How Modern Transportation improved driver retention by 15% year over year.

Modern Transportation has been serving material & chemical providers, energy producers, & industrial manufacturers since 1987.

With a slip-seat operation and roughly 280 trucks that are on the road at all hours, safety is the top concern for everyone on the team—especially Woodson Witt, Vice President of Safety and Human Resources.

When Witt joined, the fleet already had a camera system, but it left a lot to be desired. “When I started using the system, I found out the alerts I was reviewing were three days old, and that some guy in another country was deciding whether or not I could even see video footage,” he says.

Witt could see the opportunities to improveModern Transportation’s safety program, increase the company’s bottom line, and retain more drivers over the long term. He knew a cutting edge in-cab video safety system could provide the foundation for that change.

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The single largest impact on the bottom line & revenue

When Witt first introduced Netradyne, drivers and terminal managers were unsure about using a new platform—and apprehensive about the high driver scores they’d be expected to achieve. Netradyne’s recommended “good” GreenZone® Score is 850, and in the beginning, Modern Transportation’s fleet scores were in the 700s.

“There were definitely some skeptics,” says Witt. “At first, everyone said, ‘There's no way we're ever going to get to 850.’ That's all I ever heard.’”

Just one year later, things have changed.

“Now, if I ask them, ‘Hey, if I told you right now that your score is 850, what would you say?’ They’d say, ‘Oh my gosh, that is terrible. I couldn't live with an850’—the mindset has changed so much,” says Witt.

A key reason for this improvement was ModernTransportation’s leadership team—change starts from the top, and the president’s commitment to performance cascaded through the entire fleet to drive this transformation.

“The president believes in the GreenZone Score so much that he made it a requirement to get an annual bonus,” says Witt. “No matter how well you or your terminal performs, your score needs to be above 850to get that bonus. He said that Netradyne’s Driver.i cameras and the accompanying safety program have had the single largest impact on the company’s bottom line and revenue.”

Driver.i has also helped both terminal managers and the safety team have more productive and objective conversations with drivers when they do need coaching.

“The nice thing about Netradyne is it doesn’t just  tell you which driver gets distracted or which driver speeds—it also tells  you how much a driver’s score will improve if they tweak different behaviors.  You can focus your attention and coaching on those behaviors, which reduces  your risk, and increases your bottom line.”
– Woodson Witt, VP of Safety and  Human Resources at Modern Transportation 

This constructive approach speaks to the safety culture that Witt has established—instead of trying to correct behavior by punishing drivers, managers can focus on having collaborative conversations and regularly providing positive feedback.

“When we have a review with a driver about an incident, they get to provide their input and talk about how things went from their perspective, and we take that into consideration,” says Witt.

What’s also effective about Witt’s approach is that he gives drivers greater control and autonomy over their own performance, using Netradyne’s devices as a tool to self-coach.

“Everyone gets into bad habits. These cameras identify risky behaviors and provide voice alerts to prompt a driver to correct the behavior before they create an alert within the manager portal. And if they listen to the prompts and use the Driver•i app, they'll probably never hear fromSafety aside from getting praise for their driving.”

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Setting new benchmarks: How one small change improved drivers’ speeding habits

Driver.i has also given Modern Transportation a much greater level of control when it comes to setting safety standards for drivers—something which Witt was able to test and see the impact of first-hand.

“I was chatting with the Netradyne team awhile back about GreenZone scores and they were telling us our scores were great,” says Witt. “Which was nice, but it made me wonder if our high scores were artificially inflated and whether our settings were dialed in tightly enough.”

Later that evening, he went into Netradyne’s admin portal. After looking at the settings, Witt made two interesting observations: there was an opportunity to tighten the speeding settings, and there were very few severe speeding alerts—they were mostly moderate alerts. 

“What that told me was our drivers had somehow learned over time where our speeding thresholds were set and were able to stay just under those ‘severe’ thresholds,” he says.

“But speeding is speeding. We can’t support that.” Witt wanted to see if the team would be able to adapt, so he lowered the thresholds that evening.

The next day, Witt was bombarded with messages from concerned drivers and managers about how GreenZone scores had dropped. He saw it as a good thing. “It told me everyone is looking at these scores, from the drivers to the terminal managers to the directors. They knew the minute that trend changed,” he says.

But he believed in his operations team and drivers—and soon enough GreenZone scores picked right back up, with an improved safety baseline. The test worked.

“Our team adjusted and started coaching to this new standard, and two weeks later our scores started going back up. You could see the team adjusting to what we did. It was so refreshing. Driver.i has been an extremely effective tool for us.”

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Fewer reportable incidents, higher driver retention

Besides improving relationships with drivers and giving managers more control over safety standards, Netradyne has provided another crucial measurable benefit to Modern Transportation’s business.“Netradyne has been tremendous. Our incident rate per million miles has improved—without question, the ROI is there,” says Witt.

“We have absolutely seen a vast decrease in our  DOT-reportable incidents across the board,” says Witt. “And I attribute that  to Netradyne’s GreenZone score because it enables you to identify specific  types of behavior that add risk to the fleet."
–  Woodson Witt, VP of Safety & Human Resources at Modern Transportation

These benefits have provided a positive brand impact as well. “Customers and drivers all talk, and if you’re known for your focus on safety, that helps your business in so many ways,” says Witt.“Employees’ attitudes improve, more customers want to work with you, managers don’t have to spend so much time resolving incidents, it affects psyche, morale, and wellness—all of these effects that you can’t really measure.”

Above all, Netradyne has helped Witt and his team provide a working environment that drivers enjoy, while realizing Modern’sTransportation’s promise—which is also their company’s tagline: Home safe tonight.

“Our retention has improved at least 15% year over year since we've installed Netradyne,” says Witt. “That reflects our approach here at Modern—we invest a lot of time and energy in our drivers and we want to keep them on staff,” says Witt.

“If a driver leaves us for whatever reason, our goal is to make sure they're a better driver when they leave us than they were when they got here. Netradyne is empowering us to achieve that.”

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About Modern Transportation

Since 1987 Modern Transportation has served numerous material and chemical providers, energy producers and industrial manufacturers.  We have built, among all of them, a reputation for being a carrier of choice – for implementing supply chain solutions that work, successfully, in mission-critical production environments.

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