Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast

18. John Farquhar, Safety Guy Extraordinaire

June 12, 2020 Chris Harris, The Safety Dawg Season 1 Episode 18
Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast
18. John Farquhar, Safety Guy Extraordinaire
Show Notes Transcript

You can get in touch with John:
Email, john.farquhar@execulink.com
Phone, 226 802 2762

Follow John on Twitter, @1975Buick
Connect with John on Linkedin, http://linkedin.com/in/john-farquhar-9b88771a2

Keeping it Safety Dawg Simple!
#truckingsafety
#trucking
#truckdriving

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0 (0s):
If you couldn't remember I was coming, then obviously you don't care. So, so that becomes a big problem. So, so that kind of leads into,

1 (8s):
You know, what is John leaning into? Okay. So that was John Farquhar and he's on the dog on a trucking podcast this week. And he's going to tell you what he is leading into and the experience of being a safety insurance guy on the dog on a trucking podcast. Join us.

2 (28s):


3 (34s):
Welcome to dog on it. Trucking podcast. I'm your host, Chris Harris safety dog. And when it comes to trucking safety, the dog is on it. Please. If you would show your appreciation for the podcast by leaving a thumbs up a comment, a rating, it would help me so much. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you now. Let's get out of there.

2 (57s):


1 (1m 23s):
Johnny. Welcome to the dog on a trucking podcast. How in the heck are you doing?

0 (1m 29s):
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. This is cool. Hey,

1 (1m 33s):
Not a problem. Glad to have you on what the heck have you been doing? I understand that you're doing your own gig.

0 (1m 40s):
Well kind of maybe not sure yet. Yeah. We just kind of changed up what we were doing here at the beginning of may and taking some time off a little rest, do a little distress and unwind and well, I got a lot of stuff around the house needs to be done. So we're going to work on a little bit of that and make the wife happy, happy wife, happy life. I need to list. You got her. You got her. So yeah. So yeah, so we've been contemplating for quite a while, going out on her own and we're going to take a little bit of time.

0 (2m 11s):
I've got a number of people that want to talk with me here in the coming weeks. So we'll, we'll see where it transitions to.

1 (2m 17s):
Well, it's, it's an interesting game at the moment for the listeners. If you're listening to this later, we're still in the middle of COVID-19 at the time of recording. This is a Tuesday and a stage, one of Ontario opening. So I haven't seen a customer in what, six or eight weeks. I forget how long it's been. 10 weeks. Yup. Yup. As soon as I got locked out, I quit saying customers.

0 (2m 45s):
Yeah. I was going to say middle of March anyway, so yeah, so like my last visit was the 16th of March with a customer. And it was very interesting because we sat in a very large room and we in four corners of the room, cause we were honoring the social distancing.

1 (3m 4s):
So, well my last visit, I was quite nervous. Quite honestly, it, it was one that they were begging me to do because they were being non-renewed by some God darn insurance company and then insurance companies. And so I had to go in and see these people. It's a new customer and I walked in and the guy said, okay, we'll combine into my office. Well, we're in a two foot square closet, the two of us, well, it wasn't quite that small, but you know what I mean?

1 (3m 34s):
It was really tight. And he was like, we're both sitting there and her feet are touching type. The situation made me quite nervous. And instead of my usual, several hour long thing, I cut it short. Yep. Yep.

0 (3m 55s):
I was going to say it makes it a little nervous when the guys in the room close enough to fog up your glasses.

1 (3m 59s):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I want to talk to you about safety because, and I think this is really interesting for our listeners not to speak badly about any of the insurance companies, but when I was with an insurance company, I always had to ask permission to do an interview like this and most of the time, yeah, yeah. I got turned down. I couldn't do them. And I recently asked a safety follow up from another insurance company that I won't name the name because he said, no, I can't do these shows.

