Webinar Replay #113: International Roadcheck 2026 What Inspectors Are Looking For

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Lydia Wommack: Good morning, everybody! Thank you so much for joining us today on this beautiful… what is it? Are we in April? Almost Tax Day? April morning? This is such an important time. We’re lucky enough to be

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Lydia Wommack: you know, a month or so out of one of the biggest Blitz events

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Lydia Wommack: in the year. International Road Check 2026. CVSA puts on quite the event here across North America, and it’s a blitz that you really can’t escape unless you choose to just park your trucks, and I don’t think that’s the smart thing to do these days. So, we are excited to be here to talk with Jonathan Beshears from Nirvana. He’s the safety program lead, and of course, Mark Rhea, who’s been with,

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Lydia Wommack: with Frozen Food Express and Lisa Motor for 35 plus years, and now is joining us today, so that we can hear about all the things we need to do to prepare for road check.

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Lydia Wommack: and really what the impact is on your operations beyond the Blitz week, because it’s not just a one-and-done deal, it’s something that’s going to stick with you for the rest of the year and beyond. So, sit back and relax, pop into chat, and oh, I’m echoing.

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Lydia Wommack: Let’s see Let me see if I can get my,

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Lydia Wommack: A little bit better for you.

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Lydia Wommack: How’s this? This working?

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Lydia Wommack: Hello from Texarkana. So join us in chat if you would, and nope, still not working, Chris.

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Lydia Wommack: Mark, Jonathan, can y’all hear me all right?

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Jonathan Beshears: Yep, sounds good.

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Lydia Wommack: Can you be okay? Okay, well, we’ll keep moving. If you will, jump into chat, let us know where you are, and feel free to ask questions throughout. We’re going to take questions at the end, and do our best to answer everyone, but there’s a lot to cover here. So, with that, Jonathan, Mark, welcome. I did a quick introduction of Jonathan, but let me just add, he’s, yes, the safety program lead for Nirvana Insurance, but he has a deep experience in the trucking

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Lydia Wommack: world. He was in state DOT enforcement, so he’s been on that side of inspections many a time, and he’s also worked in compliance for a Fortune 300 fleet. Now he covers risk and loss control and safety with Nirvana, so I think he’s been in all seats here and has a lot of great information to share. Jonathan.

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Lydia Wommack: Welcome! Thanks for joining us!

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Lydia and Mark, for letting me join y’all and talk through, like Lydia said, one of the biggest enforcement events that CVSA and roadside inspectors do. You know, it’s…

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Jonathan Beshears: It’s something that covers North America, it’s Mexico, United States, Canada, so you’re not going to escape it unless you somehow put your truck on a boat or just shut down. So, it’s a 72-hour blitz, running May 12th through the 14th.

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Jonathan Beshears: 24 hours a day for 3 days. You know, it’s hard to run from it. It’s gonna be everywhere that you see. There’s gonna be pop-up inspection sites at, you know, normal waste stations, waste stations that you might have seen closed.

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Jonathan Beshears: rest areas, back roads, you know, on the backside of weigh stations, they’re really going to be everywhere. And so, talking about the scale of it, there’s nearly 15 trucks that are inspected every single minute across the U.S, Canada, and Mexico.

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Jonathan Beshears: So you’re gonna see a lot of officers on the road.

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Jonathan Beshears: doing those inspections. And so, the focus is really cargo securement and ELD tampering.

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Jonathan Beshears: But that’s not going to be the only thing that they focus on. That is just the primary thing that they’re looking at, but they’re still going to be doing those Level 1 inspections, which is a 37-step process. So they’re going to be checking your logbook, your fuel receipts.

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Jonathan Beshears: inside your cab, your seatbelt, your windshield, making sure you don’t have anything covering, you know, where the wipers are, making sure that you don’t have fuel leaks, bad tires, lights. They’re going to be doing a full Level 1 inspection.

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Jonathan Beshears: And so, for context, in 2025, they did over 56,000 inspections during that 72 hours, and over 18% of the vehicles and over 5% of the drivers were placed out of service. So those were vehicles and drivers that weren’t squared away whenever they got stopped.

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Jonathan Beshears: So in 2026, we talked about cargo procurement, that’s gonna be the primary vehicle focus, that these officers are gonna be talking through, and then ELD tampering, falsification, personal conveyance, manipulation.

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Jonathan Beshears: That’s really where they’re going to be diving in more than they normally do on a typical inspection.

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Jonathan Beshears: So why does this event matter? It’s because a single out-of-service event, a single violation, doesn’t just park the truck, you’re gonna miss loads, you’re gonna have upset customers because a load didn’t make that they’re on time because the driver or the vehicle got shut down.

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Jonathan Beshears: You’re gonna have increased roadside maintenance costs, because we know if you maintain it yourself, or you maintain it at the shop that you’re used to, you’re typically going to save money, but if you have that roadside repair person come out, add a couple hundred dollars, a thousand dollars to what you’re doing, and you’re going to see that cost go up.

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Jonathan Beshears: then you’re gonna see your CSA score get damaged. So at 72 hours, if you had multiple violations, multiple inspections.

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Jonathan Beshears: quickly, the next time you get a snapshot, you’re gonna see those scores go in the wrong direction. And then, from an insurance renewal risk.

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Jonathan Beshears: worst CSA scores means that you’re going to have to come to that renewal decision, that insurance decision, and say, hey, this is what I had happened during this event, here’s why I wasn’t prepared for it, and here’s what I’ve done to fix it. And so it’s going to kind of put a red flag on your CSA risk that wouldn’t have been there had we been prepared for it.

