“We’re already seeing a payback from a cost standpoint and I think other folks will see the same.” Scott Groh, Fleet Manager, Arctic Glacier

As business heats up in the summer months, Arctic Glacier is focused on a safety-first culture. Arctic Glacier is a packaged ice company that manufactures and delivers to 75,000 retailers across the U.S. and Canada. With 450 vehicles on the road year-round, growing to more than 800 during the summer season, safely delivering their cool cargo is critical.

Customers have high expectations of service in terms of delivery speed, which have put additional strains on service fleets. But what about safety? Dan Laurencelle, Fleet Safety Manager, admits that they’ve always been heavily customer service oriented, doing whatever is necessary to deliver their product, but that they really needed a greater focus on safety. According to Laurencelle, “Adopting SmartDrive has been a key element into shifting the culture that safety is the number one priority.”

Why Video Based Safety?

Groh indicates that two main objectives drove Arctic Glacier to a video-based safety solution:

First, they needed help with third-party liability, a way to protect themselves and their drivers from fraud and lawsuits resulting from incidents in which their drivers weren’t at fault.  Second, they wanted an effective method of identifying and coaching to specific driver behaviors to help their fleet improve overall driving habits.

Why SmartDrive?

The team at Arctic Glacier piloted three systems before choosing SmartDrive. Ultimately the SmartDrive program met more of the needs of their driver safety initiative, helping with overall reduction of risk.

Arctic Glacier takes full advantage of features such as extended recording, which helped them identify a suspect who stole cash from the delivery vehicle while their driver was working with the manager inside a store. This added layer of security provided protection for both the driver and the company.

“It only just solidifies the choice that we made in going with SmartDrive and that a video-based solution was the right choice,” comments Laurencelle.

Utilizing event video like “game film” Arctic Glacier has been able to coach to specific recorded incidents with remarkable results. “Since implementing SmartDrive, we’ve been able to reduce our unsafe DOT violations by about 50%,” says Groh, and “a significant reduction – 90% in both seatbelt violations and similar on cell phone violations.”

Watch the video to hear about their results in their own words. It’s really cool!