Even on days when the road is clear and the sun is shining, being a truck driver comes with plenty of challenges. Those challenges are compounded during the fall and winter driving seasons with the arrival of rain, sleet, snow, ice and any other nasty weather that Mother Nature can conjure.
It’s a fitting time for motor carriers to review the fundamentals of driving in inclement weather during safety meetings – things like slowing down, not following too closely, etc. It’s also a great time for carriers to harness the power of telematics and fleet management technology to support fleet safety and efficiency throughout the winter months.
Keep reading to learn how telematics can help you and your drivers get through the winter driving season safely and successfully.
Track and Schedule Maintenance
A roadside breakdown is never good—it’s even worse when it occurs amid winter driving conditions. The dangers posed by brake failures, blown tires and mechanical issues only increase when they occur on slick or icy roads.
That’s why it’s important for carriers to be proactive with tracking and scheduling maintenance. Using software that tracks your fleet’s service history and sends automated maintenance alerts, such as EROAD’s fleet maintenance solution, can help reduce roadside breakdowns and costly unplanned repairs.
In addition to a proactive maintenance program, pre-trip inspections are crucial to ensuring that a truck is ready to hit the wintry roads. EROAD Inspect is a paperless driver vehicle inspection report that streamlines the process for drivers and allows you easily to track vehicle defects and repairs.
Advanced trailer telematics can also support fleet safety by supplying real-time data about key trailer components, such as tire pressure and temperature and brake health.
Learn more: Trailer Telematics Can Solve Your Underinflation Problem
Encourage Safer Driver Behavior
Speeding, following too closely, and harsh cornering are always dangerous, yet they are common behaviors that anyone can be guilty of. When you add inclement weather and poor road conditions to the mix, the potential for calamity increases.
In Oregon, for instance, an average of 100 truck-involved accidents that result in injury or death occur in snowy or icy conditions each year, according to the state department of transportation. That’s not to say that the truck driver is at fault for all those serious accidents – statistically they are not – but the point is clear: winter driving conditions require extra caution.
That’s why identifying dangerous behaviors and coaching drivers into safer behavior is so important. This doesn’t need to be done with negative reinforcement—there are better, morale-boosting options you can use in your fleet.
EROAD’s Leaderboard, for example, enables you to measure driver performance within your organization and against industry benchmarks. This allows you to correct problem behaviors, as well as incentivize safe driving and foster healthy competition among your drivers to see who can claim the title of safest driver.
“By using the EROAD Leaderboard to monitor key driving behaviors, identify top drivers and reward them for performance, we’ve seen a drop in the number of unsafe driving events from about 65 to a low of 13 per 100 miles,” says Larry Needham, Safety Manager at Oregon-based Gene Whitaker Inc. “The EROAD Leaderboard is our most productive safety tool because it helps us create a safer work environment and an incentive for drivers to operate more safely.”
Learn more: Understanding the Adverse Driving Conditions Exception
See What Happens on the Road and In-Cab
Nuclear verdicts or lawsuit reform was rated third in an ATRI survey on top industry concerns in 2024, and that high rating is unlikely to fall anytime soon. False claims that cannot be rebutted with proof are causing trucking companies to lose millions in payouts, and that can cause further damage to already-tight margins.
A simple way to avoid becoming victim of fraudulent lawsuits is to ensure you have your driver’s back in the form of concrete video evidence. Footage from a dashcam can quickly show who is at fault in an accident, often exonerating the truck driver.
It’s easy to see why this footage is extremely important to have when trucks are operating in difficult driving conditions. While professional drivers may be taking proper safety measures, such as driving below the speed limit, passenger car drivers or pedestrians may not be following road rules. Footage also adds context to other telematics data on driver behavior for more effective – and fair – coaching.
What about preventing mishaps and not just catching them? Advanced dashcams like EROAD’s Clarity Edge AI dashcam can detect driver fatigue and automatically alert drivers based on video footage, all with the help of artificial intelligence. This real-time feedback can help drivers develop better driving behavior without too much hassle to the back office.
“We’ve got trucks traveling largely the same roadways and sometimes there’s traffic delays, weather or rockslides,” says Chris Freeman of California-based Bettendorf Trucking, which uses EROAD’s Clarity Connected Dashcam. “If we want to see what the condition was when the last truck went through, we just go pop the video up.”
Learn more: How to Create a Dash Cam Policy
Know Exactly Where Your Trucks Are
Visibility is crucial to effective fleet management. Asset trackers and dashcams let you know where your trucks are at any given moment, allowing you to make better dispatch decisions and provide accurate ETAs for customers.
This visibility is especially important when trucks are operating in winter conditions, during which unforeseen delays may be more common. It also comes in handy to know where your trucks are in case they require emergency assistance, especially in bad weather.
Fall and Winter Driving is Tough—Use Telematics to Make it Safer
Whether your fleet is big or small, telematics can help protect your drivers and reduce your fleet’s liabilities when cold and slippery weather hits. If you’re unsure about what options are available, here are some telematics solutions EROAD offers to discerning fleets:
