SPEAKER_02 0:00

Making safety happen is really a leadership book for people who operate in high hazard, high consequence industries. It's a leadership book. You're right. It's not a technical manual. I wouldn't know how to write a technical manual. And I'm not a trained safety professional. I've just over the years seen a lot of entrepreneurs focus on the top line. They grow their business, but then they give it all back because they haven't managed the risk.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

You're listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast with Ken Lucci of Driving Transactions and James Blaine of PAC Training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Kenneth.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Good afternoon, Ground Transportation Podcast audience. That's another day at the Ground Transportation Podcast. My name is Kenneth Lucci from Driving Transactions. Normally I am blessed to be with my co-host, James Blaine from PAX Training. But as you all know, he travels quite a bit. And last I knew he was at a golf tournament in New Jersey. I feel blessed today to have somebody who's very topical and also have somebody that, from our industry perspective, from outside our industry, this guy is somebody that needs to be listened to based on what the passenger transportation industry is going through. Brian Filco, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Well, thank you, Ken. I really appreciate the opportunity to um be with you, and I look forward to a great conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Well, thank you for being here. And for everybody who's watching us, Brian wrote a fantastic book, Making Safety Happen. I've got a bunch of notes on it, but I was impressed by the fact that it came to be hardcovered. Most of the business books, I get the best ones you want to read, are available hardcover. So Brian is a business leader, a board of director, you were CEO of Jet Code Delivery. Then you're going to talk to us about that. But um take yeah, take us through your bio.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Absolutely. Well, so I did not follow any textbook career path. Let's put it that way. I began my career practicing corporate law after graduating law school in Milwaukee and worked at a firm that served primarily mid-market companies. And my favorite client was a family-held recycling business, kind of a major regional paper recycler. And uh, you know, they offered me an opportunity to come over there at a very young age as their CFO, other COO. And so that was an opportunity that was really interesting to me because I'd always been interested in the business side more than the legal side. Um, and that began the business journey, the business we ultimately sold to waste management. And that brought me from Milwaukee to Houston. And so I worked at Waste for a couple of years, helping run the recycling business nationally.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Wayne Heisinger's company?

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Uh he was long gone, but yes, I mean he had sold it, right? Yeah, he he he is the one that started it. By the time I got there, the CEO was a guy named Um Maury Myers, and then that followed David Steiner. What I saw when I got to waste management was a team that was extremely committed to safety, and that wasn't always the case. In other words, the team, Maury and his team, a guy named Jim Schultz, who's become a good friend, really engineered a turnaround. And so I really kind of saw at waste how good safety practices and good business practices are one and the same, and began to learn that safety doesn't compete with productivity and profitability. Rather, it's the gatekeeper, it's foundational to achieving that. So, fast forward a little bit, I left waste, bought my own logistics company called Jetko Delivery in Houston. What year was this? So 2006. I bought Jetco. It's about 20 years, 20 years ago, right now. Um, we grew that business. It was um again a privately held family business, started in 1976. And when I bought it, I'm gonna say that it was tired, but it wasn't broken. I mean, the company had built a good reputation, but we saw an opportunity to come in there and just kind of take the company to a new level with an investment in fleet, with an investment in technology, people. And so we grew it over a 14-year period. Ultimately, I sold the company to a Montreal-based organization called the GTI Group and stayed for several more years to help run the organization. But during that journey, I just became more and more interested in safety, again, not as a department, but as a core value proposition. And ultimately, we learned that we all knew, of course, that safety was the right thing to do, right? You want to take care of your customers, you want to take care of your employees, you want to take care of the members of the public. But I began to see safety as a core business strategy. And I started to write and speak on that. That's just grown. So after leaving Jetco and you know, after my time there, I uh um now help clients, help companies build that safety culture. I work with an organization called the AcroSure. And we um uh that's my mission is to help and lead a team of people that help companies better manage risk and really understand how to achieve safe, productive, and profitable results.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Okay, so waste management during your time there, how big was that fleet that you were involved in, the fleet of vehicles?

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Roughly. Oh man, I mean, probably in the tens of thousands. I mean, you know, waste revenue was in the in the billions of dollars. I couldn't tell you how big how big the fleet is, other than it was massive.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

But then you went to a family logistics company, and how big was that fleet at that point?

