Ken Lucci: 0:24

hi, this is Ken Luchi from Driving Transactions, and welcome to another episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. James Blaine, my cohost from pax. How are you today?

James Blain: 0:34

Good. How are you buddy?

Ken Lucci: 0:35

Good. It's been a busy week. I have to give a shout out to, uh, Nila, new England Liberty Association. Um, great meeting on Wednesday night. I drove up there, uh, with uh, Bentley and I drove up there and I spoke a little bit about the workshop we've got coming up. We're doing, I don't know if you knew this, where I am doing a workshop on May 14th, uh, for Nila on Twofold. One is pricing to make maximum profits. We're gonna do that session in the morning. And then the afternoon, we're going to do a session selling how to sell value instead of low price. So we're gonna invite Reservationists to come into that, but that's, that's gonna be a can't miss kind of thing.

James Blain: 1:11

And, and what date was that? Just so everybody can mark their calendar.

Ken Lucci: 1:15

May 14th, um, check out Neela, uh, NE a.org. Um, and we're obviously gonna put out an invitation. It, it is primarily for Neela members. I think there's gonna be a fee for anybody who's not a member, but I would tell you, anybody up in the New England area, come on up and I guarantee you, you're gonna walk out of there with absolutely. A vital worksheet on how to price all of your services or any vehicle. And then you're gonna walk out of there with outlines and scripting on how to teach your people how to sell value instead of low price, because that's one of my primary concerns. I, I just see too many people selling low price, but besides, you know, announcing that Nila had a panel, I was on the panel to talk about insurance costs. And I'm glad we're doing this session today, um, and talking about what you do, because I'm not sure that the operators are grasping the direct correlation cause and effect of the, the rat, the massive increases insurance. And their inability or their lackadaisical approach to managing driver behavior. So it it, a lot of the examples up there, and these were the best insurance guys in the business. I mean, research, research underwriters was up there, uh, on the panel with us and there was a couple of guys who were from underwriting. So there were a lot of examples about telematics. There were a lot of examples about something you deal with, which is destructive driving. And so I, I, I wanted, yeah, I wanted to talk, I mean, what, what are the elements of distracted driving that your training deals with?

James Blain: 2:59

So it's really interesting because we are in a place where as a society, driving has moved light years ahead. But we're also at a place where human adeptness, right, and I'm trying to be really nice'cause I wanted to say stupidity here has dropped light years. So I was lucky enough that my, my wife's grandpa, he grew up restoring model a's, and when he died I inherited all these manuals and it talks about setting the valve lash and the timing and everything. And I was like, wow, I wonder how this compares to the manual for my wife's car. And I went out, brand new car, pulled the manual

Ken Lucci: 3:36

only you

James Blain: 3:37

Do not drink. No, no. And I'm telling you, right? Do not. Yeah. Yeah. But, but my favorite part is I get to today's manual and it says, do not drink the antifreeze. Do not drink this, do not lick the battery

Ken Lucci: 3:49

I I never knew that you couldn't drink Andy

James Blain: 3:52

Right. Who knew?

Ken Lucci: 3:53

I thought it tasted like lemonade.

James Blain: 3:55

Who knew, right. Yeah. Sweet. Don't, don't put it out for dogs. That's how you, how you get rid of a dog. Right. It's sweet taste. But it's, it's funny because it illustrates this point that in society we've moved from a point where you bought the car, you were expected to work on it. Do everything to now we've got this. Hey, don't drink the antifreeze. And so we've seen that. What's happened is. Things have come way forward. There's all these driver aids. There's all these things, but the problem is that in everybody's pocket, there's a billion dollar device, right? There's a whole industry built around absorbing all of your attention to the point where people actually, if they forget their phone, they will feel ghost buzzes. And so we're in this age now where there's so many things vying for our attention. Came up this morning. I was having breakfast with someone, right? Man, it was, it was funny. So I'm having breakfast with my stepdaughter and a boyfriend, and guess what they're talking about, man? We're driving here and there's this 80-year-old woman on her phone and she can't even figure out how to work it. And she's looking down and I'm thinking to myself, yeah, yeah. And you 20 year olds are what I'm terrified of because you guys know how to work it and you're gonna posting on Snapchat, driving, right? We're in this age where everything is fighting for your attention and everything is trying to distract us. And as a result of that, what we're seeing is. All of these safety aids, radar guided crews, right? Self adjusting crews, control lane assist, all these things do a great job of preventing accidents. But we're also in an age where we are seeing more high speed full force accidents than we ever had before. Because if you're looking, well think about it. You know, you've got a guy who's driving down the highway looking at his phone. By the time he goes to hit the brakes, he's already hit you at 70 miles an hour. He's already ran the red light. And so we're seeing more and more of these accidents where they're full speed, absolutely no reaction whatsoever from the person causing it. And so as a result of that, what's happening? We're seeing cost of everything else has risen. And now you've got these extreme accidents. Now you've got these lawsuits. We've got kind of this perfect storm that is making it more and more dangerous, even if your driver out there isn't the one distracted. We spend a lot of time teaching how to identify other distracted drivers because guess what? If I stop at a red light, the very first thing I'm looking at is the rear view.'cause again, you've got that guy behind you, 45 mile an hour, full speed. If he hits you, doesn't matter who's at fault,

Ken Lucci: 6:32

Well, think about it. Think about, think about what you just said there because, you know, in the chauffeur space, I think the misnomer is, and, and the rea Well, the reality is that unfortunately we have drivers that drive one way when the client is in the car

James Blain: 6:46

and another,

Ken Lucci: 6:47

way when they're all by themselves, right? But when you have somebody in the backseat, you are, you are literally in charge of that person's life

James Blain: 6:59

life in your hands.

Ken Lucci: 7:00

Right. And, um, I was in San Diego, uh, spoke at a 20 group last week, and I took a ride from the airport. Great, great, great, great chauffeur, great company, great chauffeur. And I chalk him up a little bit. And it's an employee chauffeur. Okay? So I, I'm looking at this camera in the car, right? And this person's body, his, this person's head, this person's head did not move, in other words, okay? They literally, they were straight ahead and, and I watched them a little bit, look at the mirror. I watched them look at the rear view, and then I watched them look at the side view. But my whole point is they didn't, they didn't take a drink of their big gulp. They didn't take a look at their phone, they didn't answer. I mean, their phone pinged once, right? They didn't even look at it that way. Okay? Now I'm driving back, uh, the, the company's picking me up from, uh, the hotel and I'm driving back, right? And the driver is looking at his phone. And the driver is texting. Okay. So I said, lemme ask you a que, are you an employee? And he's like, no, no, uh, you know, we're, we're a vendor for, for that company. And I, okay. I, I could tell the difference. I could tell the difference. And that was an IO car. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that.

James Blain: 8:18

The, it's normal.

Ken Lucci: 8:20

right. But the di But the, the difference is the first person was doing their job without me seeing all kinds of gyrations. And they were literally, they were looking at nine o'clock, 12 o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock at, you know, obviously the rear view mirror. So the distracted driving piece. When you talk about distracted driving, how does the operator manage that chauffeur?

James Blain: 8:48

So you gotta think of it a little bit like a sports team, right? You're responsible for your players, you're responsible for their thought process. You're responsible for the tone that you set in your own company. And I'm starting here because that's the single most important

Ken Lucci: 9:03

Oh, culture of safety.

James Blain: 9:04

culture of safety. If you don't set the tone, if you don't set zero tolerance, that's huge. Now, I'm gonna take us on a little sidebar. I'll bring it back in a second. But one of the big things that happens is operators will try to set that tone and they'll say, Hey, I have a zero tolerance policy for texting and driving. We're just not gonna do it. If I catch you doing it, you're fired. Then the best driver gets caught and it's, man, I can't lose Johnny. Johnny's been with me 10 years. It's the first time we've ever had an issue. And so you decide to keep him. The problem is, if Johnny gets in an accident six months later, you are going to have a negligence claim on your hands because they're gonna say, well, you had a, you had a policy. And that policy was that if somebody got caught texting and driving, you'd fire him.'cause you were gonna keep things safe. But ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how greedy is this man? He decided that money was more important. Why? Because he needed that driver on the road. He needed money. Money was more important than my client's ability to walk or whatever they're gonna target you on.

Ken Lucci: 10:07

Well those nu, the nuclear verdicts is what kill is killing the industry.

James Blain: 10:11

absolutely killing it. But that again, comes back to you've gotta have that policy. And here's the thing, once you've get that, Hey, we've got policies we're gonna do and we've got the culture, we've got the tone. You've gotta understand that in our world we have an extra piece vying for our attention. One of the things that drives me nuts is, look, we teach eye contact. Eye contact is good. Now, if you've got cultural concerns, you know someone coming in from overseas, you gotta be aware. Other cultures are not as likely as the west to have direct eye contact. But what always scares the hell outta me is when I get a guy in the car driving that is talking to me and thinks he's gotta look me in the eye when he talks.

Ken Lucci: 10:51

Right. And, and he's, and he's looking at you through the rear view. Or worse, he's going like this.

James Blain: 10:56

I've had him both, and you're absolutely right, you've beat me to the punch on that, right? He's looking in the rear view, which is great, but he's looking at me in the rear view. Or worse yet, he's turning over and and trying to

Ken Lucci: 11:07

Now think about what you just said. I mean, the driver talking, uh, is a distraction. It's a distraction because he's not, he's not doing his routine. You know, in the, in the security industry, I was always, when I was trained, I, I, I was trained. If you're, if you're against the wall, you don't worry about your six. You're six. So you have, now you work, obviously you're 12, you're nine, and you're three. But when you are driving, you're doing the same thing. Think about it. And, but, but again, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm having a conversation, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which is no, my 360 field of view.

James Blain: 11:49

Exactly.

Ken Lucci: 11:49

And you know what? Get think. Don't think that, don't think that your client doesn't notice it either.

James Blain: 11:54

Oh, they notice and They can feel it.

Ken Lucci: 11:56

They notice it. And especially with these fucking phones, the, the text messages are dinging, right? So the driver automatically, now, he doesn't realize it. He takes his eyes off the road and he is like, what did I just do that I, five seconds, my, my, my five seconds. I was away from looking at the windshield.

James Blain: 12:15

How many football fields do you cover on the highway? Right? Well, it's one of the things we train and here's, here's where it gets fun, right? Sometimes we are our own worst enemy in this industry, right? Because I can, I can tell you when I've, I, I've gotten picked up by someone who starts driving and then they go to their driver app, and then they put the, they're on right now. Now we're updating the driver app.

Ken Lucci: 12:40

updating the driver app to say, I have customer in car.

James Blain: 12:43

While they're right. Instead of doing the normal routine, Hey, you know what, just wanna confirm where we're going. Would you like water? You know, update it, then get driving. Nope. He starts driving, then goes and updates it. I immediately knew it was an IO because the phone rings and he picks it up.

Ken Lucci: 12:59

yep.

James Blain: 12:59

I'm on route, I've got, I've got him messing with the tablet. I've got him taking calls, and guess what? He's got to, that's a requirement of what he's doing for this trip. They gotta know, he's just doing what he's been trained and taught to do. And so one of the things that we really focus on is you've gotta train people to understand, look, it's tortoise in the hare. Right? Fastest, slow, right? Slow is fast. If he gets in an accident, if because he's updating the statuses because he is not paying attention. If we get T-boned,

Ken Lucci: 13:34

What were you do? What were you doing? What were you doing? When the vehicle impacted is the question that's gonna be asked

James Blain: 13:42

Exactly. And someone brought this up on Facebook the other day, and it was one of those ones, you know, look, I see a lot of things on Facebook where I go, I am not touched that, but I jumped in. You know, Hey, I have a pastor. Get in the car. I'm in a huge hurry. You know, I'd step on it. Well, what do we do? Well, what you don't do is speed and try to catch the light and drive any differently. What you do is you say, Hey, I'm gonna do everything I possibly can to get you there as quickly and safely as possible. And then you drive safely and surely,'cause guess what, again? You get T-boned, you get pulled over. Anything at all happens. They're not getting there at all. Now, you still want to make sure that you're cognizant of the fact that they're in a hurry and you treat them accordingly. But as you already said, Ken, you've gotta understand that you've gotta drive correctly. So what we train people is you've gotta manage all of these things through routine, and you've gotta manage them through order of operations. Look

Ken Lucci: 14:40

It's gotta become muscle memory.

James Blain: 14:41

When that, when that person gets right, you've, you've got'em in the vehicle, you've got everything loaded in, you're immediately going to then go through your typical spiel and it's gonna vary a little bit by company. You know, Hey, excited to have you on board. I've got you going to the airport. You know, it's about a 45 minute trip. Would you like something to drink? Would you like temperature? However, your company does that, and it varies company to company. Then, before you ever throw it and drive, update your app, set whatever you need to set, do whatever you need to do right then and there. Because even though for you it feels like it took an eternity, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like an eternity in the backseat because guess what? We all get in and drive. We all know that you don't just hop in and throw it and drive. You gotta start the car. You gotta do everything.

Ken Lucci: 15:25

And I think you, I, I think you also have to get it in your mind that you are being judged by the passenger. You are being judged by the passenger. It's not just Jim and Ken, James and Ken being hypersensitive. When we take trips around the country, every, every passenger is thinking the same thing. Harsh Dr. Harsh braking is a pa is I, I notice a lot. I, I, I notice the swerving. I notice all of that stuff. And we used to train that, pretend that you have champagne glasses, a tear of champagne glasses in the back as you. Right as you, as you make your turns, as you're braking, et cetera. Um, I don't know about you, but I, when I'm in the backseat, I'm, I'm hyper anxious about the car in front of us.

James Blain: 16:14

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 16:15

And, and there's also, there's also a perception that that car in front of us is really a lot closer than it is.

James Blain: 17:03

Well, and I think one of the things that is easy to forget is that driving is something most people do or have done as a regular part of their life. And so I. It's a little bit like customer service. If I said to someone, tell, explain to me what customer service is, they're gonna struggle. I say, great. Explain to me what bad customer service is. They instantly think of a time where they're like, oh man, this guy, he was the worst. He treated me like crap. I hated it. He didn't respect me. Or, you know, it's the same thing with driving. We don't have to be able to describe what's wrong to feel it. I can feel when you're in a situation where you're boxed in, I can feel, even if I'm in the back working on my laptop, if there's two semi-trucks on either side of us, I'm going to feel claustrophobic. It doesn't matter. Right. A little different for me.'cause I do this for a living. But you know, you can have one of my kids in the back and they're gonna know that something doesn't feel right. So you have to understand, and we teach, you have to really have a bubble. Your whole goal is to create a space around your vehicle and to do what you need to, to protect and maintain that space.

Ken Lucci: 18:15

Yep,

James Blain: 18:16

It's

Ken Lucci: 18:17

Well, so, so what do you think of the drivers that give you a play by play? Oh my God. Look at that lady in front of us. Oh my. Let's get away from her. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, seamlessly. I, I don't wanna know that we're in peril. I want you to manage the situation.

James Blain: 18:34

and, and we're playing chess, not checkers. Right. That's one of my favorite sayings. If you've ever been on a webinar with me, if you've ever heard me talk chest, not checkers, if it gets to that point, you screwed up. Because here's the thing I can tell you right now. One of the big things, and this is a huge one for me, if I'm driving down the road and I'm in the right lane and I see a truck merging in. I'm going to make damn sure that I'm either one lane over that I'm slowing down so there's room in front of him, or if, if I can, without speeding or otherwise causing an issue, making sure that he's merging in behind me. Because here's the thing, in all of those situations, I'm worried he's gonna merge into me and I'll, and again, I I mentioned very cautiously speeding up. If he's merging in behind me, you better believe I'm looking a mile down the road because the last thing I want is for him to merge in behind me. And anybody in New York, anybody in this part of the world, I'm talking to you. We all know in those areas, the last thing you want is him merging in behind you. Traffic stops. And now I've got him trying to park on top of me. So you are having to manage that space directly around your vehicle and then look all the way around. So. Look, I, I mentioned New York. In New York, it's gonna be tough. In the ideal world, I, I want an empty lane on either side and I want plenty of room in front of

Ken Lucci: 19:59

What's plenty in front of me? Three, four car lengths.

James Blain: 20:02

So it's gonna depend on your vehicle. The bigger the vehicle, the more room you're gonna need. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because it, and, and it's funny because I want you guys to think, everybody always expects to go and they always go, I know this, I learned it in driver's ed. It's a three second rule. And I go, okay, great. Till it rains, till it's foggy, till I'm driving a bus.

Ken Lucci: 20:24

Yeah, you're driving how, how many, what's the motor coach? 14,000 pounds or 28,000 pounds, I forget.

James Blain: 20:30

It's, well, it's gonna depend on, on what you're loaded with, and it's gonna depend on your weight. But the, the motor coaches are, are gonna be very heavy and they're gonna stop very slowly. But the other thing that you have to keep in mind, and I tell people the distance that you keep on everyday driving unless you're used to keeping a bigger gap, look, we're recommending four to five seconds even in a sedan now. You should never in a sedan have less than three and, and some, and I look,

Ken Lucci: 20:59

do you count? How do I know that I've got three to five seconds in front of me. How do I do it?

James Blain: 21:03

well, and here's, so here's two things. So the seconds, if you've never done it, this is super easy. You wait for something to go by and you start counting. So I, I say, all right, look, I, I've got a sign up ahead.

Ken Lucci: 21:15

mile, marker,

James Blain: 21:16

counting mount 1, 2, 3. If I get to it, I stop counting. Once I actually get there, I stop counting. Now, here's the thing, and this is what I hear all the time from the guys, especially LA East Coast, lots of traffic. James, are you nuts with traffic? Do you know how long it would take me to try and do that? Do you know how often that means slowing down? Do you know what that means to turn to opening up space? I get it. But here's the thing. If you don't maintain that space, if you don't defend that space, when you do have to stop or the guy in front of you stops short,

Ken Lucci: 21:51

gonna be, you're in trouble.

James Blain: 21:52

you're in trouble. And we are now seeing across the country, there's been an increase in fraud. Now this is where operators, telematics cameras, telematics cameras, but we're seeing an increase of people that have figured out I can cut in front of a commercial vehicle, slam the brakes, make'em hit me, and I have a claim.

Ken Lucci: 22:10

no, shit.

James Blain: 22:11

And guess what? You probably have at least$1.5 million of insurance. And if you're running buses, you got 5 million. So I know I'm not gonna work for a while. And that goes back to the nuclear verdicts, to the insurance guys. They think we're lottery tickets. I,

Ken Lucci: 22:26

you know it, and again, it's the straight line between the insurance premium increase to managing the expectations of your drivers. The other night I said, somebody said, well, what do you mean by creating a culture of safety? Okay. To me it's like, uh, it's like creating a, a, a lifestyle of healthy eating. Okay. It's, this is, this is what I'm gonna avoid and this is the activity I'm going to do. Right? So talk to me about this, the telematics systems, because, you know, I, I help, I've helped a couple of operators from a strategic consulting perspective, put some, put some job descriptions in place and work. One of them was a safety manager and A-D-O-T-A-D-O-T compliance officer. And I learned a little bit about, um, samsara. I was unbelievably, and, and I, they're not a sponsor, but by the way, they should be paying to be,

James Blain: 23:24

Sam, call us.

