Cost of Large Truck Accidents

One of our companies sent a provocative link that should help agents explain the economic of loss ( or the lack thereof). What is very interesting is the following:

* over 500,000 truck accidents occur every year
* 75% of these accidents are due to the driver of the passenger vehicle
* 80,000 accidents a year are due to the driver's fault
* 5,000 people are killed in these accidents that involve large commercial vehicles and 98% of the time the driver of the other vehicle perishes.

So what does it all mean? The answer is TIME and MONEY

To take a masters of business administration approach, you need to look at the Direct costs versus Indirect ( Hidden Costs):

Direct Costs: Cargo Damage, Vehicle Damage, Injury and Medical Cost, Lost Revenue, Adminitractive Costs, Police Report, Towing and Storage Costs- and yes higher insurance costs ( both from a property/casualty perspective)

Indirect Costs: Irritated or lost customers, lost sales, meetings missed, salaries paid to supervisors and employees, lost productive time doing work, loss of personal property, downtime and replacement vehcile rental, accident reportin, medical costs, poor PR and publicity, government agency costs, increased PR costs, cost to hire and train employees

So how does this pencil out? Let's say the direct and indirect costs for an accident are $25,000. If the insured is a closely held operation and just trying to eek out a profit of say 2%, the motor carrier will have to generate $1,250,000 of additional revenue! That's a whole lot of miles for a trucker.

Then there is the time fooling with it. After reading this a trucker has every incentive to incentivize his drivers by compensating them for loss free mileage. It is surprising that all truck operations do not do this.