1 (4m 32s):
They won't let me, which is that's all fair. I understand that. But you're no longer employed by an insurance company. Yes, sir. Recently left. Yes. I'm hoping that you're going to drop some bombs that the listeners will go, Oh my God. Without me. I mean, and when I say bombs, it's not, I'm speaking bad about anybody, but no, I'm talking about the secrets to impressing the safety guy. That's the insurance safety guy.

1 (5m 3s):
You know what I mean? So anyways, what, what are some of the common errors that Johnny would find or John Farquhar would find? Yep. And before, maybe before we get into that, John, sorry. Do you want to say who you are working for? Or do you want to just leave that out?

0 (5m 18s):
Well, you know what? I am very proud of who I was working for. I was working for the guarantee company of North America was a great opportunity. I think a lot of people know me back from my, my days working at Zurich and then left there, took a little hiatus, went over to the guarantee of where we started something that was phenomenal, great opportunity that I think anybody would just love to lap up. And then I think a lot of people are aware that in the late 20, 19 December, as a matter of fact, the guarantee was purchased by intact insurance.

0 (5m 54s):
So I just left that organization. It just wasn't a fit for me as all that's nobody's fault. No one person just was not a work for me. And, and I'd been thinking about for a long time about maybe a moving on there were, since we caught wind that we were sold. So it was this, you know, what needed something to do. It's interesting. Cause I was with Zurich for seven years. I've been with guaranteed for seven years. So I'm thinking there's the seven year trends. So maybe it's time to get out on my own again for seven years.

0 (6m 26s):
See how that goes. They call that the seven year itch, but I thought they were talking about marriages. Oh God, no, there you go. Well, it's kind of like a marriage when you're with the same company for a long time, but either way. Yeah. Either way. It's been an opportunity that I wish on anybody I've learned so much. I've been able to advance my career. My knowledge, my education been great working with both companies, Zurich and, and the guarantee.

0 (6m 56s):
So I can't complain at all. It's it's been fabulous people I worked with have been phenomenal. So it's just now time for the next chapter in my book. Well, in, in some ways, Mmm. Many of the people from Zurich went to the guarantee. So you didn't even the people that you were working with, like Android, it was a really good fit. Yeah. Good team, good atmosphere. We just meshed really well. So, so, and I, and I've met Angelica obviously never worked for Angelica, but she seems like a really good person and somebody great person, great person, very knowledgeable knows her stuff has some great passion and whatnot.

0 (7m 34s):
So yeah. Great person. Yeah. So Hey, tell us about some of the common errors that when you walk in, let me ask you this one. Have you ever had the experience where you walk in and the guy looks at you, the trucking company owner looks at you and goes, Oh shoot. What's that today? Yes. Had a few of those as a matter of fact, you know, and, and usually that starts the meeting off. Well, because it's like, if you could remember I was coming then obviously you don't care. So, so that becomes a big problem.

0 (8m 4s):
So, so that kind of leads into, you know, my thought process. When you said, what are some of the common errors I see, probably the biggest one that I see is culture. Sorry, just what just the, the culture is not right. You know, I kind of look at it as there's two types of cultures. There's that culture where there's profits over safety. And then there's the opposite culture where it's safety over profits, you know, is it, is it negative, positive?

0 (8m 35s):
You call it what you want, bananas, tomatoes, apples, but it is culture. And, and that right away is going to tell you how your meeting's going to go. We're gonna, you know, you start into it, you have that conversation. You're going to get an idea what the culture is like in the first 15 minutes of this operation. Just small talk, I'll tell you what's going on. Right. So when you're in there, what do you see often that, Mmm, well, what are signs of culture? What are you looking for when you say culture?

0 (9m 6s):
So, so first operator way is, you know, we're, we're talking about, I always like to start off my, my meetings with small talk, kind of get a feel for them, share with them a little, my experience, find out what theirs is. It's an opportunity for them to brag about how they're managing their company. It's a great opportunity to tell me what you're good at. And then I'm going to tell you whether you really are or not, but we're also gonna look at what are you not doing that you could be doing much, much better. So the small talk is going to kind of get a little comfort zone, get everybody relaxed a little bit so that we can talk candidly as to what's going on and what our real purpose here is.

