C.R. England Driving Safety Forward: The Enduring Partnership with Drivewyze
4 min read
Safe and Dedicated to Service
C.R. England is one of the industry’s most respected carriers with a rich history dating back to its founding in 1920. The privately owned company is in its fourth generation of family ownership and has grown to become one of the largest refrigerated and general freight carriers in North America with more than 4,000 tractors in operation.
“Safety and Service” is a core value that guides the decisions C.R. England makes each and every day. Technology plays an important role in the company’s mantra: “Safe and on-time, every time.”
The Challenge
While C.R. England boasts better than average incident rates, the company is committed to trying new technology to continuously improve its safety programs and reduce driver-related incidents. With thousands of trucks running across North America, drivers frequently encounter unfamiliar roads, bridges, extreme weather, and new customer locations. Even for the most experienced drivers, the unknowns on the road ahead can create challenges.
C.R. England has been using dash cameras to record and monitor driving behavior, but the company sought out a proactive solution that would help inform drivers of potential hazards ahead of time so they could adjust their driving behavior accordingly.
“The ability to have configurable, proactive driver notifications has been a big value add to us.”
Colin England
Director of Accident Prevention, C.R. England
The Solution
Several years ago, C.R. England began a relationship with Drivewyze when the company started using its PreClear weigh station bypass service to save time and money associated with vehicle downtime from pulling into weigh stations. In 2020, Drivewyze launched a new service, Drivewyze Safety+, which allows companies to provide drivers with proactive in-cab safety alerts for upcoming road hazards. It was a service C.R. England was quick to adopt.
The Results
Through Drivewyze Safety+, C.R England provides proactive in-cab notifications to its drivers on upcoming road hazards, such as low bridges, areas known for truck rollovers, severe weather, high citation areas for speeding, and more. The company also creates custom safety alerts to meet specific needs of its operation, such as customer site alerts to encourage safe practices at customer locations. C.R England can track driver behavior in response to the alerts and then coach drivers based on results.
Since 2019, C.R. England has come close to cutting in half its chargeable accidents per million miles. Much of that success can be attributed to the company’s ability to leverage technology — Drivewyze Safety+ and dash-cam technology — to assist with its overall safety programs. England said the ability to develop its own custom alerts, through the Safety+ platform, is what has the company sold on Drivewyze Safety+.
“At a customer location in a small town, we were continually nicking our trucks on a building in a tight corridor. We put in a custom alert, so when any driver neared that area, paid more attention. We haven’t had an incident there since.”
Colin England
Director of Accident Prevention, C.R. England
Speed is another risk factor when it comes to accidents for fleets, and it’s no different at C.R. England. Data from the Drivewyze Hub has shown that a driver that receives a speed violation alert is twice as likely to slow down than one that doesn’t. “We’re being very proactive in this area as we know speed is a major influencer in accidents,” said England.
“Through Drivewyze and our camera system we have two ways to coach drivers. With Drivewyze we can geo-fence areas of concern and see how individual drivers react. We can grab a screenshot from the Drivewyze hub and show performance to a driver – it’s a coachable moment. Likewise, with our camera system we can use video footage and data from our camera system to coach our drivers and help them improve.”
C.R. England was also an innovator in creating custom weather alerts. According to Gerardo Granados, “When we started using Safety+, we took advantage of geo-fencing for weather. We began to identify our busiest lanes – providing our own weather alerts for our drivers, taking info from the National Weather Service, and other sources. The alerts were well received, and they provided ‘foresight’ – minimizing risk for our drivers is something we’re always trying to do. Drivers have a tough job with traffic, weather, and delivery windows. Anything we can do to help them, we want to do.”
When C.R. England told Drivewyze about weather alerts, Drivewyze put its development team to work on a new function of Safety+ adding Severe Weather Alerts to its offering. Now, Drivewyze monitors incoming severe weather alerts from a national weather service agency, then geo-fences hazardous areas. “That’s been a great complimentary tool that we use, along with our own custom weather alerts,” said Granados. “Weather can turn on a dime, so the more information we can feed to drivers to prepare them, the better.”
“Drivers have a tough job with traffic, weather, and delivery windows. Anything we can do to help them, we want to do.”
Gerardo Granados
Safety Department, C.R. England
England and his team continue to probe new ways to improve safety and the custom alerts through Safety+ help them do that. For example, they’re looking at adding lane restrictions alerts to help make sure drivers never get caught in the wrong lane which could lead to a citation.
“We’ve done a great job of reducing our accident rate. That’s a credit to the technology we’re using, the drivers and staff we’ve employed, and our company’s culture. We plan to continue that success.”