Ken Lucci: 23:25

right. Samsara call us. Uh, third,

James Blain: 23:28

Scon call

Ken Lucci: 23:29

Yep. Third, third outreach. Um, so the, talk to me about the AI functions of these telematics and what it means and how an operator can use it to change the behavior of his drivers.

James Blain: 23:43

So let's, let's take a higher level approach first.'cause I wanna frame it because a lot of people think that they're being proactive by having cameras and telematics, and

Ken Lucci: 23:53

are, but you don't do anything about it. If you don't, you look at'em, there's nothing proactive about it.

James Blain: 23:57

Well, and here's the thing, it can, anything that records an event cannot be proactive in preventing it. Okay? Look, I am a firm supporter of telematics. If you don't have sock on, if you don't have Samsara, if you don't have one of the other vendors, right? Raven Camera, whatever you are using. If you don't have those in the vehicle, you are at a massive disadvantage because you have to understand the proactive range and the reactive range. I live squarely on the proactive side. My goal at Pax, my goal is that you never get an alert. You never have to deal with anything. You never have to say That was a close call'cause you never know about it. We're training to prevent things from ever happening. You then have your reactive side and I tell people I live in the practice range. If we looked at this as a high-end sports team. I live in the practice range. This is the practicing, this is the training. This is getting ready for the game. Your sock on, your Raven, your samsara, your telematics. That is your pre post game review. That is your video of the game. That's what actually happened out there. Now, what's really cool, and to tie this into your question about AI, is it used to be that they were really kinda looking for static items. Hey, we know that the speed limit here is 80 and the guy was doing 90, right? That typically happens when no one's in the car in real life, the speed limit. Here's 55. He's doing 65. All of these different things were kind of static. Now that we have ai, we're able to actually go in and say, Hey, where's the driver's eyes? You know, if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm looking, you straight in the camera, but the camera can tell that Now I'm looking off at something else, right? I'm over here, I'm leaning. I'm trying to talk to this passenger. I boom, distracted, driving alert, it knows, Hey, there's harsh driving. There's all these different things that it can now take all of the data and extrapolate it where you'd have a manual review before and you'd have to actually go through and find it. The big thing though, and Ken, you've already identified this, even as a reactive tool, it's not a tool if you don't use it. So if you're not addressing these alerts, if you're not actually looking at what's going on now, suddenly doesn't apply anymore. I'm getting the alerts. I'm not doing anything with it. And by the way, let's bring this back to insurance.'cause it's always about insurance. Right? Now, if they find out in court after an accident, hey, you had a driver that he hit someone because he was following too closely. Oh, by the way, your telematics had alerted you time and time and time again that this driver was engaging in this repeated behavior. That magic, magic word that those evil, evil attorneys that come against us love

Ken Lucci: 26:47

And they all are. They all are.

James Blain: 26:49

Negligence, right. By the way, my sister-in-law's an attorney, but she's on the right side of things. Um, but then you get that beautiful word negligence because you knew it was a problem. You wanted to make profits. You wanted to make money. You put money over people, and you let that unsafe driver stay on the road. Guys, they got you on the ropes. You're done. And that's what they're looking to do. So the goal of all of these systems, the goal of this is it's telling you what it's seeing, it's identifying these behaviors so that you can fix them.

Ken Lucci: 27:21

So you can change the behavior in advance of a problem.

James Blain: 27:24

Chess, not checkers.

Ken Lucci: 27:27

Yep. And this is a perfect analogy, very quick one. You, I used to drive Derek Jeter. I think I've, I've told this story before. And he used to get to spring training two and a half hours before. And one day I watched him in the downstairs batting cage and the, and the pitching, the, uh, the, uh, hitting coach was there. Now Jeter was the captain of the team, okay? And the hitting coach is there, and he's listening. Derek, look at this video and look at what's happening to your swing. What's something's going on here? Okay. So you're talking about a guy that's the captive of the, of the team who could easily say, I don't need to come in for batting practice. Right. So what do, what do you do for the operator who says, well, I don't need to do that. All my guys are great drivers.

James Blain: 29:18

Well, if I can help him, I help him. Unfortunately. Otherwise, I gotta sit and wait and wait for life to wake'em up because here's the thing, I don't care what level of sports it is. It's all built on fundamentals. Look, I, I started playing hockey last October. I've been very lucky in that I'm surrounded by coaches that are great, that one of the coaches all time scoring record one of the other coaches, right? Grew up in Canada, grew up playing it. And the thing that they come back to over and over and over is the fundamentals. The core fundamentals, because everything is built on it. Jeter gets it. He understands that, hey, even though I might be amazing at this, two incredible things happen with people. One, learning's not an an upward trend where you just learn and you go and you get amazing. Usually we get a hiccup. You get to a point where you amass enough knowledge that you kind of get that uncertainty. Wavering. I've kind of got it all, but now it's kind of more mixed up than it was before. And there's a dip and then we go up. Then you hit a plateau. Right? And Jeter probably understood that plateau better than anyone because what happens with drivers is companies wanna say, watch how you've been driving since he was 16. I trained him how to drive and now he's at the plateau. Well, if we wait for them to dip down, to push them back up, now all we're doing is we're either performing at base level and then falling below it and pushing back up. All you're ever doing is performing at base or dropping below.

Ken Lucci: 30:46

See, I, I think it's also fun more fundamental than that. I mean, ma uh, Tom Maser, God rest his soul. Um, you know, he was one of my consultants when I first started in the limo business. I believed in consultant. I hired Tommy, and I never used to tell my people Tommy was coming in, right? And they, they still didn't know who he was. So, so Tommy would stay in Tampa, we would pick him up from the airport, take him to the hotel, and then we would have another driver take him from the hotel to the office the next day. And, you know, he would say his biggest thing when he did the training is, Ken, most drivers, most shoppers don't know that they're bad drivers. They judge not being a good driver by, well, I haven't had an accident in seven years. And he used to say, geez, you know, odds are you're gonna have one. So think about what I just said, and the, the measure of most operators before this insurance crisis was, well, my loss runs aren't bad. Aren't bad at all. We haven't had an accident in x. I mean, think about, think about that logic.

James Blain: 31:47

But look, and, and there'll be a whole nother podcast episode on a lot of these topics, but I think one of the things is. The kiss of death to a safety program, and I mean this, I'm dead serious. The kiss of death to a safety program is when someone comes in and says, Hey, you know, we haven't had an accident forever. We're spending too much money on this. Let's, let's save some money. Let's cut some costs.

Ken Lucci: 32:10

They think it's, see, see what you just said. They think it's a cost instead of an investment. And okay, that's the, I got, I got an operator that makes more money than God, okay? He's been on our program for many ti and this guy makes a lot of money and, and he basically said to me, you know what? My guys are spending too much time on Samsara. I said, there's no such thing. There's no such thing.

James Blain: 32:33

look, if you get our highest level membership. It's$9 a month if you, if you have over a hundred drivers, you then start getting into volume pricing. You start automatically getting discounts supplied to that amount, right. All the way up to a 25% off on that$9 a month. And I have operators all the time that come to me and they say, well, you know, I would, I would do that, but I just don't know that I wanna spend$9 a

Ken Lucci: 32:58

I, I don't want, I don't want another recurring expense. Yeah. You're the same guy that's gonna complain when your insurance goes up 35%.

James Blain: 33:05

Well,

Ken Lucci: 33:06

you? Yeah.

James Blain: 33:07

one accident. One accident will wipe out the cost of every driver over the course of several years. And the other thing, it's really funny because we've got this mindset that we don't think about it in the right frame of mind. I I love this example. I used to give it all time. I said, let me ask you something. If I could give your driver a Red Bull and it was a magical Red Bull, that for a whole month would help keep their mind on what they're doing, help keep'em doing the right things, help keep'em amped up, help try and get you better reviews, help try and prevent accents. Would you buy him that Red Bull? I said, oh yeah. I said, if it was a Starbucks coffee, a little more expensive, but just one a month. Would you do that? Well, yeah, but what happens is when we start thinking about scale, we say, well,$9 a month times, my number of drivers times this, you know, we haven't had an accident in a while. Look, I'm not telling people it, you don't have to use Pax. You don't have to come and give me nine. And that's at the high end, right? We've got lower end options. But the point that I'm trying to make is that. This is really hard as an owner because nobody looks and says, Hey, this is how I make my money. The money wants to go into sales. The money wants to go into more trips. The money wants to go into vehicles, the money wants to go into these places. But in our industry, we found this commoditization of the driver or the chauffeur, however you refer to them internally, whatever type of work you're doing. There's this commoditization and this thought of, well, you know, if I buy a vehicle, I'm gonna have that vehicle. Even if the person driving, it doesn't work out. Even if I've got two or three people that drive it, I've got them there. But when you look at the cost, you are spending every month on a lease, on a payment, however you're doing it, the question becomes why do we have this mentality that the person operating it is not where to put the money?

Ken Lucci: 35:07

Right, right. And you know something, it's funny, um, this is a good analogy. So Burn Steakhouse down in, uh, down in Tampa, right? They have, they have a, a, like a six month training program for their, for their waitress waiters and waitresses. That's absolutely incredible. Been that way for years, and it's extraordinarily detailed. So they had somebody come in and look at the cost structure of the, the, the steakhouse. First of all, it's one of the most profitable steakhouses in the country, right? But somebody walks through the door and says, you know what? I think you ought to change this. And you, you, you ought to, you ought to maybe make it only. A week or two week of shadowing a, a waiter, a waitress. You know what the o you know what the owner of Burn Steakhouse said, right?

James Blain: 35:51

I'm hoping you said get out.

Ken Lucci: 35:53

Yeah. Right, right. So it, it's, it's investing, to me, it's an investment. And to me it's an internal, in internal insurance policy. Right. So I also believe that safety sells. Okay. I think that we're all trying to get a shrinking piece, a a, a piece of a pie that's shrinking, which is the co the corporate account. The corporate, the corporate client, right. I don't care if it's corporate, it's corporate, it's hospitality, whatever. And there's competition everywhere. To me, when you walk through the door with statistics. And you walk through the door and you say, listen, this is my telematics management system. This is how I manage my business. These are the statistics. This is, I have PAX training. All of my people have gone through PAX training and this is why your executives are safe with us. Right? It's, it's, it's truly an investment. So let me ask you a question. So, so break down the top distracted driving that the, that the chauffeurs that you see the chauffeurs doing or the CDLs doing, and then what should they be watching out for on the road?

James Blain: 37:04

So, so a couple things In our world, one of the easiest things to avoid and, and it, this is kind of distracted driving, but it's really its own item, is following too closely. If you ever get in an accident for following too closely, that is typically the easiest to avoid. And the excuse that I typically hear is, well, man, you don't, you don't drive out here on the East coast or you're not out there. You know, you, you don't know how much traffic we have. Guys,

Ken Lucci: 37:29

Jesus traffic is everywhere.

James Blain: 37:31

Traffic's everywhere. And look, I travel the country and sometimes I, I'm riding with a chauffeur or I'm riding on a motor coach. Other times, guess what guys? I'm in this business. I love to drive. It's my favorite thing to do. So it doesn't matter if they gimme a four runner or a Mustang. I'm gonna go grab a car and I'm gonna drive. When I come out to New York, I'm nuts. I like to drive. So I drive in New York and because I'm nuts, I fly into LaGuardia and I drive over to Newark. So it's, it's not like I'm not doing that same thing in la. Guess what? I might be down by LAX, I might be up by Ontario. I might be down in San Diego. So it doesn't matter where you're driving, the thing there is the distracted driving piece. The biggest thing there is losing control of that space. Now sometimes that becomes, Hey, I let being a little tired distract me from defending that space. I let my phone distract me. By the way, CDL drivers, it's worse for you because it is liter texting and driving's illegal for everybody. But phone use for us is illegal too. If you are holding that phone up, it's illegal. You've broken the law now, and most states, guess what? Most states now are moving to making that a law for all drivers. It's one touch or Bluetooth and. Owners, guess what? Unless there's an emergency, unless there's an issue, you should make it a policy that they're not taking calls when they're driving, whether that vehicle's empty, whether it's with passengers. I might have told this story on here before, but there was a horrible accident in Florida, and what happened is you had a bus driver who was distracted by a phone call. Everything's legal, no law's broken with the phone call one touch Bluetooth just on a phone call. No, she's not supposed to be on a call, but she's on the call. And there's a guy that was a former gangster, had gotten his life back together, had married a nurse, had the dream life. Well, he ran outta gas and for some reason it possessed him to try and push this SUV down the highway. What happens? This distracted driver hits and kills him with his wife and two kids in the car. The thing that is burned into my mind, to the point where even in my personal life, you know what? Call me later. I'm driving, I won't answer. It's burned into my mind because the photo I saw was the shoe on the top of the back of a 45 foot bus, right? His shoe up on the top of that bus. So you've gotta keep in mind the number one thing that is the distraction right now in our world is devices.

Ken Lucci: 40:10

And, and it's, and it's not just the device in the hands, it, you just described something that's sensor, that's sensory. Right. Because they, they, they, they were on the call. Chances are, they may have even been looking in front of them, but they didn't realize it.'cause they're. Their brain was focused on

James Blain: 40:27

Cognitive distraction. Yeah. And I, and I don't wanna go super crazy with this, but you know, you, there's different types of distraction that you deal with. And so in that case, you had someone whose eyes were on the phone, or, or I'm sorry, their eyes are on the road. Their brain is on the phone and their hands are on the wheel. So they're physically engaged in driving, but they're cognitively unengaged. And so you, you have all these different types of distractions

Ken Lucci: 40:53

got a missile going about 70 miles an hour.

James Blain: 40:55

and you got, yeah, you got a giant missile going 70 miles an hour. Exactly.

Ken Lucci: 40:59

So, let's back up a step and talk about the operator that knows they should do this, that doesn't, right? The same operator knows they should look at their financial statements, but for some reason doesn't,

James Blain: 41:13

But we're gonna help that

Ken Lucci: 41:14

we're gonna help that person

James Blain: 41:15

gonna help you. We got you.

Ken Lucci: 41:17

So what do you do for the operator that has checks the box and has the samsara, or has whatever the telematics system is, but does not have a system in place to review it and then change the behavior in a positive way? Te how do, what's the advice that you give them?

James Blain: 41:33

So most importantly, I'm gonna break your mindset of box checking. It is not a box to check. It is a way that you run your company.

Ken Lucci: 41:45

It's a cultural, it's a culture of safety or it's not.

James Blain: 41:48

it's not, yeah, it either is or it isn't. And if you ask me what we do, and I am absolutely notorious for any time Pax does anything at all. Customer service never comes before safety. You ask us what we do. Safety, defensive driving, and customer service. Why? Because you can't give customer service if I've literally peed my pants in the back of the car.'cause we've had five near misses.

Ken Lucci: 42:17

it was knuckle dry. It was a white knuckle trip. Yeah.

James Blain: 42:19

look, here's the thing. If I gotta change my shorts when I get to the airport, it's one thing. If I'm going to a business meeting and it's the biggest meeting in my life and I've literally crapped my pants on the way there because this guy has terrified me. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna use you ever again and I'm gonna lose the deal.

Ken Lucci: 42:35

no, no offense too. I mean, anxiety is a big thing, right? And, and a lot of anxiety is because the person feels that they've lost control and the passenger has given you their ultimate control. The ultimate control is their life. So, so the operator who doesn't, you know, who doesn't like to be confrontational and says, I'm not gonna deal with that because Jesus, I don't want to go through another hiring phase. What do what? How do you deal with that guy?

James Blain: 43:02

So, so a couple things. So first and foremost, and, and maybe this will come up when we do an episode on pricing, I know that's something that you're gonna talk with us about. Ken, first and foremost, understand that this is an investment. I mentioned earlier the kiss of death to any safety or training program is when you say, we haven't had any accidents, we can scale back. No. If you haven't had any accidents, you don't change a darn

Ken Lucci: 43:28

A actually, I think you double down

James Blain: 43:30

You absolutely

Ken Lucci: 43:31

because the odds are, the odds are that, you know, you gotta, you gotta almost wait a state, wait a minute, it's too quiet around here.

James Blain: 43:38

Yeah, and, and that's what you want because this is operationally part of that. Now, remember what I talked about earlier When people plateau, you've got this plateau and then they dip back down. What's a much safer way to operate is you're pushing people up on the plateau instead of down. And anytime someone comes down, we try to push them back above that and keep top performers.

Ken Lucci: 44:01

So how do you do that when you, when Samsara or or another telematics says, okay, we've had five episodes of distracted driving with Ken. What's the process?

James Blain: 44:13

So first and foremost, don't let it get to five second, go back and review what's happening in your company. So if you find that you are having a issue. Multiple times. This keeps coming up. Don't play checkers. Don't just go, well, I'm gonna address one at a time. Play chess. Think 4, 5, 6, moves ahead and say, Hey, something is fundamentally wrong in my training, or something's fundamentally wrong in my safety program. Look guys, this is just like sports. Anybody that grew up playing sports, it should be second nature to you. Because here's the thing, the game that's driving, that's game day. Game day is driving and they're just game after game after game after game. Your telematics, your cameras, that's your review. The problem is we get in this cycle where we never go back to practice. Think about it. Think if after winning the Super Bowl, the coach came out and said, guys, we are so good. From now on, we only practice once a year. I'm gonna bring everybody in. I'm gonna give'em a big pep talk and we're gonna go continue to win. Super

Ken Lucci: 45:19

It is not gonna

James Blain: 45:20

It's not gonna happen.

Ken Lucci: 45:21

Yeah. At The at that, at that level, they all understand that it is the continuous strive to improve that keeps them winning. And we, a lot of operators don't get that in any function. In any function. Right. You fund, you, you, you, I, I, I said this last week in a speech, well, I'm profitable, therefore I don't need to manage my financials. Oh, wait a minute. I, I, I, I haven't had a, we haven't had an accident, therefore I don't have to jazz up my safety program. Okay. Comfort. Complacency and omni thinking to me are the worst things that you can have as an operator. You've gotta operate at a heightened level of safety at all times.'cause otherwise, no. Frank, no, no. You're no different than the Uber or Lyft driver that that's, that's taken your business

James Blain: 46:12

I, I'm gonna share a story, right? I, I knew of an operator that had an accident and they had an accident with a couple in the car, and he, he couldn't afford to lose the driver. So he put that same couple in the car with that same driver, you know, a week,

Ken Lucci: 46:31

was the, the driver was negligent. The driver was.

James Blain: 46:33

this driver was in an accent. I don't care if he was negligent, for God's sake. Don't put, unless I ask you to, why would you put me back in the car with the same guy? Not only that, why would there be a timeframe where that guy's right back in, that guy's right back in with that same passenger. Look, I don't care if it wasn't his fault. I don't care what the situation was, if you haven't lost me as a customer, unless I'm saying, hey, no, no, it, it totally not. I'm fine with it. Why would you put me back with that person? Our whole world, everything we do in pasture transportation, our goal is to create this feeling that they are safe, that they are taking care of every need is there. That's why in our world, it's not just driving SA safety and, and defensive driving has always been about building a core of safety and building a core of service. You can only get to service once you have the safety in place. Now, think about it, whether it was his fault or not, regardless of what happened, what am I immediately gonna think about the next time I get in the vehicle with that driver?

Ken Lucci: 47:37

It's gonna, it's gonna be immediately

James Blain: 47:39

gonna be in my mind. Yeah. Doesn't matter what happened, it's on my mind, right? And unless I said, Hey, that was my guy, I want that driver, unless I'm requesting it, don't put me back in the vehicle with them.

Ken Lucci: 47:50

And I and I, and I think that that's almost, that's almost like you have no concept of what you put these people through. That's number one. And number two, I, I think in general, our industry, we are so busy working in the business, not on it, and trying to get people from point A to point B because, uh, especially on our busiest days. That we're not proactive. We're almost, we, we, we think we don't have time to be proactive. And, and I argue that the reason why you're on, on this hamster wheel is you haven't, you haven't taken time out to think that why is this continually happening? Why are people hitting cars in the parking lot? You know, you brought up something the other day, uh, or earlier that it's, it's not necessarily the catastrophic accident, but it's the scuff bumpers, the, the, the fenders, the dinged rim. That's a thousand dollars to fix. And you're like, why is the shit continually happening? And my an my answer is because you haven't backed up and you haven't looked at why you haven't. I mean, you haven't, you, you, you don't have a proactive process. In place to manage the data that you have. And a guy said to me the other day, well, you know, telematics, I look at it. If I've had an accident or I look at, I have a problem. I said, there is so much data that you can ma that you can manage your business by that's proactive and that you can, that you can use it as a sales tool, but use it to build up the muscle memory of your company. And it, it, it kind of is very concerning that they don't draw that direct correlation. They, they're like, well, the 30% price increase has nothing to do with me because I haven't had an accident.

James Blain: 49:40

But, but you used a magic word. You brought up something really magical that a lot of business owners miss, and that can be really tough to see through the weeds. And that's process. Here's the thing, you need processes and systems. And guess what I can tell you right now, I hear people all the time say, Hey, yeah, no, I, we could develop our own program. We can develop our own training materials, we can

Ken Lucci: 50:03

Of course you can.

James Blain: 50:05

We can do all of this.

Ken Lucci: 50:06

Of

James Blain: 50:06

great. And I can make my own iPhone. You know, I can go find engineers, we can figure out the technology. Why, why, why do we have this thought of. Do and, and here's what happens to most business owners. You have that thought of, we'll do it at absolute best. You half cock that gun, you kind of sort of throw some stuff at it and you call it good. One of the things that I learned as an entrepreneur from my father-in-law, who I was lucky enough to be mentored by, right? He's got a multimillion dollar business, doing well, doing great. He said, look, you didn't start there when I was little. I had to figure out what to do, but why would I try to invent the wheel when it already exists?

Ken Lucci: 50:48

Why would I reinvent the wheel? There's no

James Blain: 50:50

why? Why am I gonna try and build and do something? Guys, look at this. In this way, you have to figure out what it is that you produce at your company. And it, for almost all of us, we're not making the SUV, we're not making the motor coach, we're not making the sprinter. Our big thing is you are making drivers that provide experiences. So instead of trying to figure out exactly what it is, how do I keep'em safe? How do I do this? How do I teach'em? Driving safety, customer service. Grab these tools off the shelf, go put in a telematics company. Use a company like Pax to help you do the training, and then you focus on developing them into the type of person that you want to drive your family. That when passengers ride with them, they go, I have never felt so great. But you're doing that by putting all of these pieces together. If you spend your time figuring out how to actually create the hammer, you're never gonna drive the nail.

Ken Lucci: 51:51

Uh, without question, and again, to me, pull it off the shelf because it's there. Use it to improve your business and then spend your time that energy working on your business, not

James Blain: 52:05

Not in your business?

Ken Lucci: 52:07

know, it's, it's like a guy says to me, what do you, I said to him, what are you doing? He said, well, you know, I'm doing my books. I said, wait a minute. You're doing your books. It's two, it's, it's 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning. This is prime selling time. This is the reason why your revenue is, is

James Blain: 52:21

Just revenue generating

Ken Lucci: 52:22

Right. Because it's, it's not a good use of your time. Okay. And to me, it's not a good use of your time to try to rere recreate the wheel. To me, it's easier to get it off the shelf. If you want to enhance it, that's fine. But it was interesting to me, the undertone in the room and Nila shifted. It shifted away from the problem being the insurance companies to understanding that they play an, the operator plays an active role. There's a guy up there that talked about the telematics system and the AI functions, and him, him contacting the drivers, the chauffeurs when there was no customer in the car and say, listen, you know, you, you, you've, you've we're getting this signal. You really need to sh to drive the vehicle the same way when you have the car, the chauffeur in the car or empty. And that's the biggest thing. And so I saw the operators getting more collaborative on it and an understanding that in order to fix the problem, they had to identify the symptoms and they had to change and treat the symptoms. Um, when you, I, I'll leave you with this. When, when I look at review, bad reviews of companies, do you know the most prevalent, bad review I have.

James Blain: 53:37

Which one?

Ken Lucci: 53:39

That driver cut me off. The driver cut me off. Your driver was speeding and he cut me off. I want you to think about that. That person gave a review of the business. They're not even a customer. Okay. And how could that have been prevented?

James Blain: 53:53

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 53:54

The guy was speeding down the highway and of course the logo is on the vehicle. We want that, right? But Right. So what is, the person is so upset that they got cut off that they give you a shitty review. Okay, so obviously I'm looking at a company that's got five or seven of those really bad. They're racing their people between transfers. That's number one. They're, they're racing them between transfers, right? And they're not, they're not doing what you said, which is understand that you've got this bubble around you and they're not using the data. To me, when I look at a review that says the driver was speeding, right? Driving reckless, reckless driving, he's not even a customer and they're observing that.

James Blain: 54:36

well, and, and here's what I wanna close on, because you're, you're hitting on something and, and this, it's, it's a little similar to what you said a second ago with your telematics, when you get a telematics alert. One of two things is gonna happen. You're gonna go review it and you're gonna find out it's legitimate, or you're gonna review it and you're gonna find out it wasn't legitimate or wasn't an issue, and you are going to document if it wasn't legitimate. If it is legitimate.

Ken Lucci: 55:03

gonna document the change in how you change the behavior.

James Blain: 55:06

Not exactly. Not only that, right? One of the things you should be doing is, and I get people that call me all the time, Hey, I had this situation, what's the exact right course have and take? Because you want to go in and say, Hey, I've done a remedial training and in Pax, that's easy in our world, that's, I assigned him the course, or I had him retake the course, or I gave him this piece of that additional training, and then I spoke with him, and you're gonna document that, and then you're going to make sure that if that happens again, you are being careful to not allow patterns of behavior to develop. Because remember what I said earlier, the problem becomes if you have a guy that, Hey, I've talked to this guy 10 times for speeding. Ju dude, the lawyer's gonna go in and he is gonna go, he knows it's a problem. He doesn't care because we only care about money. That's always it. It's gonna come back to, and the other piece of that is, guys, there's no silver bullet. Insurance is going to go up. It's across the board.