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Lydia Wommack: So, we wanted to ask, because, you know, this is not just…

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Lydia Wommack: this is a one-time blitz, sure, once a year, but, you know, you’re at risk anytime the wheels are running, and so we did just want to, ask the audience of everyone who’s participated, have you had an out-of-service event in the last 12 months? And if you have, what kind, or what kinds?

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Lydia Wommack: you know, there are, of course, the most common ones. Jonathan, what did you see most frequently in your time?

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, load securement was the big one of just either not securing the load or having damage securement, and then from a log standpoint.

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Jonathan Beshears: It was, like, general form and manner were your typical violations, but violation of, like, your 11, your 14, which now some people are trying to hide using personal conveyance.

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Jonathan Beshears: So you’re actually going to see a resurgence of those violations now that officers are really digging in, using tools to find, like, what’s happening.

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Lydia Wommack: Mark, you’re nodding your head. I think you’ve seen your fair share, too. Anything to add?

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Mark Rhea: I have another one that’s, is documents, you know, your medical… having a current medical card. I see that one all the time, and it’s just…

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Mark Rhea: Totally preventable.

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Lydia Wommack: Yep.

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Lydia Wommack: Okay, so let’s,

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Lydia Wommack: Keep rolling here. Whoops, let me close this out and keep rolling, because as you said, Jonathan, we have two focus areas.

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Lydia Wommack: For the vehicle itself, cargo securement, and for the driver, ELD tampering, falsification, and manipulation. So, again, that doesn’t mean that’s all that’s going to be inspected, but those are going to be the focus areas. And up first, in our focus area, ELD integrity. So, I think, you know, again, hearing back from you all in chat this time.

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Lydia Wommack: what… I know you all have crazy stories. What are those crazy ELD stories? What kind of wild workarounds have you seen? Because there’s always… where there’s a will, there’s always a workaround. I just was watching CBS, 60 Minutes covered

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Lydia Wommack: you know, on a segment on Chameleon carriers, and was talking about, companies that will

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Lydia Wommack: Get in on the back end and actually zero out the hours so they can start running again after their 11 hours is up, and just keep on moving.

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Lydia Wommack: So we know there are workarounds. If anybody has any stories to share, we always love hearing them. Mark, what… in your experience, what have you seen

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Lydia Wommack: as an ELD.

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Mark Rhea: Well, the, the, the big, the big…

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Mark Rhea: target is personal conveyance, of course, and I know one carrier, actually, that ended up in a lawsuit where he would,

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Mark Rhea: run… they had their PC set at 40 miles, and the driver, this particular driver, would,

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Mark Rhea: Drive 39 miles, and then log on, under personal conveyance, and then at the end of his,

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Mark Rhea: workday, he would log out and drive another 39 miles, so he wouldn’t trigger the, the 40-mile limit, and he did this day after day after day after day. That’s not what PC was designed for, obviously. Have another,

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Mark Rhea: lawsuit that I’m aware of, that I participated in, where a driver literally went from San Bernardino, California.

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Mark Rhea: to Dallas, Texas on personal conveyance. Now, obviously, that’s not the intent

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Mark Rhea: But there are many interpretations of personal conveyance, so I would assume, Jonathan, you correct me if I’m wrong, that

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Mark Rhea: Our CVSA officers and our highway patrolmen know about that, and they’re gonna look pretty close at abuse of that personal conveyance.

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, absolutely. They’re going to really dive in more… more than they’re used to. They’re going to be asking for your bills of late and your receipts, and then comparing that to your logs. I know a crazy story for me that I’ve… that I’ve seen, and I wouldn’t recommend it because it’s easily able to be… be caught, is I had a driver that was

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Jonathan Beshears: running some, like, extra loads on the side, and so not running it through the business that they were operating for, and so let’s just say they’d go to the truck stop.

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Jonathan Beshears: and they’d park, and then they would unplug their ELD, and so that GPS location would die at that truck stop. They would go run their, you know, short load, and then come back, plug back in at that truck stop. And so, from a GPS location standpoint, GPS lined up from

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Jonathan Beshears: From off to on.

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Jonathan Beshears: But you would see a mileage discrepancy.

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Jonathan Beshears: And so that’s why, like, on the safety manager side, it’s so important to have reports that are catching those discrepancies, because if you’re not going through it, you know, manually with a fine-tooth comb, it’s going to be hard to… hard to miss there. Lydi, did we get any responses back on the personal conveyance?

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Lydia Wommack: We sure did, yeah, let’s see, we had, 67% said, yes, we do allow personal conveyance.

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Lydia Wommack: And when asked about the policy, 67% have policy, so it looks like everyone who allows it at least has a policy about it. I heard a policy in boot camp once that was as simple as, if you can Uber it, you can PC it. I don’t know how that handles… how that holds up in court, or holds up with your insurance provider, but but at least it’s something. What do you see from the insurance angle, Jonathan, about

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Lydia Wommack: personal conveyance.

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Jonathan Beshears: I think it’s one of those big ones that if you’re going to allow it, you need to have very strict guidelines around it, but then you also have to have the proactive step of reporting on it.

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Jonathan Beshears: Because if you’re in violation of FMCSA reg, especially your hours of service, and you’re involved in a collision or a claim, and the lawyer or the officer can point towards, you shouldn’t have been on the road at the time of that accident.

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Jonathan Beshears: And if you weren’t there, the accident wouldn’t have happened. You’re opening yourself up to just massive litigation and some of these nuclear verdicts that you’re seeing today, of you’re not doing the right thing.

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Jonathan Beshears: Then it’s gonna add up, and it’s gonna cost you. And so, when you really think about it from a cost of the business standpoint, is…

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Jonathan Beshears: Is on time, rushing a driver, you know, worth maybe

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Jonathan Beshears: Not getting fined $100 by the receiver or the shipper for not getting it there on time.

