Maintaining U.S. Department of Transportation compliance ensures that movement of cars, shipping containers, concrete piping and other heavy cargo is done so safely. And according to a recent Whip Around article, “a compliance inspection can occur at any time, highlighting the importance of bolstering compliance among drivers and other employees.”
Failure to follow the DOT compliance protocols can result in a number of penalties and fines and even license revocation, not to mention the potential for injury and even death of on-duty drivers.
While DOT compliance is foundational to business in the trucking world, keeping up with these protocols can be daunting for companies.
LogRock is dedicated to building technology that manages all aspects of compliance for trucking companies from driver-qualification files and permits to hours-of-service and maintenance records, so they don’t have to.
“Our goal is to help be proactive rather than reactive, when it comes to compliance,” said Hunter Yaw, co-founder and CEO of LogRock.
LogRock’s automated platform works to keep overall costs and errors minimal, thus reducing out-of-service time, nuclear verdicts and insurance rates, while opening doors to bigger and better business opportunities.
“I wanted to look for an opportunity to make industry folks’ lives a little bit easier,” Yaw said.
He provided an example of one of the many challenges many trucking companies face in relation to DOT compliance.
If a company has 30 drivers in its fleet, there are roughly 1,090 documents that the Department of Transportation or Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration expects it to maintain on a regular basis. If it boasts 100 drivers, this can add up to more than 5,000 documents.
“Not everyone has hundreds of people in a back office ready to catch all of this work,” Yaw said. “The burden is enormous and, unfortunately, the stakes are also very high in a world where the amount of lawsuits trucking companies are dragged into has increased year after year.”
Empowered by the challenge, Yaw realized the importance of narrowing expertise down to one thing that connects with everything else — and then making it really good.
“We ended up providing a service for the least-exciting thing — DOT compliance,” he said. “But there is a need for people in the industry to double-click on the more deep and narrow areas. DOT compliance is critical and requires data, and the problems that come with data are problems that software and technology can add value to. I thought that if we really lean into this, there is a chance that we could build something that could really help make a lot of folks’ lives easier, add value to trucking companies and really make a difference [in the industry].”
Click for more FreightWaves content by Britni Chisenall.
More from Taking the Hire Road:
Quality data for qualified candidates