0 (9m 46s):
I, I'm not a guy that wants to sit here and look at driver files. I don't want to look at your maintenance files. I want you to tell me about your programs. I'm going to look at them to see if what you're telling me is true, you know, and then that's where we're going to find out if we've got some problems. But if you can't tell me what's going on and how you're managing this company. Yeah. Then maybe the culture's not where it should be. You know, if, if, if you're kidding, your profiles are off the chart yet. Maybe your compliance records are great.

0 (10m 17s):
You can be compliant, but not necessarily safe. So that starts to tell us about the culture that's going on, more interested in making sure I look good, but I'm actually being good. Or am I just lucky? Yeah. Culture has so much to do with it, but you'd mentioned something else. Mmm. I wanted to ask you how important is this interview with the safety person, you know, at Zurich and that the guarantee, what kind of weight does the safety department throat not throw around?

0 (10m 52s):
That's the wrong word, but how about the word influence? What kind of influence does your report have on the underwriting department and therefore on the premiums that the carrier might pay? Yup. So, so to start off with the underwriter would not quote an account unless we went out to see it simple as that they wanted to see the report. They wanted to hear how the interaction with the interview went and the meeting, valuation survey, assessment, whatever you want to be.

0 (11m 23s):
I heard you use the word audit and one of your other videos. So yes, you know what it's, it's all of those rolled into one, but the underwriter wanted to know the underlying, you have a submission comes in a number of documents from the underwriter, or sorry from the broker, the underwriter's going through that, but it doesn't give a picture of the culture. So it's really key that this, this evaluation happens and we called them risk evaluations. And it was very important that we get this information to the underwriter, to give them an idea of what the account is actually doing.

0 (11m 54s):
Right? Yeah. They look okay on paper, but how are they really many times the underwriter would come with us. So there was a lot of weight that went into the, the pricing, our reports at the guarantee were very much influential with the underwriting side, to be able to steer them in the right direction. It didn't give them the number it helped them to derive to the right number is, is how that works. So that's going to be at any insurance company that there's going to be a lot of waiting on that evaluation process and that report.

0 (12m 32s):
And when, in my old days, way back when, and it's been six years now, I've been gone from old Republic. Wow. Yeah. But I used to tell my clients that this interview affects your premium by 20%. You know, if you looked at a hundred grand as a premium, if I wrote a bad report and, and if they still wanted to insure the company, then the premium now going to be at least 110. But if I wrote the extremely favorable report, I could reduce it down to 90.

0 (13m 6s):
Well, that's a 20 point swing. Sure, sure. And so with, with that said, I saw your video on the hard market and I agree a hundred percent with what you're doing, but we could actually add to that a little bit more with this current situation. There's a very good chance that if I write a favorable report, you're not going to see a reduction, not today, but you could see an as his quote, which means you're not going to see anything across the board.

0 (13m 38s):
Most people, most underwriting, and the insurance companies are at least looking for inflation rates, you know, a couple of percent, 3%, 5%. But my report that the detail and the nature, what I put in my report can definitely swing it in the negative. And I've seen it swing at 30%, 35%, depending on how bad you really are. So it can hurt well that, and I know that all the safety departments have enough sway that if they write the report in such a way, Oh, the trucking, company's not getting a quote.

0 (14m 16s):
Exactly. There's many times that, you know, I come back and we can go, you know what? Yeah, it might look good on paper, but when you get down to see the people they're there, their conversation is more about, I just need insurance. Can you get me signed a coming up? How soon can you get my report? And so I can get insurance. I just need insurance. And it's like, you guys, you're not getting it. So back to that culture again, it's like, you just want to keep running. You, you don't care about what it costs to have this in church. You just need it. Yeah. That's for sure. What length of time should a carrier do you think they should allow for safety interview?