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Jonathan Beshears: Or is the $2 million lawsuit, once you’ve been involved in a claim, because you’re rushing to get a load, like, where’s the upside there? And so I think you always want to make sure that, from a dispatcher standpoint.

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Jonathan Beshears: you’re not rushing a driver to get anywhere on point. Like, you’re looking at their hours of service and not putting them in a situation where it’s either fell, not get to load there on time, or get rode up because they didn’t get there, and really pressuring the driver.

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Jonathan Beshears: So, from an insurance perspective, we don’t want to see false logs, we don’t want to see personal conveyance, because that’s where you’re putting profit above safety, and safety’s the number one thing from an insurance risk standpoint that we’re looking at.

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Mark Rhea: I would also add, Lydia, that the custom content feature for INFINITI is a… is very,

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Mark Rhea: good to be able to communicate to your driver what your policy is. In the event of an accident and a deposition, the driver normally is going to say, nobody told me, I didn’t know I could… what the policy was on personal conveyance.

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Mark Rhea: And it sure helps to have a documented training, custom training content that explains in detail what your company’s

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Mark Rhea: Policy is relative to personal conveyance, rather than having.

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Lydia Wommack: dreaded.

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Mark Rhea: Nobody.

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Lydia Wommack: Told me, yes.

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Mark Rhea: Nobody told me. Yep.

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Lydia Wommack: People are gonna say it. Everywhere you turn, drivers are gonna say it. I mean, anybody, honestly, in the workforce who’s caught doing something is gonna say, well, nobody told me. I think, you know, Jonathan’s point here on the screen about the difference between unintentional violations or really good old-fashioned confusion.

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Lydia Wommack: And negligence is what you want to look out here for. So yeah, just as you said, Mark, making sure that not only do you have it defined and documented, but it’s also you can lay hands on the proof that you delivered it is important. How often, Jonathan, you see confusion, like, true, legitimate confusion?

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Jonathan Beshears: I think a lot of the confusion is surrounding

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Jonathan Beshears: all right, can I… once I’ve dropped my load, can I go home? Or can I… can I leave my house and go pick up the load? You know, especially if they… if they have their trailer and can’t drop it, and so then… are you laden? Are you unlading? I think it’s kind of the confusion there.

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Jonathan Beshears: And then, this new piece with…

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Jonathan Beshears: ELDs that you didn’t have with paper logs is, like, these yard moves. As soon as you start your truck up and it goes over, I think, typically at 5 miles an hour, it’s gonna trigger that you’re in on-duty status, and if you’re operating around the yard, or, you know, a mechanic operating your truck. And so it’s really important that every time you log in to your device.

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Jonathan Beshears: Going in and either certifying or annotating your logs?

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Jonathan Beshears: to ensure accuracy, and don’t let the officer have questions roadside and asking you what something was. Already have it annotated, because that means that you’re squared away, and you identified it, and you made the mark.

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Jonathan Beshears: And then working with your dispatcher to make sure that’s all corrected. I think from, like, the safety manager standpoint.

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Jonathan Beshears: And the reason that we’re having this webinar almost, you know, a month ahead of time is making sure that we’re going ahead and, if we’re not already on top of our ELDs, that we’re on top of it, you know, starting today. And so that’s by running those weekly unassigned driving reports. So if a driver’s not in there, in the truck, logged in, but you’re seeing mileage.

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Jonathan Beshears: Making sure that we’re running that report, assigning it to whoever it’s supposed to be assigned to, and having the driver accept that assignment.

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Jonathan Beshears: And then, you know, Mark, you mentioned the 40 miles and the driver going 39. Like, running a personal conveyance report to see who is running personal conveyance, and then if it doesn’t meet your policy, if your policy says you can

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Jonathan Beshears: use personal conveyance for these two things, and it doesn’t fall within that category. Holding that driver accountable, making sure that education is there, the driver.

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Jonathan Beshears: And then…

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Jonathan Beshears: Treating your roadside… or your hours of service report violations the same as if a roadside violation occurred, because if you see a violation today for personal conveyance that you know is a violation, and that driver has stopped in the next 8 days.

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Jonathan Beshears: that’s a violation that you’re going to get roadside if the officer sees it. So making sure that we’re training the drivers on those violations so that hopefully you can prevent those going forward. So when you go into road check, you know what violations exist, you know what you could have, but you’ve already worked on preventing them, and so hopefully you make it through road check

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Jonathan Beshears: And continued for the next years, and not having those types of violations.

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Lydia Wommack: I did… I know we’re supposed to hold questions to the end, but Aaron commented, you know, about, can a driver use PC to drive home under… after unloading per regulations? And I… the regulations are pretty broad on PC. It’s really left to the company to define. Now, you have to stick to our service rules and regs, but…

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Lydia Wommack: I think one of the… I mean, it’s a double-edged sword. A good thing and a bad thing is that PC is pretty broad, right? So, you gotta have a policy.

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Lydia Wommack: But only if you’re gonna enforce it.

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, and I’ll drop a link in the chat,

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Jonathan Beshears: But FMCSA has, like, frequently asked questions surrounding personal conveyance, and

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Jonathan Beshears: Ultimately, whether you agree with them or not, like, that’s… that’s the…

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Jonathan Beshears: what dictates what a driver can do, and so for that exact example, there’s a question that says, may a driver who drops his or her last load at a receiver’s facility use personal conveyance to return to their normal workload location, so home or terminal?

