I hope spring has found you and your loved ones doing well! Most of the people I know are really looking forward to spring and its warm weather. One thing that tends to increase with warm weather that impacts our profession is road construction. Pay attention to work zones and slow down to the posted speed limit or below. Allow yourself time to stop and react safely, pay attention to the road crews, and do not allow yourself to become aggressive while driving. Cooler heads always prevail and that puts you and your loved ones in a better situation to be successful. Your performance on the roads affects the overall “pull-in rate” with DOT officers. Did you know that our CSA scores directly affect our pull-in, or inspection rate? The better our CSA scores, the fewer times we get “red-lighted” for a DOT inspection. Each of you can improve our CSA scores by receiving clean inspections. Perform good pre- and post- trip inspections on your tractor and any trailer you touch, drive in the proper lanes (these are the easiest to correct), and don’t speed. Generally, you all do a good job at these things, but we need everyone on board to keep our scores down. The things I just mentioned will also help in reducing accidents, which should be a focus for everyone. Our accident rate is improving, but there is still a lot of work to be done, and the process is continuous. Use good space and speed management, don’t drive distracted or fatigued, and get out to look; those are simple concepts each of you can do to continue driving down our accident rates. HELP IMPROVE CSA SCORES DRIVE DOWN ACCIDENT RATES
I also want to remind you all to wear proper footwear when operating your CMV at our terminals and customer locations. This will help prevent slips, trips, and falls due to wet or slick floors and uneven terrain. Always use three points of contact getting in and out of your CMV. And remember that our landing gears have two speeds. If the dollies are hard to crank or are under pressure, use the lower gear until
the pressure has been released. Protect your bodies by doing things the right way. Your safety and health are very important to us and your loved ones.
Until next time,
–Tim Clark VP of Safety
BIG NEWS ON BIG G FACILITY
East Tennessee has been a great place for Big G Express over the years with so many outstanding drivers living in the area, we hope the new facility will give us the opportunity to grow our driver count. The new design of Kenworth T680 is looking good pulling Big G trailers. We have a large number of these coming this year and look forward to getting these units in the fleet. We have also just signed an order for 100 more dry-van trailers to be delivered later this year, so be on the lookout for those to start showing up around August.
Hello professional drivers.
Hello spring! So glad the weather is starting to turn and we can celebrate making it through another hard winter. We have seen our share of snow and ice and are so glad to see the trees putting on leaves and flowers blooming. It will be no time before we are complaining about the heat! Great news, work is coming along on our new facility in Mosheim, Tennessee, as the building frame is up and the roof is complete. We are getting a lot of calls and comments about the new facility and please be watching for a grand opening sometime this summer. The new facility is going to be a great addition for Big G and will offer great amenities for our drivers. Plans include space for operations, safety, recruiting, and, of course, a lot of badly needed space for maintenance.
Lastly, let me thank everyone for the hard work and dedication to making Big G Express the great place it is. We couldn’t do it without you!
–Tim Tipps VP of Maintenance
2 WWW.BIGGEXPRESS.COM
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator