Firefighting’s Finest improved Safety Scores by 70% in three months with Motive.

Discover how a data-driven approach to safety empowers one company to improve behavior and reward good drivers.

Overview

Firefighting’s Finest was started as a side gig by a few fellow firefighters back in 2001. Nate Douglas, now Fleet Director at Firefighting’s Finest, knew that in order to beat the competition, the company would have to deliver an elevated experience through its frontline teams. To do so, they would need to hire and train the right personnel and hold them to strict standards like uniform appearance and on-time performance. And it worked—Firefighting’s Finest caught on like wildfire. The company’s laser-focused attention to detail and customer-centric approach turned a side gig into a premier moving company with a 47-vehicle fleet stretching across Dallas, Houston, and Austin, Texas.

By integrating Motive’s fleet management solutions, Firefighter’s Finest has reduced high-risk driving behavior with the Motive Safety Score, improved coaching via real driving examples, and has taken a data-driven approach to rewarding good drivers each month.

70%

improvement in Safety Scores

Challenge

As Firefighting’s Finest began to expand operations, the company turned to fleet management solutions to support its quality service levels and streamline daily operations. Before Motive, Firefighting’s Finest worked with another telematics company but said that experience was painfully fragmented. First, because that former vendor didn’t offer an integrated platform. And second, they didn’t offer a dual-facing camera to provide instant detection of high-risk behaviors.

“We needed a solution that provided more context around our driver’s in-cab behavior,” says Douglas.

The company’s operations leaders decided to look for an all-in-one solution and discovered Motive’s comprehensive fleet management platform to help coach high-risk driver behavior and identify inefficiencies.

Motive gives me real driving examples that I use to guide classes. So far, we’ve seen a 70% improvement in our Safety Scores.

Nate Douglas, Fleet Director, Firefighting’s Finest

Solution

As technology improves, its impact on companies and employees evolves as well. While introducing a driver-facing camera certainly improves safety, incorporating any new technology takes some adjustment. “Drivers were not excited at first because they thought that we would be watching them all the time.” But, as Douglas tells his team, “If you’re driving correctly, I will never review your dash cam footage.”

Now, having actionable camera footage gives Douglas a clear opportunity to coach his drivers on how they can improve during his monthly safety meetings. Douglas appreciates how his drivers are more accommodating to his incident inquiries because he has hard video evidence from both the road and in the cab.

“Ninety percent of my job is watching, managing my team,” explains Douglas. “Before purchasing Motive’s dash cams, I’d follow up with my driver to get more context. There would be a lot of back and forth to identify what happened. Now, I check the camera footage as the first step in my investigation.”

Motive’s driver distraction, close following, and cell phone detection models minimize false alarms, only alerting Douglas when his drivers are actually displaying unsafe behavior.

Results

The Motive Safety Score helps Douglas identify which drivers need more coaching and which drivers can be rewarded for safe driving. By providing concrete numbers and hard data to back them up, The Safety Score helps his team stop crashes before they even happen. That’s because the Safety Score identifies high-risk patterns of unsafe behavior with an unprecedented level of accuracy: the Safety Score is 5x more predictive of accidents than the industry standard.

As a result of using the Safety Score, Firefighting’s Finest gains a clear distinction between fair, good, and excellent drivers based on their individual performance. Through the driver’s safety profile, the team understands exactly how specific driver behaviors like braking and speeding impact their score over time. The team can then tailor coaching efforts with insights on who exactly to coach, and what specific behaviors to coach them on, and easily see the impact of their coaching on their Safety Score.

Not only can the team ensure greater safety using the Safety Score, but they can also communicate more effectively, track the impact of coaching efforts over time, and create a culture of safety.

“Every month, I host a safety meeting to educate our drivers on best practices and resolving road issues,” explains Douglas. “I use real driving examples, captured through Motive, to guide my classes. As a result, we’ve seen a 70% improvement in our Safety Scores in the first couple of months.”

Thanks to the Safety Score, Douglas gives out a monthly and quarterly award to his fleet, including a monetary reward and company-wide recognition for safe drivers. He uses each team member’s score as the determining metric. “These awards push the drivers to show up on time, wear their uniform, and drive safely,” notes Douglas. “Motive gives me an impartial metric to point to when awarding a driver each month.” Happier drivers. Better retention. Fewer accidents. That’s a win, win, win.

When creating Firefighting’s Finest way back in 2001, Douglas knew that delivering an exceptional experience was key to the company’s success. And now, thanks to Motive’s instant and actionable Safety Score, he can coach, incentivize, and reward his teams for delivering on that core promise. Because when drivers are on time, professional, in crisp uniforms, and arrive with their customers’ belongings safely and accident-free, they earn their trust and win their repeat business.