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Jonathan Beshears: And it says no, returning home or to the terminal from a dispatch trip is a continuation of the trip, and therefore cannot be considered personal conveyance. You’re going to have officers that have different interpretations of

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Jonathan Beshears: FMCSA’s FAQs, and one officer might allow, allow, or another officer might not, but when it comes down to the letter of the law and what FMCSA has said, follow it, because that’s going to protect you no matter

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Jonathan Beshears: who you come into contact with, and who… what their interpretation is, because if you follow FMCSA’s regulations and their guidelines interpretations, that even if you get a violation roadside.

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Jonathan Beshears: or something that you follow, you can always follow a data queue and have that

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Jonathan Beshears: You know, training… training session and accountability back, with enforcement, but…

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Jonathan Beshears: Follow… follow what the regulation says, and you should be squared away.

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Lydia Wommack: So, like Mark said, you know, it’s a lot to cover here, but because

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Lydia Wommack: This is INFINITI’s webinar. We’re just gonna do our plug for, assigning that training. We have a new video coming out, actually, I think it’s this Friday or Monday, on, ELD tampering and falsification. Last year, you know, we always release new content. Every month, we release new content. Last year, just ahead of our check, we did one on records of duty status and ghost drivers, so there’s a lot of content already that’s available that can be assigned out, and this is short, like.

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Lydia Wommack: We do short to the point. We’re talking about, you know, 6 minutes on average, sometimes 2 or 3 minutes, just to reinforce the information and make sure everyone is aware. And as Mark said, you know, uploading your own specific policies, really important to make sure that you have acknowledgements for that, and that can be assigned, documented, tracked, so you can, you know, run a report if it’s ever called in question, if there’s ever a

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Lydia Wommack: It’s a situation where, you know.

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Lydia Wommack: you need to… to answer in an audit, hopefully not, or an accident, God forbid, you can at least pull the records at that. So, very easy to get everyone prepped on, you know, the basic regulations and the letters of the law, and then also the behavioral best practice as they’re out on the road.

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Lydia Wommack: And that brings us now to focus area number two, cargo. And this is a big one last year. I saw, what was it, last year? It was the number one or number two, issue that popped on Road Check, right?

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, I think it was over 34,000 violations tied to unsecurement.

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Lydia Wommack: Yeah, man. So, before going into this section, we wanted to hear from you all. Do you have load securement training? And if you do, what does it look like? Is it hands-on? Is it virtual? Do you use your own content? Do you do it, but just only in orientation, and that’s it? You know, one and done?

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Lydia Wommack: that’s, I think, a common thing that we see with fleets that are trying to build their program is a lot of focus on orientation, but not on that recurring, ongoing. And, you know, as equipment changes, as your clients and contracts change, as loads change, you need to revisit that and make sure that you’re staying on top of,

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Lydia Wommack: You know, the safest way to move your cargo.

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Lydia Wommack: Looks like this poll ended here with 43% yes, they offer load… recurring, recurring load securement training, and 38% only in orientation. So, mixed house here.

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Lydia Wommack: Let’s just…

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, I think the big thing on load securement is making sure that you do it, and you’re doing it for the specific item that’s being hauled. You know, if you’re only training your driver to do,

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Jonathan Beshears: you know, haul, like, reefer freight, but then the next day, you’re hauling paper rolls within that reefer, the reefer turned off, and the driver’s not trained on the securement of that. You’re gonna be getting a violation, but if you’re not secured right, that could also lend itself to a collision due to, like, the freight moving.

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Jonathan Beshears: And so making sure that your drivers are trained in what they’re hauling, I think, is…

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Jonathan Beshears: the biggest piece, but also recurring, you know, so Lydia, like, using y’all’s system to

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Jonathan Beshears: Do the training that you’ve put together, but put it in the custom training, you know, if you’re hauling steel pipe every day.

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Jonathan Beshears: Making sure the drivers are aware of that, and doing recurring virtual training, but also in-person, hands-on, making sure drivers know what damage procurement looks like, what the correct uses of tie-downs looks like.

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Lydia Wommack: Yep.

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Jonathan Beshears: And then documenting that they’re doing it, I think, is important.

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Lydia Wommack: Yeah, you’d think that we’d be a virtual-only house here, but no, hands-on, you know, to have a healthy training programs and safety program, yes, there are so many benefits to online. We… I could preach that all day long, but at some point, you do need to get your hands on the actual equipment, make sure that everyone knows what they’re doing, test things out, get comfortable with it, because that’s real life, day-to-day operations, is the actual

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Lydia Wommack: Doing it.

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, I think… The second piece to that is, like, you’re doing the training, now let’s make sure that

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Jonathan Beshears: we’re doing the train… what we’ve learned in training, and we’re actually doing that roadside when we’re getting loaded. Yep. And so…

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Jonathan Beshears: whether that’s the driver doing their DVIR and you’re adding something to it where they’re having to check that they secured something properly. Or, you know, really what I would say the next 30 days is, if you’re hauling something that’s maybe a little more complex when it comes to securement, you’re using tie-downs, straps,

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Jonathan Beshears: You know, more than just, like, one or two load bars holding your freight to the front, is having drivers, like, hey, send me a photo of the next time you get your load secured, and really spot checking those, and that’s going to prepare you for road check of knowing

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Jonathan Beshears: Hey, these are the defects that we found for the last 3 or 4 weeks.

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Jonathan Beshears: we’ve corrected them, and so going into road check, we’re clear, our drivers know what they’re supposed to be doing. I think it kind of goes back to some of the ELD stuff, is…

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Jonathan Beshears: It’s not… they’re not… not securing the load on purpose, it’s maybe just…

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Jonathan Beshears: complacency of, well, this is the way that we’ve always done it, kind of the travel knowledge and not actually having the hands-on training. And so, if you can train over the next few weeks and have those pictures, that kind of creates accountability, gives you a record if, you know, if an officer does stop you, and you can say, well, here’s a photo of what the load looked like.

