USI Insurance Services

Building a Safety-First Culture

Transportation leaders can help reduce loss frequency, insurance and disruption costs by embracing a safety culture from the top down. For most safety programs and cultures, it needs to start at the top. If drivers see leaders not taking safety as important as they are expected to, it makes for an inconsistent culture.

Once a safety culture’s outline is established by owners or safety personnel, it should be executed, tracked and assessed regularly to address training needs or adjustments.

For some companies, safety programs often fall apart or fall by the wayside not long after starting. This is often because, depending on the size of the organization, there are too many drivers for 1 safety person to manage; but for smaller companies, this can be easier to manage. With larger companies, it requires on-site managers at various units, divisions, locations, etc. to have safety as part of their overall KPI’s and Metrics. When this is done, it keeps the top-down safety culture flowing as intended.

These steps towards a more cohesive safety culture with all fleets are needed more than ever. With safety and claims being arguably the biggest driver to a fleet’s insurance cost, new and more engaging safety culture designs will be the companies that see greater loss frequency and thus see lower premiums than their peers year after year.

Transportation Insurance Trends and Future Outlook

Halfway through 2026, the insurance industry is seeing a variety of trends across different lines of business. For companies in the transportation industry or those that operate large unit fleets, there is still a good deal of upward pricing pressure due to an environment of ‘predatory litigation’ against transportation companies.

In smaller or medium-cost areas like property, cargo, warehouse, garage/repair and physical damage, we are seeing pricing trends plateauing or dropping in various regions based on each company’s unique risk. The most expensive coverage, like auto liability and umbrella or excess liability, unfortunately, is still seeing increases to one degree or another. Because of this, there has been a great deal of emphasis on fleets looking at captive programs or medium or large deductible designs. Both allow a strong performing fleet to reduce costs by having “skin in the game” via self-insured layers.

For nearly all fleets, the insurance markets will continue to focus on companies with favorable losses—Loss Ratios under 40% in general—have clean FMCSA profiles, DOT Ratings, ISS-Safety, BASIC alerts, At Fault Accidents, use of technology and safety culture with ongoing training.

The commercial auto insurance sector has not made a profit in over 11 years in a row. Many of those struggles have come from verdicts or claims, repairs, parts and losses incurred all higher than ever on average. This has created a thin margin for fleets to avoid runaway insurance cost increases.

Transportation leaders can help reduce loss frequency, insurance and disruption costs by embracing a safety culture from the top down.

But those who embrace a safety-first mindset and execute upon that strategy with conviction will likely see their costs fall below their competition and see a healthier balance sheet due to fewer deductibles being paid and claim-related disruptions.

An Integrated Approach to Fleet Risk Management

Creating a resilient transportation risk program for any fleet will be a clear advantage in the industry. Not only does this help shield them from inflated liability claims, but it also keeps insurance costs in check, improves driver morale, reduces outof-pocket costs and helps attract high-caliber drivers.

This type of approach is one that will yield the best ROI when it incorporates safety, compliance—DOT, OSHA—and feedback from key vendor partners. By integrating these areas, it helps ensure each is doing its part to keep the overall transportation risk program running at its best.

With all the technology and data available, fleet safety directors are better equipped to monitor drivers over the road, receive preventative alerts from telematics and address any compliance matters that could pose issues or be good training subjects. With this overview of insights, the next step is collaborating with key partners, such as risk managers and insurance brokers. This should help identify the most useful and cost-beneficial areas to focus on for overall improvement.

The more safety, compliance and key vendor partners work together, the more everyone wins. Safety improves, and compliance is likely doing so too. When safety and compliance are strong, fleets get more ‘drive time’ and fewer disruptions like level 3 DOT inspections. With safety and compliance thriving, insurance costs and collateral are more easily kept in check and even reduced.

Creating a Scalable Risk Leadership Framework

For transportation and logistics companies that see rapid growth and expansion, it is important to maintain a risk leadership structure to ensure the company is not overwhelmed.

Rapid growth is usually a great thing to have for any company. In order to enjoy all that comes with it, keeping it in control is important. With the expansion of operations, an owner or single safety manager will often struggle to manage the risk as well as the pre-growth. It is at this stage that it becomes important to assign a degree of risk leadership to others.

The best way to view this would be as a top-down flow chart. As ownership is pulled into more areas due to growth and expansion, they need someone below them to take more ownership of the risk leadership and maintain ownership's overall risk leadership priorities. As the next level of growth hits, the safety manager will need people below him or her so they can cover more ground without sacrificing quality risk controls. This will continue as needed based on a company’s growth and expansion.

As long as the continuity of the risk leadership structure remains intact, the likelihood of a quality risk leadership structure should continue. A good way to help ensure this is by having local management, shift supervisors, unit leaders, etc., take a small degree of ownership in maintaining the risk leadership priorities at their level.