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Well, when I bought Jetco, it was um it probably wasn't more than it was small, it was 40, 50 trucks. And then you built it to what? We built a freight brokerage business around it, yep, and a warehouse business and a heavy haul business. So we took what was there. I saw it as an opportunity to kind of leverage and expand, and that's what we did.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

And it's very similar to the show for the passenger business, right? Because we all have our own fleets, or uh the operators have their own fleets, but they also have network business that they send to other providers in other cities. What got me about the book was the movement from safety as a department, safety as a checklist, almost safety as a line item, expense line item, and moved it to the center stage as creation of a safety culture to help drive the business. And actually, you made the case in the book that it improves profitability. So talk a little bit about, and let me tee this up a little bit. Our industry, the chauffeur industry and the bus industry, and anybody with a commercial passenger fleet, whether it's taxi, chauffeur, I don't even care if it's or ambulance, the commercial fleet insurance is in a crisis. It to say it's a hard market is an understatement. The best possible outcome is maybe a 10 to 15 percent increase in fleet insurance. The worst possible outcome that we're seeing more and more is small operators between 3 million and 5 million, maybe 1 to 5 million, they're facing 50% increases in fleet or they're facing non-renewal. So what got me about your book, and again, I would encourage anybody to go out making safety happen. What got me about the book was you're taking something, let's face it, safety is not sexy. It's not sexy, it's not SISL, it's not sales and marketing, but you move it center stage and you make the case, which I think is absolutely on the money, that number one, a true safety program and having safety as a culture, a number one cultural objective is the safest work environment. It absolutely reduces expenses. And and every uh percentage that you reduce in expenses from accidents, whether it's workers' comp accidents, whether it's vehicular accidents, et cetera, no more reducing repair and maintenance on fleet as it comes to accidents, it goes right to the bottom line. So, in practice, how do you do that? How do you move safety from a checklist, it's a manual on the shelf? How do you make it a culture?

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah, you know, and uh I'll take you through that. But you you you mentioned insurance costs as an example. Well, nobody's gonna ever say insurance is is inexpensive, but I've seen firsthand how much control people can have over how they finance their risk. And it's really all a function of their safety performance, right? In other words, there are no A's for effort. So the better you do, I'm not gonna try and say, well, it's it's it's it's just cheap, but I'm telling you the better you do, the more options become available to you. I think that's the key. And that's just one benefit of safety. But in terms of making it happen, I would argue that there are probably five areas we'd focus on. First of all, we need to change our way of how we think about safety, right? That as you said, safety is foundational. Safety is not a priority, priorities shift, priorities compete for each other. If safety was a priority, and it might compete with production pressure. So, for example, we're running late for a passenger delivery, the passenger's upset. Okay, so I'll speed a little bit. That's what it looks like to me if we let production pressure compete with safety. Safety has to be a non-negotiable core value. So we've got to think, change how we think about safety, that nothing can compete for it. And I know you're gonna have bad days, and I know you're gonna get pressure from customers. That's part of being in business, but it can never happen at the expense of safety, taking that one shortcut, because that one shortcut, that's the time you're gonna have a problem. So, number one, how we think. Number two, it's gotta be leader-driven. This will never ever bubble up organically. Safety has to be leader-driven so that you, as the leaders of your organization, have to walk the walk. And what you reward, monetarily or non-monetarily, what you prioritize, what you tolerate, what you look the other way on, your organization will follow suit. So I was taught a long time ago, incorrectly so, I think, that safety is behavior-based, right? That so the behavior of the individual employee determines whether the outcome is safe or not. And while you still have to be very focused on how your employees conduct themselves, you have to realize that safety, the behavior is contextual. In other words, the environment your employees operate in determines how they're going to conduct themselves. You know, do we push our people too hard? Do we let them do their job safely and responsibly? And in that regard, it is a reflection of leadership. I mean, safe outcomes and safe performance or lack thereof generally traces its way right back to leadership. So, how we think about it, leader-driven, employee-owned, our employees have got to know that it's expected they do the right thing when um uh nobody's looking. And I get it, you probably have times when the passenger is pushing you, the passenger is rude. So make sure that your employees are trained to manage that passenger, not let the passenger manage them. That no delivery is worth risking a life, no delivery is worth risking your entire business. There just has to be that clarity. Then you have to have a clear process, right? So everybody has to understand how we operate. What are your rules of engagement? What are your processes? And then finally, accountability and resilience. Everybody's got to own safety and be accountable for it. So the employee has his or her role in owning safety. But a lot of times when something goes wrong, that's where we stop. We stop, you know, what did the employee do wrong? We have to sort of also look as how did our organization contribute to that? Right. The organization has to be as accountable as the employee to sort of really figure out what's going on. And then when things do go wrong, you know, and they will, we've got to lean into it and learn and be committed to continuous improvement.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Teachable moment. Everything's got to be a teachable moment.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

It's got to be a teachable moment, it's got to be coachable. Um, and we have to learn from it. A lot of times we want to talk about the good news, right? So a lot of times the bad news gets swept under the rug, and that's the exact wrong thing to do. When something does go wrong, the only benefit to come out of it is that you can use it to teach the organization so it doesn't happen again.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

And that's that directly reflects on what you said is gonna be leadership driven. Because I do think that we've passed the point where safety is a department, we've passed the point where safety is just something I do to get prepared for an insurance audit or DOT audit. It's got to be leader driven from the top down. And it it absolutely, if I think if, and I really never thought about it from the perspective of improving profitability, right? Finance is what we do, and we look at everybody's financials, and this industry is an industry of stacking dimes. What I mean by that, it's a low margin industry. So if you can save for every penny that you save, every dollar you save, it goes, it should go right to your bottom line. Above and beyond that, I I've come one of the things that you you talk about in your book is this is keeping the data and showing the data and managing the data. Safety sells, meaning if you're the safest passenger carrier out there, if you're a few dollars more, I think it bodes well in the sales process for you to be able to show off your safety statistics. Talk to me about how do you make it? I know the answer to this, but if a leader, you must have met when you do consulting, you must have met leaders that basically say, go in and do your program or go ahead and give your talk and I'll be over here. How do you turn it around if the leader is not vested in making his company the safest in his region? How do you do that? How do you turn the leader around or convince him?

SPEAKER_02 16:21

I mean, if you can't turn the leader around, I think it's almost impossible. Agreed. Because I've seen this happen, and I won't get in the middle of these kinds of situations where it's like I'm gonna bring somebody in, they're gonna give the pep talk, and then I can check the box, right? I've seen that. Fortunately, less and less as the years go on. But the good news is that as long as the leader wants to make a change, look, I've had years where our safety performance wasn't that good. And we were committed to do better. And as long as the leadership commitment is there, if you're struggling, been there, done that, I get it. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

As long as the leadership commitment is there to raise the bar. If you're doing well, good, let's do better. But where there's no commitment, you can't perform miracles.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Well, it's like anything. I mean, we talk a lot about the service experience because everything we do is experiential. Because, listen, let's face it, there are seven or ten different ways to get to the airport. There's plenty of ways for people to transport their employees, et cetera. But the service experience is the same thing. If quality and excellence is not started from the top, then it's almost impossible for it to flow through the organization. This is more important than just delivering a quality service experience or having the uh delivery being on time. When you are these vehicles, they're no joke anymore. And by the way, did you see in Atlanta this week where a bus driver fell asleep? Bus driver fell asleep.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

I didn't see that.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

So we've had two issues this week. One was a California bus crash where there was an accident, uh fatality, but in Atlanta, a bus driver was a transit driver. He had a camera on him, and you could see he had fallen asleep. So to your point, how do you, if you recognize that you have a safety problem, you have a real bad brush with a bad accident, where your insurance company says to you, we're not renewing you next year. How does the owner who has seen the light, so to speak, and he says, Okay, forget about going in this direction with a new sales and marketing initiative, forget about buying that company. We need to straighten this one out. How do you start the safety process? How do you start and move safety center stage?

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Yeah, and before I answer that, I mean, I'll just tell you, I I use a lot of chauffeur transportation companies, and you know, for the most part, they're great. But you know, there are times when I'm in the backseat and the driver's got their phone out and they're on their phone. And I'm telling you, it pisses me off to no end. And do you think I'm ever going to call that company again? No. And do you think I'm going to call the company's management? Yes. And do you think I'm going to tell everybody I know to watch out? Because you know, you could have a driver that's just decided to go off and do their own thing and not follow the company's process, right? So you give the company a chance to correct that. But a lot of times, if it happened to me, it probably happened 10 times a day, and it's probably happening in a lot of your vehicles because either you don't have the process or you're not enforcing the process. But one way or the other, you know, my cargo didn't walk and talk, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:53

By the way, your cargo didn't judge the driver, right? Yeah. And honestly, every one of our clients does exactly what you did. They sit in the back and they watch what the driver is doing. Some of them will not say a word and they'll just go elsewhere, right? Or they'll say, the chauffeur companies are no different than Uber. I'm just going to use Uber. But in your case, you did the right thing. You said basically, that's not good behavior, and I'm going to let the management know about it. I can tell you, Brian, every company has absolutely got the policy. No use of cell phone while you're driving the vehicle. So in that instance, the guy was not following protocol. What do you do?

