence of federal regulations on highway safety. You read that right: impotence,...

You’re Upside Down – Put Drivers On Top of Your Org Chart

How to Train for Winter Driving Safety

A belly full of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes means that winter is right around the corner. Already, we’ve started to see winter-like weather ...

Focus on Behaviorally-Based Driver Training

There is no substitute for effective truck driver safety training. You can add all the technology in the world to your trucks, but in the end, you’ll ...

Top 10 Reasons Truck Drivers Leave Companies | AvatarFleet

In January 2008, Deborah Lockridge, published an article in Heavy Duty Trucking listing the top ten reasons drivers quit one company only to go to ano...

How to Build a Safety Culture Through Safety Leadership

This blog post was updated on February 10, 2021.

Teach Your Truck Driver Risk Avoidance | AvatarFleet

Truck driver risk was in full view of the nation as thousands of cars were stuck in Atlanta during a two-inch snowfall. There were over 1200 accidents...

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

CSA scores DO matter.

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...

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...