Safety is priority ONE at Calex.

Keeping both our associates and the general public safe is on our minds each and every day. Our company travels approximately 15 million miles each year. As you can imagine it takes a focused team effort to make sure we are all doing the right thing at the right time.

Here at Calex before any associate gets behind the wheel, they must pass a Speed and Space Management Driving course.

Our training focuses on safety basics. Here are some of the highlighted areas: proper speed, proper spacing, and staying alert to changing weather, road conditions (merging and turning) along with staying aware of the ever-changing surroundings they travel in.

No accident is a good accident so our focus remains the same: Safety is priority ONE.

Our Drivers are Trained for Safety

Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common hazards and risks that our drivers face out on the road, and how they are trained to deal with each one.

Proper speed – Speed can be a huge factor in accidents. If someone is going too fast, and they come across an expected situation, chances are they won’t be able to react in time. Every day, a driver could suddenly face a stopped vehicle or someone who is going too slow for traffic conditions. This could cause other vehicles to make dangerous maneuvers in an effort to pass them. This, in turn, can force other vehicles to react quickly (and poorly).

Maintaining the proper speed is an essential safety practice. Our focus is to train each associate to operate at the correct speed so that they will have the ability to react (correctly) to most situations.

Proper spacing – Proper vehicle spacing is critical to operating a tractor trailer safely. One of our nation’s most common source of accidents is tailgating, so our drivers are trained to maintain the proper safety distance at all times.

If you’ve never driven a tractor trailer, you’d be surprised at just how long (and how many feet/meters) it takes to stop one. We tell all of our associates we (our drivers) are the professionals we need to be better than everyone else on the road. By maintaining a safe following distance, many accidents can be avoided.

Staying alert – Lately, our industry has brought another interesting topic into focus: driver complacency. This occurs in some cases due to the number of miles driven week in and week out.

Calex is addressing that issue through retraining. One of the things we’ve learned is that, like anything else, when you continually and repetitively do the same things over and over, it’s easy to become lax or unfocused. This outlook can cause us believe that we can do things that we normally wouldn’t.

By remaining sharp and aware of road conditions and surroundings allows our associates to notice situations before they become problems and avoid them entirely.

Adhering to the ELD Mandate

When the electronic logging device (ELD) rule was passed into law, it required many trucking companies to quickly update their vehicles, policies, and activities.

In effect, this rule required drivers to use these devices to accurately track, manage, and share their records of duty status (RODS) data. The goal was to create a safer work environment for drivers (and anyone who shares the road with those drivers).

These devices help improve safety by connecting with the vehicle’s engine and automatically recording important information, like engine hours and power status, miles driven, vehicle motion status, and on-duty time.

At Calex, we were already fully prepared for this mandate since we had been using electronic logs since 2009.

We make sure that our entire fleet is in compliance with this mandate because we believe it protects our drivers and improves road safety.

Safety and Supply Chain Management

Safety is priority ONE because we care about out drivers and their wellbeing. We also care about our clients and ensuring that their products get from point A to point B, on time and in perfect shape.

The measures we take to protect our drivers also contribute to a better, more effective freight shipping service.

Through effective logistics management, we can keep your goods flowing smoothly between your company, our warehouses, and the final destination. More importantly, we can do it while keeping our drivers and your products as safe as possible.

By putting all of our efforts into improving safety on the road, we are, in fact, improving the efficiency of your supply chain.

As long as everyone maintains the basic tenets listed above, accidents can be minimized. While we do realize that some accidents simply cannot be avoided, we do everything in our power to do the right thing each and every day.