How Driver Shortages Are Reshaping Private Fleet Safety Strategies

Driver shortage changes the playbook for private fleet safety

Driver shortages and rising accident litigation costs are pushing private fleets to rethink how they manage safety. Instead of assuming a struggling driver can be dismissed and quickly replaced, fleets increasingly are identifying risky behavior earlier and using coaching, training and technology to improve performance.

That was a central message during “The Coaching Roadmap: Developing Your Driver Workforce,” a panel at the International Foodservice Distributors Association’s 2026 Solutions Conference, held Sept. 13-15 in San Antonio.

The discussion featured Hayden Cardiff, vice president of safety solutions at Descartes, and Tim Eckhardt, senior director of safety at Dot Foods Inc. Eckhardt oversees safety for Dot Transportation, including driver safety, training, accidents, litigation and risk management.

Dot Transportation operates nearly 2,200 trucks across the United States and Canada. Its parent company, Mount Sterling, Illinois-based Dot Foods, is North America’s largest food industry redistributor and less-than-truckload consolidator, according to the company. Dot operates about 2,900 multitemperature trailers.

Cardiff said driver shortages, higher operating costs and the potential for “nuclear verdicts” have changed the consequences of poor safety performance. Fleets need to retain qualified drivers when possible, he said, while addressing problems before they lead to a crash.

“Fleets can no longer assume they can simply dismiss a struggling driver and replace that person with someone better,” Cardiff said during the session.

At Dot Foods, that shift has involved moving from a largely reactive safety model to one that relies more heavily on data, technology and patterns in driver behavior.

“In the past, you were digging through systems, digging through spreadsheets, digging through everything you could to find the data, and then you ended up basically going off a gut of which drivers were your highest risk or not,” Eckhardt said.

Dot now focuses more closely on behaviors such as distraction and speeding, while directing the greatest attention to drivers who show the highest risk. The company does not attempt to coach every event generated by cameras, telematics and other safety systems. Instead, it works to separate the most important information from the volume of available data.

Cardiff described that as distinguishing “signal versus noise.” The objective is to determine which drivers need intervention and what type of intervention is most likely to help.

Dot concentrates heavily on roughly the bottom 10% to 20% of its driver population, although that group changes as drivers improve or deteriorate. The company uses a scoring system that ranges from zero, representing the best performance, to 100. Drivers with scores above 70 are required to have a professional development plan and continued monitoring.

Eckhardt said that, as of the week before the conference, about 30 Dot drivers had scores above 70. That was a substantial reduction from when the program began, he said.

The purpose of the program is not automatically to remove drivers. Professional development plans can include coaching, additional training, ride-alongs and technology aimed at specific behaviors. A driver who repeatedly speeds, for example, may have the truck electronically governed to address that behavior.

“It’s not just to build a plan and coach till you turn blue,” Eckhardt said. “Find technology, find other resources you can to help change that behavior and help set them up for success.”

Some drivers may not improve enough to remain with a fleet. In those cases, Eckhardt said, carriers need an “exit strategy” before a serious accident occurs. But the preferred approach is to intervene while a behavior or pattern is still manageable.

Timely coaching is essential, Eckhardt said. Managers should address an incident while it is still fresh instead of waiting weeks or months. The conversation also should reflect the individual driver. A veteran with 20 years at a fleet may respond to a short, direct discussion, while a newer driver may need a more detailed explanation of why a behavior is dangerous or why a policy exists.

Dot has increased its transparency with drivers about accident costs, safety policies and the reasons behind technology installed in trucks. Managers also use camera footage to recognize safe decisions, not only to identify mistakes.

That balance can help distinguish driver development from discipline, Eckhardt said. If a manager’s first interaction with a driver is a disciplinary conversation, building a productive relationship afterward can be difficult.

Manager workloads also affect the quality of coaching. Eckhardt said overseeing 150 drivers makes meaningful relationships difficult, while a ratio closer to 70 or 80 drivers per manager is more manageable.

Dot has about 200 over-the-road driver trainers and aims for approximately one trainer for every 12 drivers. Depending on experience and skill, over-the-road training can last four, eight or 12 weeks.

Technology remains an important part of the strategy, including cameras, telematics, predictive analytics and vehicle controls. Dot also has tied driver performance to compensation. Eckhardt said the company’s quarterly safety bonus has grown to nearly 10% of driver income, providing a financial incentive to meet safety standards.

When evaluating safety technology, Dot compares the cost with the potential cost of a crash. Eckhardt said a $250,000 technology investment could pay for itself by preventing one accident of comparable cost.

Dot is also reconsidering technology intended to limit cellphone use, although the company has not decided whether to test such systems and continues to weigh practical and legal issues. The fleet currently permits drivers to use cellphones because over-the-road drivers need to communicate with family while away from home.

For Eckhardt, however, transparency may be more important than any individual technology. When drivers understand why a camera was installed, why a policy exists or how a safety system operates, fleets are more likely to gain their cooperation.

“One of the biggest things we have done is just transparency and open books and share the why behind everything out there,” he said.