When it comes to the trucking industry in California, compliance with regulations is crucial to ensure safety for everyone on the road. According to Simplex Group, compliance can affect your reputation and level playing field and reduce the trucking industry’s environmental impacts. Here is why compliance is important in the trucking industry:
Maintaining Safety Standards
Compliance with regulations is essential in the trucking industry since it ensures the safety of your employees and the other road participants. Regulations are in place to set standards for driver qualifications, equipment, and hours of service, among other things.
For example, truck drivers need to hold valid commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) to operate vehicles on public roads, and motor carriers operating in the state must obtain motor carrier permits (MCP) and display it in their vehicles.
When a motor carrier holds an MCP, they also have insurance liability in case of accidents, and it also proves that the trucking company has vehicles that went through safety inspections and met state and federal safety standards.
Trucks must also comply with weight and size limits set by the state to ensure the safety of public roads and bridges. If trucking companies transport hazardous materials, they must also comply with federal and state regulations for handling, transporting, and disposing of those materials to ensure the safety of the truck driver, traffic participants, other workers, and citizens.
Truck drivers must also comply with federal hours of service (HOS) regulations to prevent driver fatigue and truck accidents. HOS regulations limit the number of hours that truck drivers can drive their vehicles in a day and week.
Apart from this, trucking companies that comply with workplace safety regulations and meet standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSH) institute actively protect the safety of their employees.
Meeting Legal Requirements and Maintaining the Company’s Reputation
Since the trucking industry is heavily regulated, failing to comply with the regulations can result in immediate fines, penalties, and legal liability. You can easily lose your trucking business if you don’t comply with the regulations set in place, and compliance also helps to ensure a level playing field for all trucking companies in the industry.
If one company doesn’t comply with regulations, it can quickly gain an unfair advantage over other competitors or end up with several disadvantages. Since reputation makes or breaks any company regardless of its niche, compliance can help you build customer, partner, and regulator trust and respect in various ways.
Since you prove that you play by the rules, regulators won’t hinder your company’s progress, and partners will be reassured to work with you as you follow safety procedures. Apart from this, through compliance, clients will view your trucking company differently. It will open up many new doors as you showcase that you respect emission standard regulations and field efficiency requirements to help reduce your industry’s carbon footprint and promote sustainability.
Few people and customers will want to be associated with your company without compliance. You will find it hard to hire people or strike new deals with potential partners as they fear working with you since you can be held liable for non-compliance. Therefore, there is always a risk that you won’t deliver your end of the deal.
-In collaboration with Chelsey Fox
