“How safe is your fleet?” is a question that’s often met with another question: “What fleet?”

A typical small business might have a few work trucks, a car used for sales, an SUV used by a manager, and a cargo van used for various tasks. That’s not a fleet in the minds of the business’s owners or managers, but it is to regulators.

Throughout Canada and the U.S., safety regulations treat any vehicle used for business purposes as part of a company’s workplace. While vehicles that don’t require a commercial license aren’t regulated as strictly as those that do, all businesses are liable for what happens in their company vehicles—no matter what type of vehicle or how many vehicles the company operates.

The potential for human tragedy and significant cost exists for unsafe vehicles in a small company as much as for vehicles in a massive fleet. That means that even if you only have five vehicles, your responsibilities and risks are the same as an organization with thousands.

Lowering Risk Through Fleet Safety

The total potential costs will be higher for enterprises with large fleets, but small businesses have much less capability to absorb the human and financial consequences of work-vehicle accidents. Small businesses are arguably at higher risk per vehicle than their larger counterparts because a single accident can threaten to destroy a small company.

The costs of work-vehicle accidents can include:

• Liability.
• Fines.
• Lost work time.
• Personnel replacement/training costs.
• Insurance premium increase.
• Vehicle repair deductible.
• Workman’s comp premium increase.
• Group health plan premium increase.

 In addition, intangible costs such as damage to company reputation, decreased employee morale, and increased attention from regulators often follow accidents involving company vehicles in which the company is found to be at fault or negligent.

Keeping Track of Vehicle Condition

To lower the risk of incurring these costs, a best practice of fleet safety management is to regularly inspect vehicles. However, small businesses that don’t think of their vehicles as a business fleet often fail to do this.

If you’re a small business owner or manager, you can considerably lower the probability of an accident involving your company’s vehicles by implementing a standardized safety inspection program such as The Checker.

The Checker offers inspection checklists created specifically for common workplace vehicles, and these checklists not only provide assurance that the vehicles aren’t dangerous, they document that the vehicles were inspected.

Training and the creation of a safety culture are critical in lowering risk, but vehicle safety hinges on preventing unsafe vehicles from being driven on the road. Pre-use vehicle inspections are how that prevention is accomplished with large fleets, and they’re the answer for small businesses as well.

Takeaway

Small businesses may not be operating large fleets of vehicles, but they are exposed to the same risks, even if they only have one work vehicle. Regular vehicle safety inspections can provide peace of mind by minimizing those risks.

Image courtesy of Ildar Sagdejev (Specious).