As the trucking industry began to climb out of the recession in 2010, carriers were scrambling to find a competitive advantage over their peers. With the dawn of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance Safety Accountability program, carriers searching for efficiency gains also were tasked with improving their safety performance.
In 2009, Minnesota became a pilot state for the CSA program, and J&R Schugel Trucking – a 600-truck refrigerated and dry van carrier based in New Ulm, Minn. – began to take a closer look at new procedures it could implement to improve its safety scores.
The 3-mph rule
By mid-2011, not only were accidents a concern, J&R Schugel also was facing challenges with driver satisfaction at a time when the industry-wide driver shortage was rearing its head. Company executives knew that being seen as a driver-friendly fleet was crucial to its growth and future success.
J&R Schugel operates its trucks with speed governors set to 65 mph. When the company instituted a new guideline in 2011 that asked drivers to go no faster than 62 mph, naturally it was met with skepticism.
From a safety standpoint, the difference between driving 65 mph and 62 mph can be huge, says Clay Merches, J&R Schugel’s vice president of safety and human resources. A truck traveling at 65 mph equates to 95.33 feet per second; at 62 mph, the truck is traveling almost 5 feet per second slower. “That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it could be the difference in stopping short of a rear-end collision,” says Merches.
During the rollout, Merches laid out how slower speeds affect drivers. Over the course of 11 drivable hours per day, the maximum time loss is roughly 33 minutes. But, as Merches points out, J&R Schugel’s drivers average less than 7.5 hours of driving per day, and on average only three hours per day are spent in 65-mph zones, equating to a maximum potential time loss of only nine minutes.
