Hawx Smart Pest Control reduces unsafe driving by 87% with Motive Driver Safety

Written by Jonathan Keyes, Senior Director, Operations Infrastructure, Hawx Smart Pest Control

Growing sustainably while minimizing risk

Everybody wants a clean and comfortable space to live and work, and that means a space that’s free of pests. Since 2013, Hawx Smart Pest Control has protected the people and places that our customers love, and we’ve grown across 12 states. It’s not enough to prevent infestations, though. We want to disrupt the pest control industry with smart technology, and we’ve made it our mission to innovate throughout our business. 

When we were acquired by a private equity firm in 2021, maximizing profitability became the top priority. It was a great opportunity for the company, and when opportunity knocks, you open the door. Sometimes that means prioritizing strategic growth and understanding the risks that come with it.

By the time I joined the company in 2022, we had begun to think differently about risk. Instead of growth at any cost, we shifted to growing more sustainably while minimizing risks that could negatively impact our business. In addition to continuing our push for profitability, we started looking at risk management, especially as it related to vehicle safety.

Fighting high costs and a lack of visibility

Our growth depends on the success of our technicians. They drive vehicles home each night so they can start the next workday with appointments that are as close as possible to their homes. With that freedom comes the need for oversight. We didn’t have complete visibility when our technicians were on the road, which was often. Promoting professional development and increasing safety for our drivers would minimize risk, but we struggled to implement effective coaching techniques.

We also struggled with high fuel prices. Our fleet consists of around 550 vehicles, so we spend a lot of money on fuel. Finding a way to integrate and improve both driver safety and fuel management could enable us to reduce risks and lower operating costs.

Embracing telematics for proactive safety and fuel management

Solving our problems required us to rely more heavily on telematics, integrating telecommunications and real-time data systems to monitor and manage our fleet. In conducting a head-to-head trial of three different providers, ultimately we selected Motive because their devices offered the most precise data. Motive AI Dashcams let us record and replay footage to review incidents and understand what’s happening on the road at all times. We also liked the driver coaching features, which would give our drivers and managers additional information on ways drivers can adjust behaviors to drive more safely.

Another benefit of working with Motive was gaining access to fuel management tools. Our senior manager of Fleet had previously searched for a fuel management provider, and after selecting Motive for their AI Dashcams, we saw they had a solution, the Motive Card, that would help us manage our overall fuel expenditure.

More data, fewer incidents

Since adopting Motive technology, we have more visibility into what’s actually happening in the vehicle. We’ve taken all the event data and put it into our business intelligence (BI) tool to visualize the trends. 

Overall incidents have dropped by more than 39%. Motive is phenomenal, because it allows you to decide which events are the most egregious. We put cell phone use at the top, followed by hard braking. Both of those categories have drastically reduced since we’ve implemented Motive, along with several others:

• Cellphone use declined by 88%
• Hard braking fell 70%
• Stop sign violations are down 46%
• Distracted driving dropped 50%
• Tailgating declined by 75%

The biggest highlight is the reduction in cell phone use, which dropped by 88% in the first six months of the program. We’ve made great strides reducing our hard braking and close following events, too. All of these events are trending in the right direction.

A fresh approach to coaching and training

Throughout my 20-year experience, I’ve noticed that rolling out safety technology leads to an immediate improvement in behavior, followed by a period of complacency. Compared to its peers, Motive’s capability for ongoing coaching and training is one of the company’s biggest differentiators.

Managers have various leadership and accountability styles, and Motive makes coaching easy for everyone. It sends a coachable event to the driver and their manager, who each get to review it and provide commentary. That’s revolutionary to maintain desired driver behavior.

Our employees don’t want to be lectured about bad driving habits, not to mention it’s ineffective and reduces morale. We care about our team and want them to feel good about their work. We desire our employees to grow with us. So, rather than punishing them for bad driving habits, we entice them with a carrot, so to speak, incentivizing them in a couple of ways. 

