Ensuring that a trucking company fleet has achieved Department of Transportation (DOT) compliance is one of the most important parts of being involved in the field of truck driving. DOT compliance maintains the safe movement of any vehicle, shipping cargo or otherwise substantial cargo, as reported by Freightwaves.
An article recently posted through fleet maintenance software platform Whip Around included the pertinent information that, “a compliance inspection can occur at any time, highlighting the importance of bolstering compliance among drivers and other employees.”
If compliance with the DOT standards is not achieved, a fleet can be met with several penalties, some including fines. If the failure to ensure compliance is significant enough, drivers can have their licenses revoked. And in the worst-case scenarios, drivers can be fatally injured in accidents caused by their trucks not complying to safety standards.
With the very real pressures of adhering to DOT safety standards to meet compliance, and how these protocols can sometimes be difficult to grasp in totality, some trucking companies fail to meet the standards. This puts their business and their drivers at risk.
Here is where companies like LogRock step up. LogRock defines itself as being “obsessed with compliance,” according to their website. They manage files that ensure driver qualification as well as records about hours-of-service and maintenance, taking that burden off the shoulders of trucking industry leaders.
“Our goal is to help be proactive rather than reactive, when it comes to compliance,” said Hunter Yaw, co-founder and CEO of LogRock.
LogRock is an automated compliance software that can lower costs for fleets and greatly reduce the possibility for errors. In turn, this increases the efficiency of fleets and allows them to venture into more robust business opportunities.
“I wanted to look for an opportunity to make industry folks’ lives a little bit easier,” Yaw said.
Yaw shared an anecdote highlighting the challenges trucking companies can deal with when trying to stay in line with DOT compliance. Imagine a fleet of 30 drivers; the DOT and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has a total of 1,090 documents that they expect the trucking company to maintain for those drivers. Increase those 30 drivers to 100? You now have over 5,000 documents on your hands.
“Not everyone has hundreds of people in a back office ready to catch all of this work,” Yaw said. “The burden is enormous and, unfortunately, the stakes are also very high in a world where the amount of lawsuits trucking companies are dragged into has increased year after year.”
Yaw felt inspired by the need for a compliance software that could help trucking companies avoid unfortunate circumstances, so he created a software that maintains compliance – and maintains it well.
“We ended up providing a service for the least-exciting thing — DOT compliance,” he said. “But there is a need for people in the industry to double-click on the more deep and narrow areas. DOT compliance is critical and requires data, and the problems that come with data are problems that software and technology can add value to. I thought that if we really lean into this, there is a chance that we could build something that could really help make a lot of folks’ lives easier, add value to trucking companies and really make a difference [in the industry].”