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Jonathan Beshears: when the officer inspected it, and it meets the FMCSA requirements, it meets CVSA’s requirements, then you can always data queue that. But if you don’t have photos of how the load was secured, it’s kind of, you know, my word against yours on

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Jonathan Beshears: Was it actually secured the right way?

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Jonathan Beshears: But a load that looked right when you picked it up might not look right 150 miles down the road. I’m sure, Mark, you’ve seen this, of.

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Jonathan Beshears: load leaves, and, you know, 200 miles down the road, that load… that strap’s gotten loose, and so really, the way that I recommend is.

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Jonathan Beshears: And the first, like, 50 to 100 miles, you’re stopping and checking that load, retyping everything, especially something where you’re using chains or binders that are gonna just become loose because the cargo’s moved a little bit, and then rechecking it, you know, every 150 miles, or, hey, you gotta stop and get something to drink, or stop at the truck stop.

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Jonathan Beshears: Doesn’t hurt to do a quick, you know, pre-trip while you’re there at the truck stop, just to save yourself a ticket or an accident down the road.

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Mark Rhea: Yes, and I’ve seen some very good, custom content on load securement in adverse weather, you know, rainstorms, nights,

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Mark Rhea: you know, they’re gonna be subjected to… to doing that under some very adverse conditions, and… and…

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Mark Rhea: Having them think about that ahead of time and how to do that. Even the container guys, they’re picking up the containers at the ports and at the rail yards.

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Mark Rhea: They can very easily not get a good connection in a loose container going down the road,

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Mark Rhea: It’s not a very good thing to happen.

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Jonathan Beshears: No, it’s not. What’s cool is CDSA, they’re typically the ones that govern enforcement and have, like, their own inspection,

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Jonathan Beshears: guidelines, and you can go there, you can go to, I think, cVSA.org and go in, and they’ll have certain things for inspectors of how they’re supposed to inspect intermodal containers, or how they’re supposed to inspect metal coils, and you can actually go in there and see how the officer’s going to inspect it, and that will help you

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Jonathan Beshears: Do your hands-on training, because you know what the officer’s looking for, and if you can teach your driver exactly what they’re looking for, it should ensure that you’re loading everything correctly.

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Lydia Wommack: Very good.

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Lydia Wommack: So, building into pre-trips, I know everyone groans, you know, do you do a pre-trip? Well, we’re supposed to, and it’s kind of a question of, did we catch the driver? And accountability is the hard part of that on all sides. So, you know, if you have the technology to make it easy on

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Lydia Wommack: driver to capture, but then there also has to be the reporting and the technology for the administrator side, so you can actually stay on top of it and hold them accountable. And I know there’s data fatigue now, you have reports coming out of your ears. Is there a reasonable way, Mark and Jonathan, both of you, is there a reasonable way to stay on top of that, to really enforce, or have some accountability behind

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Lydia Wommack: Pre-trips, or even, you know, mid-trip checks.

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Jonathan Beshears: I think for me, what I’ve seen, there’s tons of technology out there, there’s new companies popping up left and right, advertising this new way to do, you know, DVIRs, and…

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Jonathan Beshears: there’s a couple things where you can scan a QR code, walk around the truck and scan a QR code, but, you know, what stops me or from a driver just running around and still doing my 5-minute one and doing so? You can actually… you obviously have to have an ELD. That’s something FMCSA mandated, but a lot of these companies are really putting

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Jonathan Beshears: tools for you to use, not just that you had to use, making it a better experience for you, and so what I’ve seen in probably some of the top 3 to 5 Telemax providers is

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Jonathan Beshears: the ability to make a driver take a photo when they inspect something, or if they find a defect, take a picture. I saw a demo here the other day where

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Jonathan Beshears: You can actually set it up where, when a driver goes to inspect an axle, it shows them what a good axle should look like, where there’s no leaking parts, and so the driver compares the photo that they looked at.

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Jonathan Beshears: to what they’re actually seeing, and they would know if there was a violation or not. And so I think that’s… that’s, like, the really cool technology piece.

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Jonathan Beshears: what I’ve also seen work is doing mock pre-trips. And so, like.

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Jonathan Beshears: If you own a truck, you have a spare truck sitting at your shop.

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Jonathan Beshears: go out there and throw some fake defects on it of, like, hey, here’s my top 10 violations I’ve received as a company. I’ve received flat tires and cracked…

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Jonathan Beshears: Brake drums, whatever the case is.

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Jonathan Beshears: Putting that on there.

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Jonathan Beshears: And then on a, like, quarterly cadence with your drivers, hey, your driver showed up to do the 34 reset, or to have maintenance done on their truck, whatever the case is. Hey, why don’t you go out there and do a pre-trip, real quick, and come back and tell me what… what you found. Because you’re gonna know by doing that.

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Jonathan Beshears: What violations they’re finding, what violations they’re not, and specifically the violations they’re not finding.

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Jonathan Beshears: You can train on that.

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Jonathan Beshears: if they’re not finding a leaking wheel sill, well, then you can do hands-on training of, here’s how you identify a leaking wheel sill next time you do a pre-trip. Mark, what have you… what have you seen work?

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Mark Rhea: Well, I’ve… I’ve used carrots and sticks, and some things work for some drivers, and some… don’t. It’s all across the board, but

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Mark Rhea: I think just… just… just, you know, all these… the technologies out there, the 15… the mandatory 15 minutes, but you also gotta keep in mind, sometimes these guys are in sandstorms, and they’re in… they’re in snowstorms, and

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Mark Rhea: It’s… it’s a never-ending challenge that we have as an industry to do an adequate pre-trip. I think it’s gotten better. It’s certainly got a long way to go. The… the second…

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Mark Rhea: component that’s a benefit from a pre-trip, it is it mentally prepares the driver for his driving experience. If he or she, in fact, does a good road pre-trip inspection.

