Harms Pacific Transport simplifies DOT audits with Motive.

Eliminating Hours of Service violations

How does a fleet of stainless steel tankers ensure it’s compliant with the FMCSA? That was the question Tracey Day, Logbook Director of Harms Pacific Transport, had to ask himself after a less than stellar DOT audit. Day needed a way to catch the Hours of Service (HOS) violations his drivers struggled with so Harms could stay compliant with the FMCSA’s regulations.

Deploying an easy-to-use app

To serve Harms’s long-term safety needs, the safety solutions it selected had to be easy to use, “It was a no-brainer to go with Motive,” Day says.

When Day stumbled upon Motive, he admits he was skeptical. “I had looked at three other apps before, but none of those were very user friendly,” Day explains. Some of the drivers in his fleet were hesitant to try an electronic logging app. They assumed it would be more complicated than the paper logs they were used to.

But soon after downloading the Motive app on his Android phone, Day knew that the app met his first requirement of being incredibly easy to use. “Those drivers who were initially resistant to the idea of electronic logs are now the most loyal Motive users we have in our fleet,” states Day. 

Testing compliance capabilities

To determine whether Motive would catch HOS violations reliably, Day decided to test it out himself for two weeks on the road. He tried to expose flaws in the system by “throwing curveballs” at it. After the two weeks, the verdict was clear: Motive was error proof. It caught all the violations that plagued his fleet in a previous DOT audit, and it supported the Canadian HOS rules for when his drivers went north of the border.

Harms enlisted the advice of the former lead auditor of Washington to determine whether Motive could legally be used in place of paper logs. “He not only said that Motive was legal, but that it was the best program he had come across,” Day says.

Preparing for DOT audits

Although it hasn’t had a DOT audit since using Motive, Harms expects different results the next time around. In the past, the sheer volume of paper logs made it impossible for the Safety Department to get around to auditing each day’s log. But with Motive’s easy-to-use interface that notifies both drivers and safety managers of violations immediately, the Safety Department spends a fraction of the time it used to looking over logs.

With the number of violations plummeting, Harms’s office can rest assured that its award-winning tankers carrying hazardous chemicals are being taken care of by the top rated electronic log solution.

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