Greg Ollinger

On March 28th, we had our annual Driver’s Meeting. We had a good turn out with approximately 90 drivers attending. I was glad to see most of the people from the Milling crews show up even though they are not full time drivers. D.O.T. rules and regulations, and safety are for everyone driving a truck, it doesn’t matter if it is occasionally or full-time.

Mike Manatt started the meeting with a brief overview of upcoming work. He talked about how our new insurance policy is going to work and the huge deductibles we will have. Just one bad accident could wipe out all or most of the profit for the Trucking Department for the entire year. Mike also talked about our new company motto “To Safely Do Everything We Do Better Than Anyone Else.”

Ray Raske with Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) used the rest of the morning to discuss Defensive Driving. Most of what Ray talked about is common sense, we just need to be reminded to pay attention to what we are doing and avoid distractions. We need to look ahead and anticipate what other drivers or pedestrians might do or not do. This was the classroom portion of DMACC’s Defensive Driving Course.

The second part of the course is the commentary-driving portion. My intention is to have some of DMACC’s instructors come out to our job sites and ride with our drivers. I want the instructors to see what different types of situations we get into and make their comments based on what we do. Most of their training is for over the road drivers, so this will be a little bit of a learning experience for them as well as us.

Jon Peterson and Mick Vana with Michelin Tire talked about the importance of checking tires and maintaining proper tire pressure.

Officer Loren Waterman with the I.D.O.T. discussed the new tougher Commercial Drivers License (CDL) standards. CDL drivers are expected to maintain a better driving record than non-CDL drivers. Violations that occur in their car or pickup could result in them losing their CDL but not their Operator’s License. He also talked about the new tie down standards for anyone hauling equipment or other material on a lowboy or trailer.

Dan Boyer, Nancy Ollinger, Becky Edelen, Frank Heinen, and Bev Vaverka all talked about company matters.

Burt Ostert discussed safety and loss control.

Dwight Triplett, Bruce Loving and Elmer Anderson (Elmer couldn’t talk, he had a frog in his throat) made some suggestion on things that we need to improve on.

I made a few closing comments and discussed the new Employee Evaluation we are using. We have 7 drivers getting incentive raises (.10 cents extra), 6 drivers getting no raise, and the rest of the drivers are getting the standard raise. The drivers not getting raises could have avoided this; most of the problems were with paper work (weekly tires sheets were a big problem), not keeping trucks clean (this means inside as well as outside), and not keeping the truck and fifth wheels greased. There isn’t any reason why everyone shouldn’t get his or her raise. Most of the problems can be easily solved. It is my hope that everyone gets a raise next year.

Now it’s time to prove that we can live by the company motto “ To Safely Do Everything We Do Better Than Anyone Else.”