1. We use Motive data to train drivers and proactively manage risk. Motive integrates seamlessly with the SambaSafety online driver training platform, and we use an API to route driver and incident data from Motive to SambaSafety to identify drivers who need remedial training. This approach incentivizes our employees to drive safely and reassures them we’re on their side. Instead of punishing them, we remediate their actions and coach them to become safer drivers. 
2. The data from Motive’s AI Dashcams became the basis for our internal driver incentive program Hawx Safety Guardians. Once a month, we recognize the top drivers and the top teams in the company, with cash prizes going to those with the best driving record. Increasing safety on the road reduces risk. Rather than dumping money down the drain on high insurance premiums and collision management, we’re putting that money back into our employees’ pockets. 

Now that we have a more holistic view of incidents, coaching conversations have become more productive. In the past, managers would sometimes have to rely on photos or verbal descriptions when reviewing incidents with drivers. Video tells a much broader story. For example, if a driver slammed the brakes because another vehicle cut them off or there was debris on the road, we can see they were responding to an aggressive driver or a road hazard, not driving poorly. In one scenario, animals unexpectedly ran onto a road and the driver didn’t swerve or hard brake, only slowed down. They ultimately hit one of the animals, but because we had a comprehensive picture of the incident, we recognized that driver for staying calm and didn’t berate them for damaging the vehicle. In the event of a collision, Motive helps exonerate drivers when they’re not at fault, potentially saving thousands, and even millions, in legal claims.

Improving fuel cost management and reducing fraud

One of our goals was getting a better handle on our fuel costs, and the Motive Card does that. We can see where and when our drivers fuel up and how much it costs to fill the tank at specific locations. Monitoring driver patterns allows us to optimize expenditures and identify potential savings. We’ve leaned into the Motive Card as a fraud prevention tool. We’ve saved about $21,000 in 2024, but the bigger, more unexpected impact has been fraud reduction.

Having real-time location data means managers can access camera views at any moment. Because we can sync the telematics unit with the vehicle, driver, and app, we can review the analytics and investigate any anomalies, such as if someone used the fuel card but the vehicle wasn’t at the gas station, or if someone who usually spends $75 to fuel up their vehicle spent $150.

In addition to using Motive API integrations for driver training opportunities, we also have utilized Motive data to validate our payroll system. Our technicians generally can’t clock in until they’re at a customer’s house, and we can compare the Motive data against the technician’s timecard to ensure everyone clocks in when they’re supposed to.

Lowering insurance costs, one month at a time

A lower incident rate looks great on paper, and which can lead to lower insurance premiums. With our current insurance carrier we were measured at a safety score of 80 before adopting Motive, and now our score hasn’t dipped below 99, which means we qualify for the maximum discount of $18,000 a month—13% of our premium. Since having Motive in our cabs, we have maximized our discount every month, saving us more than $216,000 annually.

I can also use our lower incident rate as leverage at renewal time. I can confidently contact big brokerages and mention our safety statistics and the impact of our telematics, incentives, and training programs. Our goal is to influence them with our track record,  to be able to offer a more of a self-insured program or at the very least increase our deductibles because we’re a lower risk.

We spend an obscene amount of money each year on auto insurance, but with Motive, we believe we are in a better position to optimize insurance costs and savings to be more profitable.

Making incremental improvements for long-term success

I’m a certified Scrum Master, so I’m competent regarding agile project management methodology. Therefore I’m very critical of software companies, specifically how well they meet the end user’s needs and how quickly they can provide solutions. Motive is, without a doubt, a company that is maximizing the agile methodology. The features that we’ve received in their rollout cycles have been phenomenal. One of the most recent releases is a time-lapse feature, which allows us to recall and review a large amount of footage in a very short period of time. Motive is all about innovation, which resonates with us.

Hawx is never satisfied with the status quo. We’re going to continue to iterate our driver safety program, and we plan to expand our use of the Motive API to calculate profits and losses better, optimize fuel usage, allocate resources more effectively, and improve invoice accuracy. Motive delivers a bird’s-eye view of our operations alongside the granular data we need to tackle specific issues and make incremental improvements.

Our initial goal was minimizing risk and increasing profitability, but onboarding Motive has also allowed us to invest in our workers, promote a strong safety culture, and improve company morale. We are investing in safety, and we’re seeing short-term gains that will ultimately lead to long-term success.

The testimonials, statements, and opinions presented on this webpage reflect the real-life experiences of individuals and/or companies who have used our products and/or services. Individual results may vary and past performance is not a guarantee of future results. The testimonials presented on this webpage were voluntarily provided and not paid.