U.S. Concrete

DriveCam reduces accidents by one-third within one year for concrete company A large producer of ready-mixed concrete and related products achieved a 30 percent reduction in accidents and cut costs per claim by 65 percent in one year with DriveCam.

Case Study: U.S. Concrete A large producer of ready-mixed concrete and related products achieved a 30 percent reduction in accidents and cut costs per claim by 65 percent in one year with DriveCam.

Situation

With 3,200 employees, Houston, Texas-based U.S. Concrete is the seventh largest producer of concrete in the United States, providing ready-mixed concrete and related concrete products to the construction industry in 12 states.

U.S. Concrete was averaging 172 vehicle accidents per year across its 2,507 vehicles, at a considerable cost per claim. The company's safety program included behavioral observations, but it was not seeing the substantial impact on the bottom line that it sought. Desiring the ability to pinpoint and reduce risky driving behaviors, U.S. Concrete looked to DriveCam's behavior-based risk mitigation solution to identify and correct risky driving behaviors before they resulted in serious incidents.

Solution

In December 2005, U.S. Concrete worked closely with a dedicated DriveCam team experienced in concrete and construction to pilot the solution in 95 vehicles based in San Jose, Calif. Company mechanics installed video event recorders on windshields behind the rearview mirror, and members of the DriveCam Technical Implementation team installed wireless access points in the yard to capture events from vehicles when they return at the end of the day. By January 2006, all of the DriveCam video event recorders had been deployed and were in use.

DriveCam Driving Risk Analysts did not begin reviewing, scoring or delivering reports to U.S. Concrete supervisors to help them coach drivers until July when initial Union resistance to the recorders was resolved.

"At the end of the day, the Unions saw the video event recorders for what they are—technology to increase the safety of our drivers and exonerate them in instances of false claims," said Rick Maidens, director of safety and risk, U.S. Concrete.

From January through July 2006, U.S. Concrete realized a 50 percent reduction in the total number of claims and a 61 percent reduction in cost per claim compared with the same period in 2005.

U.S. Concrete moved to full-scale implementation in California in July and quickly had 400 vehicles outfitted with the DriveCam video event recorders. In August 2006, the company outfitted 78 vehicles in Maryland and Washington, D.C., and implementation has begun on 571 vehicles in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. Full implementation across all U.S. Concrete vehicles is expected by the end of 2007.

Impact

After 12 months, results have been significant.

• U.S. Concrete realized a 65 percent reduction in claims costs and a 30 percent reduction in accidents.
• The DriveCam solution has been instrumental in exonerating U.S. Concrete drivers in accident situations where they initially were assigned blame.

Maidens believes that the biggest benefit of the solution is that it enables U.S. Concrete to manage people rather than a process.

"Prior to implementing DriveCam, all we could do once a driver left our plant was make sure he returned on time. Now, we are actually able to manage drivers while they are gone and can ensure they are getting the coaching they need to ensure the results we expect," Maidens said. "At the end of the day, we also are earning our employees trust because what the solution does is exactly what we said it would do and the whole company is benefiting from it."