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Well, you have to look in the mirror and say, all right, do I have a driver that just chose to do the wrong thing? And what am I going to do about that? Or do we have a beautiful handbook and a beautiful sign on the wall that we're not enforcing, right? In one case, maybe you've got a single employee that you need to address one way or the other. I know what I would do. Or do we have a systemic problem where we've got the policy, but we know that nobody's enforcing it? I mean, you got to really look at and figure out what's going on in the organization to know what the right thing to do is. Um, but yeah, I mean, your passengers are looking. And sometimes I've seen situations where it's like a driver's excessively speeding, and I'll say, hey, come on, chill out, let's slow it down. Yep. And they'll say, but you know what? I'm already stacked up and I have another pickup.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

That's a dispatcher. You're right. That's the that's systemic as well. That's systemic as well. That happens.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

You've created the environment where the driver's gonna speed.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yep. Yep. And you know what? When the hits the fan and there is the accident, and God forbid there's an injury, how it's too late for you at that point to say, listen, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you less trips today, I'm gonna put on another driver, or I'm going to use an independent operator for this trip. It's true, and that happens every single day. Talk to us about the telematics aspect. Did you have telematics in the vehicles when you owned a fleet?

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, when I bought the company, so back in 2006, you know, at least for companies our size, our niche, it really wasn't a thing. And by the time we put them in, which was let's say 2013-14, it still wasn't a thing for our niche, which was kind of that mid-size, smaller, mid-sized fleet, which was already growing for the huge companies, the JB Hunts, the Schneiders, they were already adopting. But I had a situation where my decision was to put in two-way cameras that wasn't negotiable. But if I screwed up how we implemented them, I would have a lot of trucks with cameras and no drivers. So putting in the cameras is the easy decision. Doing it in a way that's accepted and fits your culture and gets buy in, that takes a little bit more. If the argument over the past 10 years was should we put cameras in, the argument over the next five years is we've got cameras. Now, what do we do with the data? How do we operationalize the data? That has to be the conversation today. I mean, if you don't have cameras, in my mind, two-way cameras and probably more, right? Side view, especially now. It's time, it's just time, it's food mismanagement. The ROI is there, but you got to figure out if you put them in or you're considering putting them in, that's just step one. Now, what are you going to do with them once they're in?

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Correct. How are you going to manage the data? And I'm astounded. So, a couple things we've covered. We have retained clients. Listen, we're blessed. We have more retained clients. We have people wanting to do business with us, but we'll talk to our retained clients and they'll say, you know, I had another issue with a driver. You know, the driver came back with a speeding ticket or this, that, and the other thing. And my question is always okay, you have telematics in the vehicles. You obviously knew that the guy was speeding before this. What did you do with that data? Well, what do you mean? We only looked at that when if there's an accident. No, you're missing the whole point. And I think we're going to get to a point in this industry and also in anybody that owns fleet where your insurance company is going to want to say, let me see the last 12 months of this driver's telematics. Let me see everything, all of the data that you're tracking. I'm shocked at how much telematics can do. The telematics can tell if you're picked up a big gulp, right? It'll send a signal in because your face is blocked. It looks at you and says, wait a minute, it tells whether you're distracted. Is it perfect? No. But to your point, it gives you so much damn data. The question is, are they really looking at it? And you're saying operationalize it. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Well, just what you're saying. I mean, if people use telematics and focus on only when there's uh a crash, that's probably not the right approach. And hopefully you're not having that many crashes. The way I would use it, whether we're, you know, as you mentioned, AI is really helping now, but it is it's gotta be about coaching. I mean, people are fallible, every one of us is fallible. And what telematics can do is help make better drivers, right? By helping the driver understand the decision they made, the move they made, and maybe what they can correct next time. So it's more of a coaching tool. And where I see people make mistakes with telematics is it's like, gotcha, I caught you, now I'm gonna run.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

It becomes punitive.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

Yeah, it needs to be coaching, it needs to be the athletes watching the game film. And what you've got to do with your telematics too is you're gonna have plenty of examples, probably more than you have problems, where the driver did something right, where the driver was the ambassador of the road. The driver made an evasive maneuver, avoided contact with a reckless driver. I mean, half the world is on their cell phones and distracted. So, so when you so your drivers, as professional drivers, as a class, are better than that. So you've got to use telematics when you see something where your driver did the right thing, you've got to recognize that so that it's not always a root canal, like, oh gosh, here's the camera. What did I do wrong now? Um, instead of looking at every event, right? Because right now we almost have too much data coming in with telematics. What are the conditions, the behaviors that have the most potential for severity? You know, a fatality, a serious injury. That's what I would focus on.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Okay, so let's go see.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

There you go, that really have the greatest potential.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Speeding, following way too close. That to me is the biggest thing. People just don't realize they're trying to push the car in front of them. So speeding, following too close. What are the other top two or three?

