5 Ways to Improve Fleet Safety and Reduce Trucking Insurance Costs

Every fleet manager knows that safety is about more than just good road etiquette. Safe driving reduces incidents of damage, legal complications. driver injuries, and can even reduce the cost of your commercial truck insurance. This means that every safety initiative serves a dual purpose to both secure your fleet and improve your budget. There are many precautions you can take that will both improve the daily safety experiences of your drivers, but also provide credible proof to your insurance company that your fleet is a lower risk to insure.

The following five strategies can be used to improve fleet safety and reduce your truck insurance premiums.

1. Keep a Maintenance Schedule

The best fleet maintenance is set to a schedule. You can predict your fleet’s maintenance needs using the average lifespans and recommended maintenance schedules for each truck model and year. This is the ideal way to achieve preventative maintenance so that all your belts are replaced and fluids are changed long before a problem has a chance to arise. Keeping a preventative maintenance schedule ensures that nothing is missed and your maintenance team is always on the lookout for signs of trouble, thus ensuring that you avoid catastrophic failures on the road.

2. Install Telematics and Track Safety Data

Telematics are a powerful way to monitor fleet safety and prove to your truck insurance provider that your fleet is a good insurance investment. Telematics are often used to secure lower rates, while also providing useful insights for fleet management.

These details are collected directly through each vehicle’s internal computer, outputting data like velocity, turn radius, and how hard your drivers are braking on the road. You can post this information on leaderboards to celebrate safe drivers and encourage your team to drive safely and send the same data to your insurance provider to lower your rates.

3. Provide Drivers with Supplementary Safety Training

It’s never too late to train your drivers in defensive driving and how to handle difficult driving situations. Supplemental safety training can refresh any driver’s capabilities, reinforcing the importance of safe driving techniques while working on your fleet. In-line safety training can also instill new drivers with advanced safety practices such as how to get through an icy patch on the road in winter, how to navigate areas with high foot traffic, or what to do if the truck acellerates too much when going downhill.

4. Adapt Your Fleet to Each Season

Make sure to update your fleet trucks for each season. In late fall, change out tires for tires that can handle ice and snow, and replace fluids with winter-weight oil and alcohol-based wiper fluid. Then change to summer tires and fluids in mid spring. This will ensure that your fleet is always ready for optimum safety on the road in seasonal weather.

5. Install Interior and Exterior Dash Cameras

Dash cameras are another great way to both collect useful data for fleet management and provide valuable proof of safety to your commercial truck insurance provider. Exterior dash cams will show instances when other drivers create a dangerous road environment or may be responsible for any accidents your trucks could be involved in. Internal dash cams show driver behavior including attentiveness, proper use of tools and mirrors, and safe overall conduct.

Safety and Savings in One Move

Improving the safety of your fleet provides many opportunities for savings. You save on emergency repairs and downtime by preventing catastrophic parts failures on the road. You save in accidents avoided with safe driving and seasonal readiness. But you can also save on your fleet insurance costs y proving the safety measures taken to protect your drivers , fleet, and the world around you. Contact us today to learn more about commercial trucking insurance and how to get the best policies. We provide commercial or owner operator insurance in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Iowa,Tennessee, Nebraska and Florida.