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1775
Old 6 Road |
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 Greg Ollinger As I look back at our 2002 construction season, I am having trouble finding any good things to talk about. It seems all the bad things are what stick in my head. We had a bad year, and I admit that. We had some bad accidents with severe personal injuries that could have easily resulted in fatalities. Our insurance company (Liberty Mutual) isn’t very happy with us, and I don’t blame them. Our profit is down and more than one of the owners have said that we should sell our trucks and get out of the trucking business. I personally don’t agree that we should get out of the trucking business. I look back, and know that we have had a lot of good years too. I know that we have a lot of good drivers that do an excellent job every day. I know that the main function of our trucking department has switched from being a trucking company to being support for our construction crews, and I think we do a pretty good job of it. I know that when the Asphalt and Concrete paving crews fill up their schedules with some of the bigger jobs that our profit in trucking improves. I think it will be a long time before our economy is as good as it was a few years ago, but I am confident we will get through this and be better and more efficient than we were in the past. In an effort to improve things in the trucking department, we have made some changes and will be making more. Last spring, I implemented a program to do driver evaluations at the end of each season. Raises will be based on these evaluations. I don’t feel it is fair to pay everyone the same. The drivers who do a good job should be paid more than the ones who are only here for a paycheck and don’t care if they do a good job or not. We are also going to do more training and retraining of our drivers. We are still working out the details on this. I will have more information on it at our spring drivers meeting. Liberty Mutual wants us to make some policy changes on hiring of new drivers and retention of our current drivers. We have put into effect a Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) point system (more info). An MVR is your driving record that we get from the Department of Transportation. We will rate your MVR based on convictions. Since we are just starting this program we will only go back to Jan. 1, 2002. We will eventually be going back for 60 months. Our new hires we will be going back the full 60 months. Following is a copy of the point system. If you have any questions on this call Burt Ostert (Safety Director) or myself. I’m looking forward to proving that we can have a great season next year. With everyone’s help I’m sure we can!
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