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Unsafe, unnecessary lane changes.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

I I think then obviously distractions. I mean, in other words, this is the big one, but huge. I mean, you know, uh uh uh having your big Mac while you're driving, you know, even if you're on the cell phone hands-free, it's called cognitive disassociation. In other words, you're still mentally distracted, even if you've got both hands on the wheel.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Say that again, please, for everybody to understand it.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Sure. So you're just as distracted with both hands on the wheel having a hands-free conversation on the phone as you are with the phone in your hand. You just don't have the physical distraction.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Especially when I'm talking to my girlfriend and she's arguing with her kids, I agree a thousand percent. Or if I'm talking to a client and it's a heavy conversation, I may have my hands on the wheel. I'm doing 40 miles an hour in a vehicle that's 6,500 pounds or whatever the weight is, agreed. I don't think people realize that. Oh, wait, wait, I'm on hands free. But you're still distracted from your task.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

Look, this happened to every one of us. We've blown past our exit, and it's like, well, how do we do that? You know, it's because I was on that phone having an intense conversation, you know. So, yeah, it you are distracted. When we look at incidents or potentially serious incidents, we can't just look at the driver's role. We got to look at the company's role. So you want to cause distractions, even if the driver is hands-free, your office is calling the driver every 10 minutes. That's not good. You know, if your dispatch instructions are wrong and now you've put the driver in a bad spot because they didn't get the right address, and now the driver's running late, there may be a temptation to make up the time and cut corners. When you know the reality is that had you had the right dispatch order, the driver probably would have had the time to do it. So you have to look at how the organization is contributing and the distractions that are caused, not just by the individual driver. A lot of times I think we might blame the person whose hands are on the wheels and then close the close the file. We have to look at what else went into it. I mean, I'll give you an example. Um uh Alamo, Texas is a city in the very southern tip of Texas. We had a load once, and the customer was calling and calling, saying, Where is the driver? And turns out that dispatch sent the driver to the Alamo in San Antonio, which last time I checked did not have loading docs.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

So this is true. And what were you delivering, by the way?

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yeah, I don't even remember what it was, but it was nothing the Alamo needed.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

I don't think the Alamo was expecting a big shipment that day. But but you know something? That stuff happens, Brian. That stuff happens constantly. It could be as simple as the Hyatt downtown versus the Hyatt resort, you know, out in the suburbs. It happens all the time.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Which is why you got to focus on distractions behind the desk as much as behind the wheel. Pay attention to that order, that dispatch order that you're booking in. Because if you mess that up, you've completely turned the driver's day upside down. The driver's gonna feel a duty to his or her customer to make it up in terms of trying to make up the lost time. Now we're rushing, now we're feeling the pressure, now we're distracted, all because somebody in the office wasn't paying attention to detail. It's a shared responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

You hit the nail on the head when you said the easiest thing in the world to do is to blame the driver when the accident happens. But to your point, it's systematic and what happened before and what happened originally when that trip came in. True story, we're having some technology challenges in our industry. And believe it or not, about 80% of the reservations come in by phone. They come in by phone or they come in by email. And I've been doing a ton of traveling. This has been an unbelievable summer of travel, and I've had to make phone reservations to call in to some of my customers. But in some cases, I'm calling a company that's not my customer because I might go in to see an investment bank or I might be going in to see a company that's for sale. I have had some of the most excruciating phone calls. Excruciating. Because I was in the industry, I started as an operator. And one of the things we said is use the name, use the client's name, and repeat. Repeat and confirm. And what you just talked about is it's either it happened because the dispatcher just flaked out and said Alamo, Texas versus the Alamo, or there is a chance that when that order came in, whoever wrote up the order, again, didn't confirm it. So it becomes a domino effect. Stuff like this, usually, if it's a bad accident or there's a service failure, it's because something happened way before in the process, or at least that was a mitigating factor. So your point is examine the failure, examine every failure, figure out why it happened, and make it the teachable moment. And this is one of the things that gets me. I'll talk to a client who'll say to me, he'll say, This is the third time we've had an issue where the driver went to the wrong terminal at the airport. Okay. What did you do on the other two or three? Did you trace back why did that happen? They're so busy trying to get from point A to point B, logistically manage the business that they don't they don't correct the systematic process problem. How do you get people to focus on that?