Ken Lucci: 56:08

The market is the market is never gonna become a soft market. You need to understand that it's gonna be a hard market and it's gonna continue to go up and up and up. So that, that's gonna lead us to pricing at some point.

James Blain: 56:20

but I have good news. And you're absolutely right, Ken. If you guys don't listen to the pricing episode, after you listen to this episode, you're in trouble. But here's the thing, when the pricing goes up, you don't have to ride the ride all the way to the top. Look, their job at the insurance company is to assess how much of a risk you pose. That's what Underwriting's whole job is. Underwriting's job is to come in and say, okay. Timmy's limo, John's Motor Coach Company, Steven's Taxi, whatever company you have, they come in and they say, okay, we have to try and figure out how risky you are and how likely you are to blow it. Because if you have a huge accident, if something goes horribly wrong, we know what the worst case scenario is. But what do we kind of expect? What do we think is gonna happen? So if you are actually creating a safety culture and you're documenting it all before you do your insurance renewal, months before you should be getting an insurance packet ready. Here's all the training that we've done in the

Ken Lucci: 57:23

Build the case,

James Blain: 57:24

build your

Ken Lucci: 57:26

build the case that you're less risky.

James Blain: 57:28

You are being graded, you're being assessed.'cause they have to assess the risk. Now does that mean you're gonna get the most favorable, best pricing in the world? No. Insurance is also a regulated industry.

Ken Lucci: 57:39

do you say to the, what do you say to the operator that says, well, you know, I'm really good friends with the broker. He'll take care of me.

James Blain: 57:45

Okay, well let me ask you something. Are you giving the broker what they need to get the job done? Because if I hire a chef and I say, Hey, he comes to my house and his name is Tommy and I've known him since we were kids and he's his best chef in the world and he gets to my house and there's nothing in my fridge and there's nothing for him to cook, how is he gonna take care of me?

Ken Lucci: 58:04

he can't tell, he can't tell the story anymore because there's not enough companies out there. Right. There's not enough companies out there where he can pass you between from one company to another, and he can't tell the story without data.

James Blain: 58:18

And, and to that point, your goal, you should not be, if you are looking at insurance as price alone, guys, there's more to it than that. We have, we at Pax, have a partnership with Lancer. If you're a Lancer customer, if you're one of their insurance, can't say enough about Steve and Tim, um, that whole team. But if you're a Lancer insured, you get access to additional lancer specific training. Lancer, the way they approach claims, the way they do things is different. Every insurance company's a little different. There are things you're gonna get with Lancer that you might not get with a national Interstater. You might not get with a Carolina casualty, or there's things with Carolina Casualty you might not get with a Lancer. They each have their own thing. So if you are assessing it. Purely on insurance, right? Purely on my cost. Two things. Their job is to assess your risk. If they know you're looking for the cheapest deal, that tells them you're a cheapest deal person.

Ken Lucci: 59:17

and you're, you might be more risky'cause you're also gonna be cheap on your safety. You're gonna be cheap on your DOT

James Blain: 59:22

because it's here, just a cheap guy. Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 59:24

Because by the way, it's usually because you don't make your pricing properly and you don't make enough profit. That's why you have to be cheap because your profits suck.

James Blain: 59:32

and here's the thing, guys. You've gotta make sure that you understand the game that you're playing. To Ken's point about, he's my broker's taking care of me. Give him the tools to do the job, right? Set him up for success. Look, we have a company that we work with out on the East coast. Had'em come to me this year and say, Hey, the first time ever, we've had no incidents last year. And we know that it's because we're doing weekly training through pax. We're keeping it top of mind. They have two main things that they think about every single week. How am I gonna stay safe and how am I gonna create an experience for this passenger? That's what their focus, that's the bread and butter of the passenger transportation industry.

Ken Lucci: 1:00:14

And you know, the funny part

James Blain: 1:00:15

pushing them up.

Ken Lucci: 1:00:16

you know the funny part about those companies, they understand that success is fleeting. They understand that success is temporary, right? So what they do is they develop systems of excellence. And it's not just lip service, it's internal processes and systems of excellence. And it's funny how the ones with the best safety programs are also the most profitable. They're also the ones

James Blain: 1:00:42

They have the best

Ken Lucci: 1:00:43

they have the best systems and they also have the best insurance rates year after year. Okay. It's funny how that is, it's funny how the ones that do everything reactive, they do everything last minute. They really are not in touch with all of the, all of the, the, the levers of their business. And I, I, I say to them, I don't know why you're surprised that your rates went up 35%. You're doing the bare minimum on safety. You're doing the bare minimum on driver training. It doesn't, you, your mindset is when your mindset is a sense of plentiful. I can go and get insurance anywhere. I don't have to change things. It's, you know, it's out of my hands. No, it's not,

James Blain: 1:01:26

This, this shows up time and time and time and time again all throughout business. And this is what I'll leave you guys with. When you have a vehicle that you start getting a small noise from, do you wait for it to be so loud you can't ignore it, or for your lights to show up as a Christmas tree? Or do you immediately take care of the problem? More importantly, don't you want a safety program just like you'd want in your maintenance program that never has the squeak because you are identifying it and taking care of it before it ever became an issue. Because guess what happens? Yep. Issues turn into problems. Problems turn into accidents. Accidents turn into catastrophes. Wouldn't you rather never have issues? So I think that's the best place to leave off.

Ken Lucci: 1:02:18

I think it's a great, absolutely a great place to leave off. I love these episodes. I, I, we've been on the road for a couple weeks, but another successful episode. Guys, we will see you back here again, uh, soon. And the next subject is going to be pricing. Okay.

James Blain: 1:02:34

Pricing. How do you afford this?

Ken Lucci: 1:02:36

By the way, we've got some great stuff coming up. We've got Charlie Horkey coming up right from Charlie Horkey from Slate Services, one of the most, I mean, iconic operators. Been around this business for 40 years, to me, one of the fathers of the Li Li industry. And then we've got one of my favorite people in the entire world. One of the most positive guys in the entire world. Eric Augh from The Advantage Remarketing is coming up. So, uh, stay tuned guys, and thanks for, uh, thanks for listening.

James Blain: 1:03:03

Take it easy, everybody.

1:03:04

Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.