In many ways, the commercial trucking industry runs the nation. Although many of the commercial products that consumers use are shipped from overseas, long-haul truckers are responsible for delivering them to individual states, cities, and stores.
As a very vital part of commerce, trucking companies maintain tight schedules even when weather issues and labor shortages abound. For these entities, good customer service is always delivering goods in a saleable condition on time. Sadly, for those who share the roadways with commercial truckers, this rarely results in optimum levels of safety.
How Customer Service in the Trucking Industry Impacts Consumers
The drive to get goods where they need to be on time, every time is beneficial to the average consumer in many ways. Drivers who work long hours are ultimately the reason why store shelves remain stocked, and popular goods are replenished as soon as they sell out.
Without the efforts of trucking companies, getting consumer products from ports to stores would be impossible. Other forms of intermodal transportation certainly support these efforts, but cities and counties throughout the nation lack ports of their own, and aren’t possible to service via the railways.
However, commercial trucks are also the most dangerous vehicles on the road. They’re the largest and they’re often fast-moving. When these vehicles malfunction or when their drivers grow tired and fall asleep at the wheel, the resulting damages are always catastrophic.
Even a single commercial truck can cause multi-car pile-ups, freeway closures, life-altering injuries, and fatalities. While the overarching goal for customer service is timeliness, commercial trucking companies deal with constant pressure to improve their safety measures. Moreover, the expectation is that safety be improved without compromising efficiency.
The Dangers of Making Timely Delivery the Cornerstone of Customer Service
With timely delivery as the cornerstone of customer service in the trucking industry, a number of unsurprising dangers have arisen. Among these are:
- Drivers who are too tired to operate their vehicles safely
- High rates of stimulant addiction among commercial truck drivers
- Poorly maintained vehicles
- Aggressive and unsafe driving tactics to adhere to tight delivery schedules
- Payment plans and incentives that ultimately encourage unsafe driving
As the result of these and other factors, there is and has long been a very high rate of commercial trucking accidents throughout the years. Whether commercial truckers are driving distracted, operating their vehicles under the influence, or simply driving too fast to effectively control their trucks, even minor mistakes have had devastating effects on the motorists around them.
Pushing for Higher Levels of Safety
There are, however, incentives for trucking companies to address these and other issues pertaining to the safety of their operations and the feasibility of the demands that their drivers face. Failure to address these issues could result in a lawsuit against the company. You can click here to contact a truck accident lawyer if you need more information.
As accidents rise and settlement amounts pile up, companies are finding that the implementation of safer standards and safer driving practices are becoming increasingly necessary. The high rate of commercial trucking accidents has not gone unnoticed by legislators. Efforts to maintain acceptable age minimums for drivers, reasonable limits on maximum driving distances, and stringent testing for drug and alcohol use are among some of the regulations that have been implemented to this end.
As such, commercial trucking companies are constantly looking for ways to meet both new and existing legal demands without causing labor shortages, and without compromising on their number one priority in customer service.
While commercial trucking companies ultimately serve consumers, their clients are the result of long-standing business-to-business relationships. As such, when trucking companies define customer service, the ability to deliver on time and as needed always ranks on top. This is how these entities maintain their contracts and how they meet their profit goals. Sadly, it is also why there remains an unacceptably high number of devastating commercial truck accidents.