SPEAKER_02 33:46

I mean, I would ask, you know, in your example of the driver went to the wrong terminal, I would ask if we fired that driver and put it in another one, would that driver go to the wrong terminal? And then would the next driver go to the wrong terminal? And if the answer is probably, you probably have a process problem or a system problem. It's not the driver. Understand, like whenever there's a safety issue, what I always wanted to know is was it the result of an honest mistake or was it deliberate, reckless behavior? And a lot of times we break trust with our employees by treating the honest mistake as if it was deliberate. With honest mistakes, you coach, you look at training opportunities, you look at systemic issues, you go through and figure out where did it break. And in most cases, I've seen there's probably an individual component and a systemic component. Rarely it happens, but sometimes it's only the individual. Then you know what to do and you take the action. But in most cases, you look at what could the individual have done better, what could the organization have done better. And then you're focused less on blame, less on who done it, less on I'm gonna write you up, and more on how do we create a smarter organization, how do we get better, how do we continuously improve?

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Couldn't agree more. I think people look at safety as an expense and as a burden. I think they look at it as secondary, and quite frankly, the cost drivers of the business are such, and the changes in those cost drivers, fleet insurance, workers comp insurance, etc., they are all telling you, no, you need to change your behavior. Your loss runs are gonna make you or break you. And for the first time, I've been doing this since 2018, buying helping people buy and sell. And we've been doing retained financial reporting and analysis for about three years. But I can tell you, this past year is different. I'm seeing insurance companies flat out pick winners and losers. And it's not based on their revenue, it's based on the fact that they just don't think the people get it. And I would never put anybody on the spot, but I've had enough clients come to me who have to sell their businesses because their insurance is just astronomical. And I do think it is, and I have to tell you, before I sat in Roger Booker, wait a minute, this makes perfect sense. Safety happens, you have to make it front and center. It has to be cultural, it has to be, you have to move it from a department, and as you just said, today's priority because we had an accident. Uh uh you hit the nail on the head. You said something about punitive on the telematics. You know, I get asked to speak a lot. And I went up recently and I spoke at a client's chauffeur meeting, and I speak only on the Ritz Carlton methods. I was Ritz Carlton trained, went to the Disney Institute. I treat only on customer service. And they had their guy there to show videos of telematics. They were all negative. And they basically said, Well, we fired this guy. But to your point, you've got to make the data that we have. The telematics data can't be punitive. It can't be holy shit, we're just gonna show it when bad stuff happens to make correction. You hit the nail on the head when you said coaching and showing the good stuff and rewarding the good stuff and changing the bad behavior. So tell me how do you move from your guy that monitors telematics, you know, he's writing up all of the drivers, all of the bad things, you know, aggressive driving, speeding. How do you change the mentality from punitive to being you're the coaches and we're now looking at the game tapes? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_02 37:44

It's a concept called just culture. I don't want to make it sound too philosophical here, but the way a lot of us were brought up in business, it would look like this you know, you were trained, and if you did as you were trained, you wouldn't make mistakes. You made a mistake, you'll be punished. That's kind of progressive discipline, the way a lot of people practice it. So the first mistake might be a verbal warning and then a written warning, and then a strike, and then suspension, and then you're out, right? Um, and that one size fits all approach, it looks fair, it's anything but fair. What if somebody's been with you 10 years and they've been a stellar employee? I mean, does a write-up really feel like the right thing to do? Discipline, you know, a different way to look at it, and I think I alluded to this earlier, is that you know, you look at it this way you're human, humans make mistakes. Now, what I always wanted to know is was it honest mistake or reckless behavior? Honest mistakes, like I said earlier, you coach, you build the system, you look for improvements, reckless behavior. I mean, if I had somebody going 50 miles an hour in a well-marked school zone, I'm not waiting for strike two. I've seen plenty with the first violation. So it requires judgment. It requires judgment, management, leadership, it requires building trust. And your reaction to me ought to be a function of what the facts were. But that requires us to roll up our sleeves and actually look at what the facts were. It's just easy to say strike, strike, strike, and you're all the same, but you break trust and you really deny yourself the ability to kind of look at the situation to figure out where the real opportunity for improvement is, where the coachable moments are. And then what are the situations? What are the behaviors that you're not going to coach? You're going to just kind of move right into discipline because those do exist.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

I think most drivers who drive for profession and they drive as a means of their income, I think most of them want to do the right thing. I do think this damn thing has caused so many societal issues, and the distractive driving piece, and it's not just you also said, and I want everybody to hear this, you also said the dispatcher calling constantly. Where are you? I think text messaging is even worse now because, well, I wasn't on a phone call, but I'm going to look down. And that to me is even worse. You have to develop dispatching processes, and you have to develop a culture where people know when you're en route, I'm going to look at the GPS data, but I'm not going to call you because you're literally contributing to the distractive driving. Every time you text that guy to say, customer is in the baggage claim. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? By the way, when I looked at your first foot looked at the book, and I'm like, this guy, this guy is this guy is a safety zealot. I said to myself, he's a safety zealot. But then I said, you know what? This guy's a CEO. This guy understands the direct relationship, the black and white relationship to safety improvement equals more profitability. But yours is a holistic approach. And you know, when I first looked at it, I'm like, okay, I'm going to learn how to run a safety department. But when I got into it, this is like a religion to you. And I think you're right on the money. I don't think people look at it as if it is a main stage of everyday business. The commitment to safety has got to be right up there with your commitment to customer service, your commitment to quality, your commitment to on time. It's got to be front and center. And I just don't think that a lot of people are there yet.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

Yeah. I mean, making safety happen is really a leadership book for people who operate in high-hazard, high-consequence industries. It's a leadership book. You're right. It's not a technical manual. I wouldn't know how to write a technical manual. And I'm not a trained safety professional. I've just over the years seen a lot of entrepreneurs focus on the top line. They grow their business, but then they give it all back because they haven't managed the risk. They don't have the process in place. So my focus is safe, productive, and profitable. It's a holistic business focus for those who are operating in high-consequence businesses. I do want to make one other point because you mentioned that a lot of the listeners on this call will manage affiliates, right? So, in other words, if you're based in Dallas and I need to ride from your customer, I need to ride in New York, you're not going to come get me in New York. You're going to find somebody in New York to get me.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

We're going to have an affiliate partner.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

Yeah, an affiliate partner. You got to do your homework on them too. I mean, you're not running their business. You don't want to run their business, but you've got to make sure that they operate their business in a way that reflects favorably on your brand. And that they operate to the same high standards you have. I think that's critical these days, not just for your own company's reputation, but you may be doing everything right, but you don't want to put me with a rogue operator somewhere in another part of the country.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

You said a mouthful there as well, because I was just on a call doing a moderating a networking event for a major network. And one of the things I was talking to them about is your affiliates need to understand it's not about this one ride. It's not about the one ride. It's about you as the affiliate are our representative. We're selling a multi-million dollar corporate contract, and it comes down to everything you do is a reflection of us. So we were talking about the cleanliness, the quality. To me, the safety aspect, because we started this by talking about you're in the back of a chauffeur car and you're watching the guy and he's on his cell phone. Every single one of our affiliate trips, the client knows that if it's a Dallas company placing it, it's a partner in New York. So I think they're heightened. The client is judging. The passenger is judging. The worst thing that can happen because they see you on the phone constantly, or they hear you talking, and it's obvious that you're distracted. The worst thing that can happen is they go away quietly. They never use your chauffeured service again. They just use Uber Black or they switch companies. I think the best outcome is they call your company and say, look, I just want to tell you, you your guy is on the phone, he's texting, etc., etc. But you're 100% right that every single trip or every single delivery can make or break the client relationship. And you're making a hell of a case in this book that it's all about leading the safety aspect leading from the top. So for everybody out there, yeah, I was in a car the other day, and I said to the chauffeur, he didn't know who I was. Said to the chauffeur, how do you like working for this company? He said, Oh, I love this company. I said, How long have you been working for? Three years. How long have you been in the industry? Seven. Who'd you work for before this? He said, Oh, you know, I don't want to tell you the company name. I said, So why'd you leave? He they treated us like dirt. They were back-to-backing us constantly. I didn't have a ability to move, to breathe. You know, but the but what got me and the reason why I left is I they issued me a car and I reported, I did my walk around and I reported that the front tires were bald. Okay, this was in a major city. I reported the front tires were bald, and I put it in my trip sheet and I texted the dispatch and I got a rotation, I got out of that car. Five days later, I got into that car again and the tires were still bald. And he said, I went home that night and I said to my wife, they don't care about us, they don't care about the customer. And he said, When I say those tires were bald, whatever it was, the metal was coming out the side. Something happened there. Meaning the dispatcher, he reported it to the dispatcher, he put it on his walk around his his vehicle pre check. Okay. And five days later it was still there. May my the way he described it, and he said, I went home to my wife and I said, I told the dispatcher I'm not driving that vehicle again. And he said, I'm not a shrinking violet, Ken. I, you know, he was a war veteran, but I am not driving passengers in a vehicle that is just not safe. I said, good for you. And the beautiful part is, I said, so these guys are different. He said, Ken, these vehicles are absolutely perfect. If I report an issue, that vehicle is either fixed that night or it's offline. And that's again, to your point. This guy reported to his dispatcher at his last company and he wrote it on his pre-inspection. That obviously meant crap. It didn't mean anything to the owner of that business. So I think we've covered a lot in a short amount of time. I was very pleasantly surprised at your book. I swear I thought it was going to be more like I'm you teaching me to be a safety manager. But a few things. Number one, you're making the case, which frankly I just don't think anybody can deny anymore, that safety has to be ingrained, you have to ingrain safety in your culture. Number two, you don't manage it when the crop hits the fan. You don't manage it when you've had a problem. You manage it incrementally every single day and try to get better in every process. Your your telematics people or your your fleet management people, whoever's dealing with your drivers, they have to move from punitive to becoming the coach. I love the coach. I love the analogy that we are looking at game tapes. We have to look at the good, we have to look at the bad, and we have to figure out how to change that together. But I love the good. I love looking at when people do the right things. Look what happened here. He avoided an accident. On our past podcasts, we have videos from like buses doing the wrong things. I mean, like nasty stuff. When we look at it, we try to make those a light episode. But the reality is anytime you have a close call, if you have repeated close calls, you're too late. You've got to go back in the process. So, what would you tell every fleet operator, regardless of passenger or delivery, regardless of what they carry? I don't care whether it's watermelon, oil, diesel fuel, flammable, or you've got a bus with 50 souls on board. What would you tell them to try to accomplish what you've written in this book? What's your best advice to them?