0 (14m 54s):
We we're under, we were always trying to strive on that three to four hour Mark. I try not to interrupt your day. But with that said, we've had many, a meeting go five, six hours. And when they go five, six hours, that's a good sign. That means that the customer, the carrier is quite engaged in the conversation. There's going to be a lot of great information being shared back and forth there. Probably if we, if we're getting into that kind of timeline, they're making a lot of notes because that's, what's key to us is if, if we're giving you a lot of information, you should be taking down a lot of notes.

0 (15m 31s):
Cause this is going to help you in the end. So you know what? Three to four hours I think is the norm. But again, they can go longer. If your meeting goes less than two hours, maybe less than an hour, you, you, if you're the carrier, you should be concerned that that didn't go well. Well, certainly if it's a pre quote, if it's a free quote and it's that short. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As my mama used to say, if you ain't got nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all.

0 (16m 5s):
Yeah. So what are some of the things that would, you would put in your report that would make a client uninsurable? What have you seen in the uninsurable? Uninsurable? Yeah, no quote, unsearchable. Okay. Probably something to do with the, the lack of involvement in the meeting. And I think we've all seen these at one time or, or another with regards to, you know, everybody that we know that's in this, in the safety risk management side to go in front of a customer, you know, the person you're conversing with is sitting there busy.

0 (16m 42s):
You know, he's looking at the phone, I got messages, hang on a minute here. You know, it's one thing to say, okay, I want you to take care of business. Cause maybe you're the only guy, but if there's somebody running the operations department and you're supposed to focus on me, but you don't want to, that's going to be a, an indicator right there to go. Yeah. There's a strong one. We don't want to insure these guys. Cause they don't want to make the time for us. Somebody that disregards safety compliance, risk management, you know, driver files their mess and they don't care.

0 (17m 15s):
Safety training is arrived. They don't care. Driver training out in the field, bring trip. Who cares? I ain't got time for that. Who's got time for that. No, no, no. Those are things that are right off the bat are going to get written in that report. They're going to go to the underwriter. We're not hiding anything from the underwriter. We want them to know this is what's going on and this is not looking well. So now on the other hand of that, if I get a guy that goes, Oh yeah, you know what? Oh, this is great. Yeah. Have a look at my driver file. Tell me how good they are and you go, yeah, they're not bad.

0 (17m 46s):
A couple of things. Here's a couple of things you need to do. And, or here's some training you could do by making all kinds of notes. Right. And all kinds of things that we're going to fix that, Oh, I'm going to fix that. I've actually been with customers that have taken my recommendations to heart, right. While where they were sitting there, they had three people in the meeting and the safety director points to one of the girls. He goes, go grab that policy right now, grab the original. Let's look at it. Let's tweak it right here while John's sitting here with us. So boom. They fixed the policy right in front of me. We reworded it.

0 (18m 16s):
And before I left there, they had made 40 copies and stuck them all in the driver's mailboxes. So they had that rectified before I left. That is going to get your big gold stars in the brownie Mark. Yeah. And just for those who are listening and it can't be superficial crap that you're trying to do just to impress the safety guy. It's gotta be something that's substantial. That is truly safety oriented. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Well, one of the key things is, you know, and as you learn this job is you learn body language.

0 (18m 50s):
You get to know who's snowing you. Who's telling you a story. You know what you and I we've been around here a long time. Anybody that's been around this long time knows what it's like, you know, I've owned my own trucking company. I've been the guy on the other side of the desk trying to get insurance, you know, and you know what you can say and you know what your kids saying, you know what you should say. And you know what I know when somebody is trying to tell me something that I want to hear rather than something I should hear. So you get to know them pretty quick and then you get to pick up on them.

