SafeCleanRide LLC (SCR), a third-party certifier of sanitization standards for ground transportation, and Certified Safe Driver, Inc. (CSD), a driver safety training provider, announced a strategic alliance on February 10 to combine best practices and standards for ground transportation and fleet transportation sectors.
The complementary expertise and vetted certifications of SCR and CSD will create a comprehensive training and testing program for all types of vehicle drivers, ranging from long-haul-truckers to pizza delivery couriers.
“Certified Safe Driver was formed by experts in ground logistics to provide required state and federal certifications for professional drivers. Safe*Clean*Ride is the only transportation contagion and hygiene safety training/certification that exists- so adding it to the scope of services at CSD was a natural fit,” said Sara Eastwood-Richardson, co-founder and media, and marketing manager for Safe*Clean*Ride. “While CSD products and services ensure drivers are compliant with all state and federal laws, SCR ensures drivers are fully trained in CDC, OSHA, and EPA cleaning protocols. Our overarching goal is one — to mitigate risks associated with transportation so that drivers and the public are safer.”
“SCR and CSD are two businesses that desire the same outcome when it comes to safety. The pandemic has added more to the definition of health and safety,” said Andrew C. Ray, vice president and CFO of Certified Safe Driver. “Health is not now just proper diet, hydration, hygiene, exercise, and rest. It now brings the definition of hygiene to another level. Everything we come in contact with needs to be clean/sanitized. CSD is a hands-on company with defensive driving training for the transportation sector and independent contractors. Now with the training session comes with following the CDC guidelines on cleaning the surfaces we are about to touch.”
SCR’s protocols were created and tested by transportation and technology veterans, under the watchful guidance of a panel of medical experts to ensure it is scientifically sound and in full alignment with CDC guidelines. Created with all of the CDC’s educational and health goals in mind, SCR has been fully reviewed and endorsed by an esteemed panel of experts in virology, chemistry, cleaning protocols, and transportation.
The executive team with Certified Safe Driver brings combined decades of driving safety and logistics experience at United Parcel Service. Since its founding in 2016, CSD has worked with such major companies and agencies as Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, Nestle, Alto Systems, Los Angeles County of Public Works, SoCal Gas, and independent contractors for Amazon and Fed Ex.
Among the clients who could most benefit from the CSD-SCR alliance are the full range of ground transportation operations, from last-mile delivery and logistics services to heavy-duty truck hauling, down to local pizza delivery drivers. In particular, last-mile delivery presents a growing market for coordinated driving and health safety training.
“Our mutual best practices can help transportation operations promote safety and wellness to reduce at-risk behaviors while reducing the exposure to the liability of a crash, injury, or illness,” said Michael Perez, founder, and CEO of CSD. “These measures instill safe habitual behaviors.”
“Anyone who drives a vehicle for business or service needs this training,” Perez added. “Wouldn’t you want to know the driver coming to your house not only follows safe ways to drive but keeps a clean vehicle that carries your ordered products or food?”
Perez emphasizes a keyword that applies to the CSD-SCR offerings: Exposure. “If you don’t do these things, you are exposed to liability. The more you do, the less liability. You want to have enough measures and practices in place, never to be said you were negligent in your processes. As an organization, you are reducing your exposure by putting a safety process in place that includes foods, health, and hygiene.”
Adds Beatrice Solis, CSD’s senior VP of corporate development, “I would feel more comfortable to know I’m getting food delivered from a company that is sanitizing and has requirements for a clean vehicle.”
Beyond the Pandemic
The value of the alliance between CSD-SCR will endure long after the COVID-19 virus spikes and infections have subsided. “It is a huge unknown, even with herd immunity, that this virus and any mutations are just going to disappear,” Ray said. “Business will have to adopt both ends of what SCR and CSD offer moving into the future.”
Like wearing seatbelts, the combination of CSD defensive driving and SCR sanitary travel practices can reduce the costs of illnesses, accidents, and related liabilities, allowing transportation services and businesses to reallocate money and invest it in other parts of operations.
“We should be learning a valuable lesson from COVID,” Perez said. “We have seen fewer people hospitalized and dying from the regular flu. We have also started developing some good habits that keep us from getting the colds we always get. Moving forward, it should be that way. There will be new versions of this virus, and there will be other viruses. We need to increase the odds of not catching whatever comes next.”
More than 20 million commercial drivers interface with millions of people in a day and are in constant motion, underscoring the wide potential for safer practices.
“Creating a safe and clean environment in the workplace benefits companies that stay compliant to the standard mandated by OSHA,” Solis said. “Our alliance will give awareness that you can’t have either without enforcing them both to keep your workforce safe and healthy.”
The industries served by CSD and SCR are amongst the highest risk for the transportation of any kind and the easiest to potentially spread any health risk to our general public overall, Solis added. “Although we may reach herd immunity, does not mean there will not be a different type of health threat. These policies should become a lifestyle not just for work but in one’s personal life.”
