How Five Star Trucking Built a Culture of Safety and Innovation to Improve Their Bottom Line

Five Star Trucking got its start in 1974, operating between Ohio and eight Western states. Nearly 50 years later, and passed down through multiple generations, the family business has expanded to a 48-state truckload carrier and full brokerage, taking pride in its high employee retention rates.

But Five Star is no stranger to the challenges of today’s fleet — from maintaining federal and local safety regulations to integrating the latest technology to enhance safety, operations, and further reduce costs. The latter is a great challenge for fleets like Five Star, as such tools are often out of budget for smaller fleets. Five Star found the technology and safety program partners they were searching for in the most unexpected of places — their insurance and telematics carriers.

Creating accountability with Samsara dash cameras

Five Star was committed to keeping safety at the forefront of its business, which is why Five Star invested in in-cab telematics. Samara’s connected operations cloud telematics technology allowed the Five Star team to monitor how its fleet was operating. Having access to such data allowed Five Star to identify driver behaviors that needed to be addressed and helped create a sense of accountability towards safety within the fleet.

However, with all the data that Samsara was providing, and all the improvements Five Star was making to its fleet from those insights, Five Star did not have a centralized place to view all their data from their Samsara devices or their FMCSA data to give them a complete picture of safety. This is where Nirvana Insurance was able to partner with Samsara to help bring Five Star’s safety insights to the next level.

Improving outcomes with the Nirvana Safety Program

Five Star became interested in Nirvana because of its use of in-cab telematics to generate personalized insurance rates based on miles driven and driver safety. They were impressed by Nirvana’s ability to leverage millions of data points to help businesses like Five Star reduce costs, improve safety programs, and provide a discount for the fleet, while other carriers haven’t quite figured that out yet.

Nirvana believes strongly in creating a safety program that fleets can leverage as needed. This safety program not only includes access to critical data within the Nirvana Safety Platform, but also provides access to Safety Managers who specialize in consultations to make fleets safer, discounted in-cab cameras, a partnership with safety training resource Infinit-I, and more.

Five Star leverages the Nirvana Camera Program for access to affordable, discounted in-cab dash cameras through Samsara that provide even more data on its fleet. Five Star also leans on a Nirvana Safety Manager who has conducted multiple mock DOT audits and helps prepare Five Star’s drivers for common safety scenarios that can arise while on the road.

Beyond the camera program, safety manager consulting, safety training access, and a discount for the fleet, Five Star also sought a tool with a simple user experience to continually enhance cost savings and a culture of safety. The Nirvana Safety Platform met Five Star’s high expectations. The platform intuitively displays key metrics — like CSA scores and safety violations — in a single, convenient dashboard and it allows fleets to track their progress by viewing trends over time. Five Star can access previously inaccessible insights, including indicators of speeding & harsh braking and individual driver performance, all in one centralized location.

With the visibility and transparency into driver performance in real time, Five Star can now pinpoint safety issues with drivers and correct them to reduce costs related to accidents, claims, and violations to keep premiums low.

As a result, Nirvana’s data-driven safety rating system has rewarded Five Star’s impressive safety record with fair pricing both upon bind and renewal. Nirvana has also helped the Five Star team make investments in technology, negotiating a discount for the fleet, and contributing directly to their driver rewards program.

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