0 (19m 22s):
And what's really interesting is when you pick that out and you give it a few minutes during the conversation and you come back to that area again and you find out, Oh, I just got a different answer. Okay, let's try that again. Give it 10 minutes. I'm going to come back with you with a different question, but then the same thing. And I'm going to get a different answer again. Now I know he's not paying attention to what's going on again. That's going to be some bad marks against what you're doing and not sure you're going to be insurable if you can't get with the program. Okay. And this is a question I just thought of just as, as you were speaking, knowing that it is a likely that you're going to hang a shingle out as a safety consultant, you know, that I did six years ago.

0 (20m 7s):
And the reason I did it is I used to sit across the table from some safety consultants who we're very good at compliance. They could make driver files look impeccable. They could make maintenance files, both they, these people could pass an audit in most cases. Yeah. If you scratched a little bit deeper or if you looked at the actual safety record.

0 (20m 38s):
Yeah. So leads me to two questions. If you decide to become a consultant, why? And then maybe before you answer that one,

1 (20m 48s):
How as a safety, an insurance safety person, how do you dig deep enough to know whether this safety consultant is truly having an impact? Because a lot of the companies that I deal with, certainly the 50 trucks and less, and there's hundreds and hundreds of them here in Southern Ontario have safety consultants as a, a very viable management of risk. So when you get in there as a insurance guy, a safety guy, how do you dig deep enough to know whether the it's a safety consultant who doesn't know their shit, or whether it's the owner who won't let the safety consultant do what is actually necessary?

0 (21m 32s):
Well, one of the big problems out there is there are not enough good consultants. I think all, although all the consultants that we know in a kind of tight group and whatnot are great guys. Unfortunately, there are a handful, more that as you say, their compliance people, they're not risk management people. Part of the challenge in this, in this role of being a consultant is to try and get the customer, the carrier, to understand they need to do more than be compliant with my background on insurance.

0 (22m 10s):
I think that's a big asset because I can go guys. I know what they're looking for. When they're trying to quote you, I know what they're looking for. And it's more than compliance. It's it's back to that culture. It's like, how are you going above and beyond? Don't sit there and wave your CVOR and go, Oh, I pass my audit. I'm 82%. I'm okay. No, there's so much more that you could be doing. And you're probably not because even all the good customers that I had in my career here, not everybody was perfect and they admit that, but there are a lot of them that go, I'm good, but I want to be better.

0 (22m 51s):
And those are the ones that are going, help me. What do I need to do? What am I not doing that I could do to be better at what I'm doing? The unfortunate aspect is those guys that are skimping by aren't asking those questions of their consultant or of their insurance specialist. They're more just interested in how do I keep the doors open and how do I make money? The problem is it's been proven time and time again, that if I invest in my safety department, my risk management department provide training to my drivers on a regular basis.

0 (23m 25s):
I can actually save more money. Then I would, if I cut all those things out, cause they're not taking into account the money they spend on damages violations, convictions, driver, turnover, like these are all horrendous costs that you don't need to endure. If you invested half that money into your safety culture, you'd cut out a lot of those things and you'd find out, wow, I actually make a better profit because you might think the insurance company is going to pick up those claims.

0 (23m 58s):
But every time you have a claim, they're just going to keep adding to your premium and it's going to keep going up.

1 (24m 4s):
Well, not just adding to the premium. If the client would understand that the insurance company has to make money and you have the insurance company, most of them tell us that they have a 30% operating cost or overhead. Yep, yep. Spot on. Yep. If you have a 65% loss ratio, you add 30 points to that to cover the building and salaries for the insurance company. You're at 95. All of them want to make a 5% underwriting, profit.

1 (24m 35s):
Yup. And so exactly above 65% loss ratio, if they renew you right now, they're going to add a lot to it because he wants you well below 65% loss ratio.