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Mark Rhea: Mentally, they’re preparing for an important event, which is going online, or going on duty, and driving a commercial truck. So,

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Mark Rhea: I wish I had the magic button to punch to say this works all the time and you can do it. It’s… it’s a… it’s a…

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Mark Rhea: It’s a tough one to get done on a consistent basis, and I will also say it’s an easy one for our friends in the plaintiff’s world to drag you across the coals in a lawsuit if you don’t do everything that you’re supposed to be doing on a pre-trial.

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Mark Rhea: Relative to violations that are found.

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Jonathan Beshears: I would highly… oh, sorry, Lydia.

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Lydia Wommack: No, go ahead, John.

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Jonathan Beshears: I would highly encourage just…

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Jonathan Beshears: drivers, when you’re… when you’re stopping safety managers, like, when you’re… when you’re talking with your drivers, anytime a driver stops, they should be doing a… a walk-around inspection, whether that’s at a truck stop or,

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Jonathan Beshears: they parked at a shipper or a receiver, doing a quick loft around, especially if you stayed overnight somewhere. What I’ve… what I’ve seen, and you would hope that this wouldn’t happen, but what I’ve seen is

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Jonathan Beshears: A driver parked at a truck stop, and another driver or just another person has come up and messed with that driver’s loan.

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Jonathan Beshears: Whether that’s, like, loosening a tie-down, or flipping a placard that was visible, and now it’s no longer visible. And then that driver, you know, wakes up, starts a truck, and starts going down the road, and never does another pre-trip.

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Jonathan Beshears: they’re gonna get caught for that violation, and they know, like, hey, I had this load secured, I had that placard on, whatever the case is.

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Jonathan Beshears: There’s no way…

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Jonathan Beshears: you know, this violation happened. Well, someone’s messed with their load, or, you know, talking about tires, of… you could have hit a nail, you know, right before you got into the truck stop, and the next morning, the tire’s flat, or…

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Jonathan Beshears: You stop for fuel, and just doing that walk-around’s gonna protect you, because you never know… you typically know where the weigh stations are if you’re taking the same routes.

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Jonathan Beshears: But you never know where that officer’s gonna be sitting for a random, you know, level 3, level 2, level 1 inspection. So you have to always be prepared. Not just be prepared for the areas that you know about, be prepared, because especially during road check.

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Jonathan Beshears: You don’t know where they’re gonna be set up.

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Jonathan Beshears: And… and they’re going to be going over that full, full Level 1.

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Lydia Wommack: I think, be prepared and proactive is kind of the name of the game across all of this. I mean, really anything, not just for road check, but proactive is best.

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Lydia Wommack: Because this is, this is, you know, I know you’re… you’re about to tell us all about it, this is just the litmus test for how your operations are year-round, which you in insurance.

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Lydia Wommack: certainly care about. You’re looking at the overall health and safety of the company, the culture, you know, year-round, because you have to have coverage year-round.

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, exactly. So, Road Check, I mean, it says it here on the screen, is a diagnostic. It’s not… it’s not…

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Jonathan Beshears: just an enforcement event. It’s truly telling… telling us

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Jonathan Beshears: what is this carrier, how do they operate over the course of the entire year? Because during that 72-hour period, it’s not like, hey, I caught you, you know, from an enforcement standpoint. It’s only identifying the problem that’s already there. And so, if you can correct that problem before road check occurs.

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Jonathan Beshears: don’t let that single 72-hour event impact you for the next 24 months from a risk perspective, or from a litigation perspective. Like, if that stuff’s not there.

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Jonathan Beshears: then you look like a healthy risk from a FMCSA basics standpoint.

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Lydia Wommack: Yep.

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Jonathan Beshears: Mark, I know from your perspective, when you’ve seen RoCheck, have you seen

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Jonathan Beshears: Carriers get violations during those 3 days, and then never get those violations again?

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Mark Rhea: I’ve seen them get violations. I’m not sure that they never get them again. Sometimes they are recurring.

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Mark Rhea: So, I think there’s an ongoing lights, brakes, and tires that’s always out there. Unfortunately, some of the

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Mark Rhea: Some of the carriers and some of the drivers will sit it out and just not participate in road check.

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Mark Rhea: I think Road Check is a really good program.

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Mark Rhea: I think it works, I think it brings awareness, and

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Mark Rhea: But in terms of if I get a violation.

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Mark Rhea: Well, will that… will that eliminate a future violation from occurring? I think…

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Mark Rhea: Sometimes a sloppy operator is a sloppy operator, is a sloppy operator, and…

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Mark Rhea: You gotta make a tough decision on whether or not you want them to continue to work for your organization.

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think it does come back to, like, what Lydia was saying, proactive. Proactive is, like, the name of the game when it comes to

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Jonathan Beshears: Not just surviving road check, because it’s not something you should ever have to survive, it should just be a normal way of operating.

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Jonathan Beshears: And so, fleets that are going to be investing in safety proactively have more leverage when it comes to insurance. So, if you have this 72-hour event, and you have no violations, that means your score’s going to improve. It’s going to show that, hey, there was an increased focus during these 3 days, which means officers were going through with a fine-tooth comb on these trucks.

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Jonathan Beshears: And this carrier had no violations. That means they have a safe operation. And from a telematics point, we can see, hey, you were running during those 3 days, and during those 3 days, you had no violations. And so that… that looks great and bodes well for your safety record. The lower your CSA scores.

