We recently caught up with Tom Benusa, CIO at Transport America about how his team has incorporated Weather Alerts to provide a safer more efficient driving environment for its fleet.
His experiences provide a number of insights. Here are our top five takeaways from how Transport America has benefited from Weather Alerts:
Tom says Weather Alerts saves his team between 15 and 20 hours during busy winter weeks. It does this by allowing his team to identify trucks in jeopardy of encountering severe weather and communicates this to them much quicker than before.
Transport America has seen a reduction in Department of Transport reportable accidents on snow-covered roads from 19 in the winter of 2013-14 to just three last winter. While there are obviously a lot of factors at play here, Tom puts a special emphasis on the positive impact Weather Alerts has had in helping bring this number down.
Beyond safety and efficiency there’s a more direct business benefit. Weather Alerts has introduced a level of analytics that allows Transport America to understand the cost of rerouting around bad weather.
This analysis means that it can pass on some rerouting costs to customers reducing the financial impacts of bad weather.
Under the guidance of Tom, Transport America has continued to innovate and build upon the platform to better serve the business’ needs.
This past summer it developed a way to alert drivers that are moving towards a tornado or severe thunderstorm. Given the short life of these types of events, Transport America is now able to alert drivers far enough away to give them the opportunity to stop short of the weather, but not too far so that it would be passed by the time they got to the alert area.
Beyond the business impacts, the driver sees a real difference in their day jobs from Weather Alerts. Tom says that drivers appreciate the information being delivered directly to them, and they appreciate knowing that those in the office are aware of what they are facing.
Tom says that Weather Alerts helps Transport America reinforce its empowerment message to drivers: They’re the captains of their ship and if weather dictates they should shut down, then that is what they should do.
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