0 (24m 48s):
Yup. Yup. Yup. Exactly. Well, and you'd hit the nail on the head there in your last video about the hard market where I've seen it myself, where we've had customers with very low loss ratio, but their lack of safety commitment is what got them a non-renewal because the potential was there. You know, we've got policy limits that we see hit on a regular basis. I think the norm prior to the hard market was $5 million limitations.

0 (25m 23s):
Now we're seeing two insurance companies don't want to give you 5 million anymore. They're afraid to give you 5 million. You've got to go look for it somewhere else in the reinsurance. So you gotta be really, really, really good to get that 5 million. And there are even some carriers out there that require 10 or 20 million because of what they're hauling the product and whatnot. And you know what? I had a number of those clients and they were really good. And you know what? Underwriting had no problem writing 10 million, $20 million policies.

0 (25m 55s):
But my continual visits had to keep that going. You had to make sure that you guys stayed the course, you did what you were supposed to to keep those kinds of terms and conditions in place. So, and those are the guys that are always gone. What can I do more? What else can, what do you hear out there that I could do better? What can I do here? It's like, wow, you're using telematics out. The wazoo you're training. You're hiring your qualifying of your drivers is repetitive to the point where it's fabulous. You don't have any losses. Your, your, your carrier profiles are all in single digits. That's like, you're doing a great job.

0 (26m 26s):
Wait, can you do more? Keep it up. And, and let's talk about maybe a new tweak or maybe a quality assurance process or something along that line. But it's encouragement to keep them going. That course. Cause it takes a lot of resources. There's no doubt about it, but they will admit it's cheaper doing it safer.

1 (26m 46s):
Well it's cheaper and the owner can sleep good at night. Yep. Yep. One of the reasons I don't want to be a safety guy for a trucking company anymore is I don't want that 2:00 AM phone call to say we wrecked a truck. I just, I I'm out of that, but I'm too old for that stuff. I'll say stuff. Exactly. You know, and that was episode 14 was the hard market. Yeah. You also talked about telematics and I would encourage the listeners.

1 (27m 19s):
I offhand, I don't know the episode number, but word Workington from fleet metric does a great job of I'm handling all kinds of stuff. So give that a listen to it. Might've been episode 11, I'm guessing, but I'm not sure, but ward working tendency he's in the list there. So do that. But yeah, we are in a hard market. Like good. Well, as I told you,

0 (27m 45s):
Go ahead. I was going to say, tell Tel telematics is so key right now. It's if you're not using telematics, then you're, you're not using all the tools in your toolbox. It really, really disheartening when you go to see a customer and go, Oh yeah, we've got Omnitracs in the trucks. Cool. What do you pull from it? Nothing. We just use it for ELD. Well really like, cause you could be doing so much more, you know, people need to think of what are the consequences of not utilizing these services.

0 (28m 15s):
And, and one of them right off the bat is I could save my bacon in court. If I utilize these services, learn from the data that comes out of it and improve my operations by utilizing that data, you know, it could help me put into place some training programs that I didn't think of. Heartbreak over speed, following too close, a hard cornering, all these great tools at your fingertips, but people go, I just use it for ELD. You know? And it's like, well, that's not going to cut it. You've got to get with the program nowadays because the courts are going to go, well, you had it at your fingertips, but you didn't use it.

0 (28m 50s):
So therefore you're not really bought into the program. So we could have prevented that collision if you'd done something, but you didn't. So guess what? We're going to write a big check.

1 (28m 59s):
Oh, also you've got as a trucking company, they may have it at their disposal. And if they don't use it, the prosecuting attorney sure. As hell will

0 (29m 8s):
Definitely. Yes they will. They love it. They eat that up. No problem. You can't destroy that evidence.

1 (29m 15s):
So they're going to use it against you. Yup. Exactly. And I can't tell you how many customers I'd ask. Well, what do you do about heartbreaking? And this is before yields. Well, how do I know about heartbreaking

0 (29m 29s):
ECM? Like you download it and yeah. Yep. You can pull those off on a monthly basis and whatnot, you know, or quarterly at least. But yeah. There's no reason why you couldn't have been using that information. But now with ELD is in place. Everybody's, there's always, there's a telematics aspect to ELD and all the trucks. There's no reason why you can't be using some of that information. Yeah. It's just it's mind blowing to me. Okay. What other tips or tricks or things would you like to see to the audience and how to get ready for their insurance audit their, their safety insurance audit?

0 (30m 9s):
Well, I guess, I guess the, the, the one thing I look at is not all insurance companies and not all risk teams are created equal. They're, you know, we won't get into the bads and the crux of it, but everybody's looking for a little different than others. I encourage people that when you start that conversation with your risk specialist, your insurance precedence, your lost profession specialist, whatever, from the insurance company, when he calls up and says, Hey, yeah, I want to come out and do a, an evaluation and audit and assessment and interview and a survey, whatever it be.

0 (30m 44s):
You need to start asking him some questions right there. Don't go. Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll see you at two on a Tuesday. No, no, you need to go. Okay, cool. What would you like me to have prepared for you for that evaluation meeting? I want to be ready for you. Who would you like me to have at that meeting so that we can have everybody at the table. Now, if it's coming from me 99% of the time I send you a list, I send you a list. I'm looking for driver management, vehicle management, loss management, safety management programs.

0 (31m 19s):
I'm looking for the operations of the company where you travel, where you go, we're looking at your crash data. We want to look at your carrier profile information. And while we're at it, I want everybody at the table. I want to see the owner of the company at the table. I want the manager at the table, the GM. I want to see the operations guy at the table. I want to see the safety manager at the table. And you know what, when it comes time, I'd like to see the maintenance manager at the table as well. So there's five folks right off the bat that should be at that table and they should be taking this seriously.

0 (31m 51s):
Now there's some of these folks that are not going to need to be at that whole meeting, but they should be available so that we can call them in during the time period. That is most pertinent to them, nothing worse than talking to the general manager who kind of oversees the safety department, but he knows nothing about what the maintenance guy does. And it's like, but you've got this carrier profile of all these defects. What are we doing here? Why don't we talk to the maintenance manager and find out you find out he doesn't even know anything about it because nobody shares the profile with him. So these are things that all of a sudden come out of the woodwork during the conversation.

0 (32m 23s):
So if we have all these folks at the table, we can probably enlighten them. If not, they're going to get their eyes opened real quick to go. I didn't know that was available. Why didn't anybody share that with me? So now we can get a collaboration of teamwork. And on top of that, we get calibration between the team members. So everybody knows, I need to know this now, how do I get this information from you? Mr. Safety manager.

1 (32m 48s):
So that's awesome. I think you're right. That in that, not enough, certainly maintenance managers know what the SMS is, know what the CVOR is, know how to read it and identify issues. Yeah. That can be found there.

0 (33m 4s):
Oh, so he's and why they don't collaborate, you know, the good companies. And I'll be honest with you, the good companies they collaborate, you know, they meet regularly. They have a board room meeting and the safety manager comes into general manager, the safety manager, the owner of the company, the maintenance manager, you know, all five of those guys and more are at that meeting. And they're going, okay, what are we doing? How are we doing it? And when I go to meet with them, they're all there at the meeting. Even if it's just a, Hey, I'm stopping in for a midterm visit, see how life's going. They're all there. Cause they all got questions.

0 (33m 35s):
They all want to know, Hey, we got ran into this situation. Or what have you heard about this in the industry? We heard this new rule coming out. What, when does that come in? Do you know anymore? You know, I'm supposed to be a resource to them, but I can't be a resource if they're not going to be there to receive the information.

1 (33m 50s):
Yeah. Yeah. There's so, so many of them just don't appreciate what the safety people from the insurance companies can bring the expertise and not to know the inner workings of any one company, but I'll share the numbers with old Republic. And I would think they're similar six years ago when I was there, I used to have 60 to 80 clients that were actually clients. And then I would probably see over, along with them all the different pre quotes.

