Truck driver families learn to live with the uncertainty, the tension, and the danger of having their loved ones out on the road. But even the most patient and understanding of families still yearn for time together. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays … especially holidays built around family time, like Christmas.
As a fleet manager, you are doing more than taking care of operations. You are taking care of people—your drivers, your employees, their families. You do that by keeping a focus on safety. It is safety that brings your people back home.
See also: A salute to truck drivers
Now heading into the Christmas holiday, safety means thorough planning. Winter weather can alter your standard routes, affect delivery schedules, and demand immediate changes. You and your team need to review lessons learned last winter and have alternate routes, additional parking locations, and customer communications ready. Safety trumps time in transit. Waiting behind a snowplow is time well spent when it means your drivers have a clear road ahead.
And it is not just your drivers and trucks which must be prepared. Your dispatchers should have immediate access to weather reports and road closure information. Your safety team should be on alert if a skidding motorist ends up alongside one of your trucks. Your sales staff should be on the phones, letting customers know that your drivers will deliver happy holidays safely, if not precisely on time.
When you have done more than just taking care of operations, when you have taken care of your staff, do one more thing and write a holiday letter to the truck driver families.
Share all the steps you and your team take in the interest of truck driver safety. Tell them how the time and hard work of their special person means that others will enjoy a better holiday season and a brighter new year. Make sure the families are invited to any company celebration you may have planned. Most of all, let them know the sincere wish that you and your team extend to all families… if I can paraphrase the song … that “They’ll be home for Christmas.”
Happy holidays to all!
Steve Vaughn is vice president of field operations at PrePass Safety Alliance, the provider of PrePass weigh station bypass and electronic toll-payment and management services. Vaughn served nearly three decades with the California Highway Patrol and is a past president of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.
