Loss benchmarks allow companies to compare their loss and accident frequency with that of others in like industries. This report on the trucking industry provides details on the successful program elements used by trucking companies and outlines key safety program elements that should be contained in a typical trucking company s safety program.
The companies with excellent results have adopted different approaches; most notably among them is the use of in-vehicle training and more stringent hiring criteria. These practices are detailed in the Best Practices section of the report.
Because hit-other-in-rear accidents are one of the more significant loss sources, we calculated a rate of hit-other-in-rear accidents per million miles for all truckers. Those truckers requiring greater following distances were noted to have significantly lower hit-other-in-rear accident frequency rates than those truckers not requiring greater following distances. The details of this are shown in the following distance section.
In 1996, Liberty Mutual conducted a Benchmark and Best Practice study in Wisconsin to identify and compare safety program elements employed by companies with excellent accident costs and frequency. Developing these loss benchmarks would allow a company to compare their results from year to year and to other trucking companies.
The 1997 survey included five states and represented 7,700 power units and approximately 750,000,000 miles of exposure. We amended the benchmarks slightly from the first year to show more significant claims over $1,000, versus the total claims that were used in the original report. The 1998 report uses the same benchmarks as the 1997 report.
We obtained the information from a three-page survey form completed by trucking companies. Approximately 165 surveys were returned from the 265 surveys mailed to trucking companies. Of these, 143 had sufficient information to be used in the study. We disqualified respondents who were not insured by Liberty Mutual for a significant period of time, or for incomplete information.
The 1998 survey included the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin. A small number of truckers in Arkansas and Oklahoma that are serviced by our loss prevention representatives in the responding states were also included in the study.
The survey responses represented 19,000 power units and 1.9 billion miles for all of the responding companies. The loss information reported was for the time period 10/1/97 to 9/30/98 and the results were valued by 12/1/98. The survey examined total incurred losses for automobile liability and did not include physical damage to our insured units or cargo-related losses.
The surveyed companies ranged in size from a drive-away company with no power units to a company with some 1,050 power units. The miles ranged from less than 1,000,000 to 125,000,000. The median size trucker had 58 power units and 5.8 million miles.
