How is my driving sign on back of trucks?

George A

Actually yes people do call them to compliment a driver for driving professionally and safely.

Trucking companies subscribe to that service. When you call the 800 number, it goes into a third party call center, not the actually company that owns the vehicle. The operator will take your information and forward it to the contact of the actual company (usually the Safety Director).

If the call is a complaint, most of the major trucking companies do follow up on the complaint & the driver is usually reprimanded. If the call is a Kudo, it also gets passed on to the driver either as a safety certificate or a safety bonus on their pay check. Numerous companies have either a quarterly, semi-annual or annual safety banquets & at that time all of the drivers who have gone without any accidents or have received a compliment from the general public are recognized & given some type of an award for that accomplishment.

Rebuttal to the person's comments below me. I don't know what company you work for, but in the 10 yrs I drove truck, I've worked for US Xpress Enterprises (as a company driver, Driver Trainer and an O/O), Crete Carrier Corp, JB Hunt (waste of time), a couple of private trucking companies & Schneider Nat'l Carriers (as a company driver & O/O). USX, Crete & Schneider will let their drivers know if someone calls in a compliment & their Safety Directors even encourage the public to call & let their drivers know they are driving like the professionals they are (at least when I worked for them) & I have received over a dozen "atta boy" from Safety from USX, Crete & Schneider combined. Some where via a satcom message in my truck, others where face to face from someone in Safety & others are certificates & copies of letters when people had written in. A majority of the compliments I received was during the time I worked as a Driver Trainer & as an O/O, but I also received them as a company driver.

As for the companies not wanting to tell their drivers when they do good, is not a company to work for. People as a whole like compliments, especially about their work performance- it's bred into our psyche and is just human nature. Employers that do not compliment their employees for good work- tend to have a very high turn over ratio.

I have close to 1 million accident/incident free miles. I've been out of trucking since 2003 & forget what Safety said the exact mileage was when I left the business & sold my truck. I'm 46, have held a driver's license since I was 16 & during that whole time have had only 2 wrecks- the first responding to a serious accident in the winter where a car was pinned between the jack-knifed cab & trailer of a semi. My car hit an icy spot, spun out & wrapped around the end of a bridge. The other when some moron bent over to pick up some money he dropped on the floor & rammed into the back of my police cruiser at a stop light in Ft. Jackson, SC.

Philip K

No news is good news so when the owner of the truck gets no complaints he/she will assume that the driver is doing good. I however think it is a good thing to call that number and praise the driver if you see a driver behaving with extra care in a bad situation. Some truckers work real long hours and try their best.

dontyouaskme

I call and compliment people at random. If people are gonna ***** about something, they should send out the praise when it's deserved too.

eric

I think if a trucker knows about the sign, they'll drive extra careful because they don't want people calling complaining. Not all trucks have a sign like that. If a truck does, the company obviously cares about their driver's driving and doesn't want bad drivers driving for them. It's true that most people would only call if they see the driver do something that they thought was unsafe.

One time I was behind a van getting on the interstate with one of those signs and the van was going slow (about 60-65 mph with a speed limit of 70), but of course I'm not going to call to complain about that. These drivers may have rules or a speed control device that prevents them from going faster than a certain speed, like even though the speed limit is 70 or 75 in most states, it may be impossible for them to exceed 65.

UCANTCME

I have called many times but I cant tell you if it works or not...hopefully it does do something.

wvparanormal

George A, is correct about how it works with the third party thing, but if someone calls to complain, the driver hears about it ASAP. If they call with a compliment, the driver will probably never know.

Trucking companies usually do not single out a driver for driving well for one main reason. They don't want the driver to get big headed and over confident. They may bring up the fact that they had "x" number of good calls at a safety meeting, but they will not identify the driver(s).

I've been driving for the same company for 17 years and have had both types of calls made about my driving. I know this because on a couple of occasions, the person who called actually told me they called. Most of them have been complaints and were merely a case of the person calling, having a bad attitude about trucks and they were in the wrong. The only time I have been singled out for doing something right is when someone actually took the time to write a letter to the company. And then the company didn't make a great big deal of it.

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