Keep your eyes on the driver

f|UT OF CONTROL lumber truck Vkills two. Lumber truck crushes sports car. Overturned lumber truck causes massive freeway tie-up . . if headlines such as these are part of your nightmares, it is time for you to keep an eye on your driver.

Truck safety has become a national concern. In late fall, the American Trucking Associations launched a series of late-night "trucker" radio program spot announcements plugging the need for safety and courtesy on the highway. More than I 100 commercial messages were broadcast on 12 stations across the country.

This advertising campaign was coupled with the Road Team project in which six selected professional drivers toured the country making speeches, giving interviews and appearing on radio and tv with their safety message.

During 1986, the ATA also was instrumental in getting legislation creating a single commercial drivers license. This was a legislative victory over one of the biggest problems facing trucking"an increasing accident record involving trucks and cars," said Thomas J. Donohue, ATA president.

The single commercial driver's license will work to get bad drivers off the road by creating a uniform, national licensing system for drivers ofheavy vehicles. A central file ofall major violations will allow states to exchange information about driving records. With this new legislation road tests in the vehicle to be operated will be mandated in all states. In addition, it provides for more roadside inspections of equipment and drug/alcohol testing of drivers.

As an employer of truck drivers, you can set your own policies and establish your own guidelines for hiring and keeping drivers who are competent and qualified. Dixieline in San Diego, Ca., is an example of a retailer who has set up a simple, yet effective program for qualifying and training drivers.

They begin by not selecting inexperienced drivers unless they have had a reasonable period of working at Dixieline and a thorough knowledge of policy and procedure. "Before hir- ing a new experienced driver, the company does a background check and conducts a driving test to certify that he is familiar with large trucks," says Roger ing or driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol automatically disqualify a prospective driver.

Myers,

corporate security/safety director at Dixieline.

Story at a Glance

New national drivers license for heavy trucks. added roadside inspections... how one retailer screens, hires, checks and trains the drivers it puts into its trucks.

The background check for prospective Dixieline drivers includes (as required by both the Department of Transportation and the California Highway Patrol) verifying with the Department of Motor Vehicles in Sacramento that the candidate has a current drivers license of the correct class. They also check past driving records and violations with the DMV. They investigate all violations. Violations such as too many speeding tickets, reckless driv-

If a prospect survives this investigation, he must undergo thorough physical examination including alcohol and drug abuse screening.

If both the license check and physical are acceptable, the new hire receives additional training before being allowed to drive a Dixieline truck. This includes being responsible for material in the Driver's Handbook which is issued to him, and instruction by the garage foreman in truck nomenclature and characteristics. He has on-the-job training of two weeks as a ride-along and two weeks as a driver with a trainer along. The final check to be passed is a driving test with a dual trailer rig given by the garage foreman. The driver who completes all this successfully is then on probation for 90 days.

Untrained driver candidates selected from present Dixieline employees undergo the same checks and complete extended training

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