SPEAKER_02 48:58

I mean, the the best advice, I think, is first of all, the way I wrote the book is the way I read, which means you don't have to read it cover-to-cover chapter every chapter. You you want to kind of understand what keeps you up at night? What what are what do you think are the biggest challenges? Um you may see those in your insurance loss runs, you may see them because you're growing, you may see them because you're losing customers. What keeps you up at night? Then let's start there. The other thing is that you may think of a solution that could take a lot of time to implement. I want to focus on what we can do now, what can we do in 30 days, what can we do in 90 days? I'm much more interested in the base hits, things that will move the needle to show people progress, even if it's just incremental, rather than seeing nothing and waiting for three years. Um figure out what we can do now to address the problem. You gotta be humble and transparent. Use the leader, don't have all the answers. Bring your subject matter experts in. And you know, the nice part about your subject matter experts is they're working for you. They're called your drivers, they're your mechanics. These are the people that if you are just transparent with them and say, look, this is really keeping me up at night. I need help, they're gonna roll their sleeves up. I have a very strong bias just societally of how we how we treat our frontline professionals. Okay, and sometimes we think we're the smartest guys in the room in the conference room, and we're not. Take your front lines with you, knock down those physical or figurative barriers that separate your front lines from the office, bring them in, make them part of the solution. The dividends will be tremendous. So I think you got to sort of understand and define what are your pain points. And once you knock those down, we can reload. But let's figure out what are the most acute issues, figure out what a short and long-term plan looks like. Let's get those base hits and let's enlist our teams to help us solve it. You don't have to do it all yourself. A lot of times we drown out the voices of the people who know the best how to solve it.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

You've saved the best for last because I'm convinced, and I've deal with a couple pretty large companies that publicly traded, and I'm convinced that the biggest problem is they're so far away from the line process, they're so far away from the customer, and they're so far away from the delivery process that it's again, they're sending down from on high the answers. Well, the answers actually are the guys that are behind the wheel every single day. So, Brian Filco, how do people, first of all, they can get your book making safety happen on Amazon, but how do they reach you?

SPEAKER_02 51:45

Well, they can get Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple. It's available in hardcover, ebook, or Kindle, and also audiobook. They can reach me on either my website is Brianfilco.com or just email me at Brian at Brianfilco.com. I'll be glad to reply. Feel free, I'll be glad to answer any questions I can. But the book is full of checklists, it's actionable, it's written not for technical folks. It's written for people trying to run a business that have to run it safely and grow and take care of the customers and make payroll. That's who I wrote it for.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

To me, more than anything, is your changing behavior of the leader so that again, I'm not going to focus on safety 90 days before my insurance renewal. I'm going to make it front and center in everything I do because I've got a fleet of 20 vehicles out there, and every day they're going X number of miles. That's a tremendous amount of risk. Brian, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. I appreciate it. We will put the website and your email and the final edit of this. Appreciate it again. Brian Filco, making safety happen. Definitely recommend picking up the book and implementing everything he talks about. Thank you so much for joining today.

SPEAKER_02 52:59

Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation joining you. And bottom line is I hope this helps.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Everybody in the industry knows that their fleet insurance is top of mind, and they blame the insurance company. And I think this book is to me, it's let's look inward, let's change our culture, and the cultural change starts with the leadership. And safety first leadership, uh, 100% you'll get it out of this book. So I appreciate it. Ground Transportation Podcast audience. I thank you for listening today, and we will see you next time on another exciting episode. We'll be recording next Friday at one o'clock again. Thanks and have a terrific day.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

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 PAXTraining.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 Brown Transportation Podcast.