1 (34m 20s):
So I'd see over a hundred different trucking companies in a year. Well, yeah, you see a hundred different ways guide. You can get some good ideas sometimes.

0 (34m 30s):
Oh God. Yes. Very much so. Very much so well, because the concept is when we go in, we're not telling them what they have to do. I'm not there to run your company for you, but I'm trying to give you some information. Some tidbits that I learned from this guy over here, which would be really good or I've seen this when I ran my own trucking company, here's something that worked very well for me. But at the same time, if you take what I shared and you go, okay, I didn't follow it to the rule, but I went this direction and I went this far. Wow. This has really turned out.

0 (35m 0s):
Awesome. I'm going to go, that's great. Let me pay you on the back. And then while I'm at it, I'm going to take that information and share it with this guy over here. Cause he could use that. That's awesome. And the real good guys going to go. Well, take one of my business cards, give them my card. I'd be happy to show them what I did to make that work. You know, because there's no plagiarism in safety. And if guys can share with one another, we can all be better for it.

1 (35m 22s):
Wow. That, and let me just say something about being a safety consultant. I've taken 15 years of that exposure and become a safety consultant in John work. How many years in safety? You, you said seven and seven. So you've got a boat 15 years as well in, well, we'll talk about before that.

2 (35m 44s):
Yeah.

1 (35m 46s):
Well, I mean, I know you were a safety manager for a trucking company, but you know, like you got years of safety experience. I was in TMT safety department before my 15 years with insurance, you know? So I mean, I don't know how many years, 20, 23 years of safety stuff, a youth, you're not as old as I am, even though you've got a little more gray

2 (36m 12s):
Spots,

1 (36m 13s):
My mine's thin, but it makes it easier during this time to get a haircut, right? God, anyways. So I would encourage the listeners and the viewers to take advantage of John's expertise. If he does decide to hang a shingle out and down below in the show, notes will be John's contact info. So if you wanted to reach out to them, they're certainly available. But you know, John brings 20 some odd years.

1 (36m 44s):
How many years of safety experience drive? Hi, I'm pushing just over 30 now. Okay. So 30 years he's got more safety experience than I got hold it. What are you doing on my show? I haven't figured out how to work the computer as good as you yet. So I'm not there you keep going. So I'm happy to refer John. Cause I know he knows this stuff, John and I worked together at different projects and stuff.

1 (37m 14s):
So there's a great deal of respect for John our anyways, any last words, John? Mmm, not that I can think of off the top of my head. We've talked about some great job leaks and whatnot. I guess the biggest thing is hopefully your listeners are listening and, and, and it's, don't be afraid of the safety guy. Don't be afraid of your safety consultant and keep in mind, you're paying them. So you want them to provide a service to you.

1 (37m 44s):
So ask them, what can you do for me? How can you help me be better at what I'm doing? Safety consultants are going to do that. Safety managers, safety risk guys with insurance companies are there. I love it. When a customer goes, yeah, this is what I'm struggling with. I really need to help John. Can you give me a hand with this love to let me help you out? What can we do? Oh God, this is, I got some stuff. We've got some tools let's do this. Let's do that. You know, or you know what? I got one of my other customers who've built a really cool solution for that. Let me get in touch with him and let's put you two together and, and it's phenomenal when you get that.

1 (38m 17s):
And I feel good. Being able to help somebody to better manage it themselves. Yeah, that's perfect that way. Hey guys, John, I want to thank you for being on the dog on it. Trucking podcast. Thanks so much, buddy. No problem. Appreciate it. It was awesome. I hope you love the show

3 (38m 36s):
As much as I did. Please leave us a, like a thumbs up a review, a comment, a rating. If it is, thank you so much. And I do really appreciate your time and join us again next week for another exciting

2 (38m 54s):
.