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Jonathan Beshears: The better your renewal outcomes are gonna be, because a fleet that has those low scores or has those preventable… doesn’t have those preventable violations.

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Jonathan Beshears: we’re going to be able to see that, hey, this fleet is managed proactively, they’re doing everything they can to prevent violations, but a proactive fleet, you’re also going to prevent claims. And so, unsafe driving, you know, using televacs to determine

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Jonathan Beshears: If there’s following distance, or cell phone use, whatever the case is.

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Jonathan Beshears: you’re going to prevent claims by being proactive and coaching drivers, having those policies in place, the personal conveyance policies in place. And then, really, from an insurance perspective, as you talk litigation, Mark, what you’ve mentioned, what you’ve seen is

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Jonathan Beshears: if you’re doing everything right, and you’ve crossed all your T’s and dotted all your I’s when it comes to your policies, and the usage of your policies.

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Jonathan Beshears: that’s gonna help out from a litigation perspective. If you do have a claim, then you’re covered on the back end of, I’ve done everything right, here’s how the claim occurred, but from a safety side, I’m covered. Just having a policy.

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Jonathan Beshears: means… means nothing if you’re not proactively using that policy and holding drivers to it. Really putting yourself in a way of

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Jonathan Beshears: Hey, driver, you did this, here’s the policy, this is what has to happen, and making sure that it’s fair across the board, and not, well, this is my senior driver, this is my

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Jonathan Beshears: low-tenure driver, everyone’s created… everyone’s treated equally across the board, and that policy is adhered to, because as soon as you don’t use that policy… so, for example, if you have a policy that says.

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Jonathan Beshears: drivers at speed don’t get 20 miles an hour over, are gonna get written up, or terminated, whatever the case is there.

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Jonathan Beshears: But then that driver goes and gets in a collision two months down the road.

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Jonathan Beshears: And they can point back to that policy and say, well, you had this policy in place, but we’re not seeing that any training occurred after the fact.

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Jonathan Beshears: Then what was the use of the policy?

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Lydia Wommack: Negligence. Bam. Yeah.

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Jonathan Beshears: Yep.

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Lydia Wommack: That’s an ugly word in this, in this industry.

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah. So, I think the big… the big thing for me is be proactive, have your policies and inspection procedures in place today, so that during Road Check, it’s just a normal day. You don’t get… you should go into road check not treating it any differently if you are already doing everything you’re supposed to today.

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Lydia Wommack: Very good.

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Lydia Wommack: Well, Jonathan, thank you. Mark, thank you. I want to open it up now to questions. I have a hand raised from Susie, and we’re going to scroll through chat. While we do that, this is the time. This is the time to prepare. So, please don’t wait until the day before or the week before. We know it’s coming. It comes every year. This should not be a surprise. And really, safe operations should be year-round. So, now is the time to get started.

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Lydia Wommack: If you feel like there are some gaps, and you want to do a road check prep review, Jonathan and his team can do that with y’all. Our client success team is always happy to, you know, pull fleet safety analysis reports, look at your CSA trends, and give you a sense of how we could apply our

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Lydia Wommack: catalog of over 850 training videos, plus some of your custom content to really get out ahead of that in an ongoing way. So, you know, two offers on the table for anyone who’s here today. If you’d like to have access to INFINITI 30 days free, please, please, please do it.

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Lydia Wommack: It’s the best time to get prepared. If you want to prepare for road check, with Jonathan and his team, again, people who’ve seen it from all sides, who’ve seen it from enforcement, from the fleet side, and now from insurance, too, it would be invaluable time. So…

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Lydia Wommack: please, please, you know, feel free to take advantage of that. I should have popped the trial. Meanwhile, let’s see, Susie, you had raised your hand to ask a question. I’m gonna allow you to unmute yourself so that you can,

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Lydia Wommack: You can ask the question live if you want.

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Lydia Wommack: and you might… if you’re a little nervous about speaking, you feel free to throw it into chat. Oh, mistake, okay, not a problem.

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Lydia Wommack: So, anything else in chat here? Hey, while I have you guys, how about, how about driver behavior when they’re pulled over? Because we didn’t talk about that, we talk about the actual mechanics of pre-trips and preparing and the things that you have to have together, but there’s a personality… there’s a way you need to prepare your personality and your attire and the way you speak. Can you comment on that for a moment?

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Jonathan Beshears: Yeah, I think from when I was in the enforcement side is…

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Mark Rhea: Is that for me?

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Jonathan Beshears: So I think from, like, an enforcement side is, if an officer approaches, you both have jobs to do, so the officer has their job to do an inspection, you have the job to move the freight and to work for that trucking company, and those…

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Jonathan Beshears: Those jobs kind of conflict with each other, because the officer supposed to be there to check the vehicle, but you both have the goal of doing it safely. And so, if you’re doing your job safely, the officer is just double-checking your work to make sure that everyone else around you is safe.

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Jonathan Beshears: But whenever an officer makes contact with you, is, like, just be as friendly as possible. You know the officer has, a job to do. We’re all… we’re all people, we all have the same things going off in our personal lives.

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Jonathan Beshears: And so we might have had something before the shift, or before we jumped in the truck, that maybe has our, our mind, or our,

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Jonathan Beshears: actions in a different place, and so I would always just say, when you’re interacting with an enforcement official, be as friendly as possible. If they say, open the hood.

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Jonathan Beshears: Be friendly and open the hood. Help the inspection progress.

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Jonathan Beshears: It’s typically gonna bode well for the difference between a warning or a citation, is…

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Jonathan Beshears: The friendlier you are, and the more apt you are to help the officer.

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Jonathan Beshears: it’s… it’s gonna be friendly. Make sure that you stay in the cab until the officer approaches or tells you to get out. But a big thing, Lenny, is keeping your cab clean.

