The Salvation Army

Why The Salvation Army was Ready for a Video-Based Safety Program

The Salvation Army is over 60,000 employees strong and has the 10th largest fleet in the U.S., with over 15,000 vehicles. While The Salvation Army strongly values public service and has been committed to keeping streets safe for its employees and the community, due to the sheer size of its fleet and the large amount of city driving, they have had a significant number of costly collisions. “Our insurance costs were rapidly ballooning,” said Jim Thompson, Director of Loss Prevention. Management began actively attempting to reduce vehicle collision rates and related claims costs across the fleet, while identifying and improving risky driving behaviors. And they sought a comprehensive solution to address safety and cost reduction.

Why the SmartDrive^® program is the Smart Choice for The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army deployed the SmartDrive Measured Safety Program across a large number of its fleet of trucks in the Western Region of operations. The Salvation Army fleet supervisors were immediately impressed by the responsiveness and customer service provided by SmartDrive representatives. They expressed complete satisfaction in the program’s ability to effectively monitor and manage The Salvation Army’s fleet.

Like all SmartDrive implementations, the rollout of The Salvation Army’s Measured Safety Program was preceded by training and a Q&A session designed to help employees understand the SmartDrive approach and benefits. By selecting the SmartDrive solution to manage their driver safety program on a fully outsourced basis, The Salvation Army’s employees were able to focus on their core competencies. A dedicated SmartDrive account team works directly with The Salvation Army to manage and monitor the program and deliver consistent, timely review of critical events so supervisors can better do their jobs. The SmartDrive program also provided The Salvation Army with in-depth information about their drivers’ performance, comparing the frequency and severity of risky driving events between drivers, divisions, geographic regions, and even across the entire organization.

Maximizing the Value of their Investment

Since implementing the SmartDrive Measured Safety Program, The Salvation Army has seen a dramatic drop in their collision rate and saved a significant amount of money on claims and insurance.

In addition, the SmartDrive system has been instrumental in exonerating drivers when they initially were assigned blame. Within the first few months, the SmartDrive program exonerated three of The Salvation Army drivers who were found not to be at fault by the video and audio that the SmartDrive system provided. “SmartDrive helps protect our employees from other drivers on the road, and the liability associated with a collision. It provides us a record exonerating our employees when they were not at fault,” said Thompson.

The program has also had a surprising impact on the morale of The Salvation Army drivers. “In the six month period after we implemented SmartDrive, driver turnover has gone down,” said Henry Filoteo, the Director of Production for many of The Salvation Army distribution centers.

Operations expenses have also been reduced through the use of the SmartDrive program. “With our drivers slowing down, we’ve also increased fuel economy and reduced maintenance costs,” adds Thompson. These savings fall straight to the bottom line.