You need more than a prayer to keep a fleet of corporate service wheels rolling the mean streets. Driver training programs take many forms, but a good one will help your fleet vehicles spend less time in the auto body shop. A little education can ease the risk, inspire confidence and may even leave you laughing. Read about these lessons before your next skid!
Many moons ago, at my high school (which will remain nameless to protect the innocent), Sister Noel would interrupt English and proclaim she needed so-and-so to drive her to such-and-such. The lucky student would disappear from class, race Sister Noel to the yellow Dodge with black vinyl roof — I said it was many moons ago — and settle in behind the wheel for hours of serious driving: in the busy city, along winding rural roads, then headlong into rush-hour traffic. All the while, she kept her feet near the dual controls and her hands on her rosary beads.
For those of us not fortunate enough to have had a Sister Noel to steer us in the direction of driver safety, all is not lost. Driver safety training still exists; in fact, for some corporations like United Parcel Service (UPS), safe-driver training is a part of the company culture.
Founded in Seattle in 1907 by Jim Casey, who handed out $5 bills as a reward to the first employees with safe driving records, UPS today employs 344,000 men and women, approximately 87,000 of whom are drivers. All new employees are oriented in safe work habits, but drivers and on-the-road supervisors continually go through extensive, intensive, in-house driving programs as a requirement of their jobs.
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