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Jonathan Beshears: That’s really gonna show that when the officer gets there, hey, this person’s squared away. If the officer asks you for your registration, your insurance.

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Jonathan Beshears: hand them your registration insurance, not just the binder that has, you know, 100 different documents and some of it’s expired. You might run across an officer that isn’t going to ask you for the updated insurance if you handed them a book. And so if you handed them the book, and the first thing they come across is an expired insurance.

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Jonathan Beshears: you’re probably going to get a violation for expired insurance. And so when you’re doing that pre-trip, make sure you have all that information there, and just easily be able to hand it to the officer versus the officer having to hunt for it. Same thing goes for the ELD. Know how to use your ELD.

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Jonathan Beshears: the officer, there’s hundreds of ELDs out there. The officer’s not trained to operate every single one, which is why there’s supposed to be an instruction manual. So, first of all, driver needs to know how to use the ELD, and then…

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Jonathan Beshears: Be able to teach the officer and provide them the guide on how to use it as well.

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Mark Rhea: I think approachability is the key there, and I’ve talked to a number of

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Mark Rhea: Texas DPS officers, and the first impression is very important, and unfortunately, some of the drivers will…

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Mark Rhea: And they will start the roadside inspection, asking the officer

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Mark Rhea: Don’t you have anything better to do?

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Lydia Wommack: Hmm.

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Mark Rhea: Why did… why did you pull me over? I wasn’t doing anything wrong. That does not set a good first impression, and that’s a trainable event. I think you need to at least attempt to train your drivers on how to

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Mark Rhea: Conduct yourself during a roadside inspection, and that first impression

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Mark Rhea: Is a big moment that you can do real well, or you can do real poor.

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Mark Rhea: I would also ask, you know, we talked a lot about pre-trip, and we got a lot of people online here. Is anybody…

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Mark Rhea: Willing to offer what their best practice is for validating drivers doing their pre-trip inspections?

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Lydia Wommack: It’s a good one. I’ve heard, of course, you know, hiding… hiding the gotcha tag somewhere on the truck, you know, that they might find in the course of a pre-trip, and if you find it, you get $50, $500. It sure has people doing their pre-trips to look for it.

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Mark Rhea: just like the rest of the… you just… it’s a tough egg. It’s a tough one to… it’s a tough one to get right, but it…

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Lydia Wommack: That’s one of those collections.

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Lydia Wommack: runs we hear.

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Mark Rhea: Yeah.

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Jonathan Beshears: Well, we had a… we have a customer that does something similar to that, and they actually took a stick… got a custom sticker of the owner of the company, and had that sticker, and they would put that on components of the trucks.

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Jonathan Beshears: And it was, yeah, if you turn… if you took a picture of it and sent it in, that you found a picture of the owner.

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Jonathan Beshears: Then you got some type of… some type of credit. So, kind of a gamification of…

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Jonathan Beshears: pre-trips and doing everything right, I think is key, whether you’re rewarding a driver for a clean DOT inspection, or rewarding them for so many days straight for having a completed DVIR, or you return that to an extra day off, whatever the case is, some type of gamification of

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Jonathan Beshears: doing what they’re… doing what they’re supposed to do already, I think’s… I think’s great.

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Lydia Wommack: Yeah, and it’s a… that’s a great way to frame it, too, because so often you hear about gamification, and you think, okay, I’ve got to turn it into a true video game, or a mouse going through the maze to get to the cheese, and really, sometimes it’s just as simple as something to kind of catch people by surprise, or make them laugh, or, you know, with the owner’s face on the sticker, it’s something that just makes it a little fun, or something to hunt for. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

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Lydia Wommack: I think what works is what’s best.

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Lydia Wommack: Even if that’s simple.

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Lydia Wommack: I have Tatiana in here saying a random weekly video asking them to send, asking from them to send with the equipment. So, yeah, so a video of them, like, just, you know, capturing that they’re doing this.

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Lydia Wommack: Ed adds a note here on policies and procedures. It’s good practice to go beyond simple acknowledgement, develop some knowledge verification that speaks directly to it, and yes, absolutely, because acknowledgement is good, but, you know, to really gauge for comprehension or understanding is even better.

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Lydia Wommack: Steve, looks like Steve says, we use a thing called Workflow, they must complete everything before they can move on, and that’s within Samsara.

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Lydia Wommack: So…

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Lydia Wommack: All good thoughts. I think if anyone here masters it, tackles it, and can figure it out, then we’ve got the keys to the kingdom there. So, you know, maybe one day we’ll hear about it and we’ll share it out. But everyone, thank you so much. You know, I hope you are able to prepare adequately for next month. Next week, though, remember.

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Lydia Wommack: Work Zone Awareness Week, real issue here in the Dallas area and across the country with more and more construction, so be safe out there. I think for us at INFINITI, we kind of believe it all comes down to the behavior of employees. If you are being proactive and kind of setting the right standard for the ongoing correct behavior to do the job, whatever that job is, safe driving in this case.

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Lydia Wommack: then you’re gonna… your operation is going to be safer, more profitable. It’s just best all the way around. It’s gonna even help your turnover. So, you know, that comes down to frequent, consistent, and required accountability. So everyone, thank you, good luck next month. Stay safe next week, too, with Work Zone Awareness. And, if you have any feedback for us on what’s working in your prep for Road Check.

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Lydia Wommack: please send it in. As a reminder, we will send out a replay of the webinar to everyone, so…

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Lydia Wommack: Appreciate you, Mark, Jonathan, thank you.

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Mark Rhea: Thank you.

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Jonathan Beshears: Thank you.

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Lydia Wommack: Take care.