Dot Foods cuts high-risk drivers from 2,200 to 30 with data coaching
Private fleets can't replace drivers anymore, so they're scoring behavior and coaching the bottom 10% instead of firing them. Dot Foods' system costs $250,000 but prevents one crash.
Dot Foods runs 2,200 trucks and used to fire struggling drivers. Now it scores every driver zero to 100 and coaches anyone above 70 until their number drops. As of mid-September, only 30 drivers scored above 70.
The shift happened because qualified drivers are too expensive to replace and nuclear verdicts make every crash a fleet-ending risk. Tim Eckhardt, senior director of safety at Dot Transportation, said fleets can no longer assume they can dismiss a struggling driver and hire someone better.
How does Dot Foods score driver risk?
Dot's scoring system runs zero to 100. Zero is the best performance. Drivers above 70 get a professional development plan and monitoring. The company focuses on the bottom 10% to 20% of its driver population, though that group changes constantly as performance improves or deteriorates.
Eckhardt said the company used to dig through spreadsheets and go off gut instinct to identify high-risk drivers. Now it uses data from cameras, telematics, and safety systems to track distraction and speeding patterns.
Drivers who continually speed can have their trucks electronically governed to address the behavior. Professional development plans include coaching, additional training, ride-alongs, and technology designed to change specific behaviors.
What does the coaching program cost?
Dot's technology investment runs about $250,000. Eckhardt said that expense pays for itself if it prevents a single accident of comparable cost.
The company also tied driver performance to compensation. Its quarterly driver safety bonus has grown to nearly 10% of driver income, giving employees a financial incentive to meet safety metrics.
Hayden Cardiff, vice president of safety solutions at Descartes, said fleets increasingly have the opposite problem from a lack of information. Trucks and back-office systems generate so much data that safety departments struggle to determine what matters. The challenge is separating signal from noise and using the information to determine which drivers require intervention.
When does Dot coach drivers?
Eckhardt said one of the most important elements of effective driver coaching is timeliness. Managers need to address risky behavior while an incident or pattern is still fresh rather than waiting weeks or months.
Coaching also needs to account for the individual driver. A veteran who has been with a fleet for 20 years may respond to a short, direct conversation, while a newer driver may need more explanation about why a particular behavior is dangerous or why a policy exists.
Dot has become more transparent with drivers about accident costs, safety policies, and the reasoning behind the technology being installed in trucks. The company also tries to balance corrective coaching with recognition of safe driving. Managers use camera footage not only to identify problems but to recognize drivers for good decisions behind the wheel.
"If you have a relationship around that driver, you've been able to build that relationship," Eckhardt said. "But when your first conversation with that driver is to give them discipline or tell them what they did wrong, normally that relationship doesn't recover after that."
How many drivers can one manager coach?
Relationships become harder to maintain when managers oversee too many drivers. Eckhardt said managing 150 drivers makes effective coaching difficult, while keeping the ratio closer to 70 or 80 drivers per manager can make the process more manageable.
Dot has about 200 over-the-road driver trainers and aims for a ratio of roughly 12 drivers per trainer. Depending on a driver's experience and skills, over-the-road training can last four, eight, or 12 weeks.
Some drivers ultimately may not improve enough to remain with the fleet. In those situations, Eckhardt said fleets need an exit strategy before a serious accident occurs.
What technology is Dot testing next?
Dot recently revisited the possibility of testing technology aimed at limiting drivers' cellphone use, although the company has not made a decision and continues to consider practical and legal questions surrounding such systems.
Dot currently permits drivers to use cellphones because its over-the-road drivers need to be able to communicate with family while away from home.
Eckhardt said one of the biggest lessons from Dot's safety evolution isn't necessarily technological, it's transparency. When drivers understand why a policy exists, why a camera was installed, or why a particular technology is operating inside the cab, fleets can generate greater buy-in.
"One of the biggest things we have done is just transparency and open books and share the why behind everything out there," he said.
What this means for small fleets
Dot Foods operates nearly 2,200 trucks across the U.S. and Canada. Mount Sterling, Illinois-based Dot Foods is North America's largest food industry redistributor and less-than-truckload consolidator.
The company's approach shows how private fleets are moving away from a largely reactive safety model toward one increasingly based on data, technology, and patterns of driver behavior. Cardiff said driver shortages, rising costs, and the threat of nuclear verdicts have changed how fleets must approach driver performance.
Fleets can no longer assume they can simply dismiss a struggling driver and replace that person with someone better. Instead, carriers increasingly need to identify risk earlier and retain, train, and engage existing drivers.
For owner-operators and small fleets, the takeaway is simple: if you can't afford to lose a driver, you need to coach them before they crash. The math works when one prevented accident covers the cost of the technology.
