How a large food & beverage fleet used fleet maintenance software to avoid a nuclear verdict

Founded in Chattanooga in 1993, Five Star Breaktime Solutions has become one of the nation's top out-of-home food and beverage retail solution providers for employers, commercial and institutional locations.

They operate in major US cities and small towns across the South, offering services like vending machines, micro-markets, office coffee, catering, pantry and corporate foodservice.

The challenge

Powering a business of this size requires a rather large fleet — about 1,500 vehicles in this case.

Conducting and tracking inspections on paper can be quite difficult. Previously for Five Star, reports were often lost or misplaced — and keeping track of paper files was simply not realistic.

Since a sizable number of Five Star’s vehicles are subject to DOT regulations, that situation wasn’t going to cut it for Corporate Safety Manager Josh Humphries. “The problem was, that's a piece of paper sitting on someone's desk that they'll throw away,” Josh said. “So we really weren’t fixing all of our defects or DOT-compliant issues.”

He was also concerned about Five Star’s CAB score, which is essentially a rating that insurance companies will use to evaluate the safety and compliance of commercial motor carriers.

“We were doing DOT pre-trips on paper and not catching all our maintenance defects, which caused us to be in the red on our CAB score,” Josh said.

The solution

Five Star implemented Whip Around, a Geotab Marketplace Partner that specializes in fleet inspections and maintenance. Accountability improved swiftly after that. Previously, drivers would look at a previous inspection and just pencil-whip it. For example, if tire pressure was marked low last time, they’d just mark it low again. Now they don’t have that option.

“If I'm driving a truck that I've never been in, I don't know what the person before did with it,” Josh said. “I only know what I did. So this way you don't assume that the other person did everything correctly — you actually check everything out and put your initials on it saying it is 100 percent.”

Streamlining defect management

Incorporating Whip Around has led to the discovery of defects that wouldn’t have otherwise been found. The app’s customizable forms and forced photos have played a key role.

“We make them take a photo or input the mileage from the odometer. They have to take a photo of the dipstick,” Josh said. “And if any defects are found, those are mandatory photos. We even require them to take a photo of their medical card.” They can simply look at new defects then quickly assign them to the proper team members to resolve and mark as corrected.

“With Whip Around, now we have that info for as long as we need it,” Josh said. “I can go on there or the fleet local fleet manager can go on there and say, OK, this is not that important, but this one we need to get fixed as soon as possible.”

The results — avoiding a nuclear verdict

Recently, Whip Around helped prevent a tragic incident from becoming even worse for Five Star.

Despite the Five Star driver operating safely and legally, a serious accident occurred involving a pedestrian.

The responding officer then asked for the driver’s DOT pre-trip and full inspection history. Thanks to Whip Around, this process went smoothly.

“He was able to show him that he's been doing his inspections ever since he was hired, and when we got to the police station they wanted to see if we had any defects reported,” Josh said. “We didn’t have any defects reported, so that freed us up from a lot of additional questioning from DOT and police officers.”

Without those records proving that the truck was properly maintained, a tricky situation could have arisen.

“It was a huge help from a legal standpoint and also from a state standpoint, avoiding being cited for certain things,” Josh said.”

Moving the safety and compliance needle

Remember that CAB score we talked about? Five Star has successfully reduced that score — and a lower score is a good thing.

“I want to say we were at 82 percent; now we’re at 50. So Whip Around has helped bring that score down,” Josh said. “With DOT pre-trip inspections, that’s where the drivers report this stuff back, finding issues with things like lighting, reflectors, tires, wheels, windows and all that stuff.”

The momentum in the fleet and safety department continues to build. As a way to incentivize drivers to prioritize safety, Josh is planning to roll out a new internal safety program with Whip Around as the foundation.