R.E. Garrison Trucking lowers preventable accidents by 30%

With Samsara, the company sees a range of benefits across their operations, including an 83% drop in worker’s compensation claims, a 40% reduction in manual paperwork, and a $730,000 savings in fuel costs year over year.

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Meet R.E. Garrison Trucking

Lack of real-time data created a reactive safety culture

R.E. Garrison Trucking provides logistics and freight management services across the Southeastern and Midwestern regions of the United States. A leading food shipping company, R.E. Garrison transports a wide variety of refrigerated products that range from hot dogs to alcoholic beverages.

Founded in 1959, R.E. Garrison has steadily grown to operate hubs across seven states, with plans to continue expanding. However, R.E. Garrison's team realized that siloed information was slowing it down. "One of the biggest issues we had was running 15 different reports to get one answer," said Tracy Rushing, Executive Director of Safety & Recruiting. "It was slow and difficult to get a holistic view of our operations."

Safety was a critical operational area where the company needed real-time information. "When an incident occurred, we'd request footage, but then wait 45 minutes—if we received it at all," Rushing said. "Overall, our safety culture was very reactive and it was difficult to identify and coach unsafe behaviors."

Rushing and the R.E. Garrison team began to look for a solution that would help them make significant improvements across their operations, particularly in safety, compliance, and efficiency.

TRACY RUSHING

Samsara unifies systems and data to unlock operational insights

R.E. Garrison was using several different solution providers for dash cams, telematics, and ELD. The company selected Samsara because it offered a unified, integrated system to meet their technology needs. "Samsara is a one-stop shop for our operations," Rushing said. "With Samsara, we have a single view and point of contact for everything that touches the cab."

R.E. Garrison also chose Samsara because they were not just a technology provider, but a fully integrated partner that could help the company scale for the long-term. "If we have a challenge, Samsara is now our first thought for how to solve it," Rushing said. "It's like Samsara is just another one of our team members sitting at our table, ready to bring solutions."

Real-time visibility transforms driver safety

With Samara AI Dash Cams, R.E. Garrison now has real-time visibility into safety incidents, reducing the wait time for video footage from 45 minutes down to just a few seconds. With the ability to see and coach events in real time, R.E. Garrison has been able to lower unsafe behaviors like mobile phone use and speeding, and has also reduced harsh braking incidents by 25% and preventable accidents by 30%.

Reduced idling delivers significant fuel savings

With Samsara Fleet Telematics, R.E. Garrison has seen a number of efficiency gains across their business. Using Fuel & Energy reporting, the company has been able to improve fuel efficiency by 3% across their fleet, as well as reduce idling waste by 26% year over year, resulting in almost $730,000 in savings.

Finding assets quickly leads to significant time savings

R.E. Garrison transports perishable goods over long distances, which means knowing where assets are at all times is critical. Before Samsara, finding important equipment like trailers was difficult and time-consuming. Now, the company uses Samsara to quickly locate assets and has been able to reduce the time spent looking for trailers from weeks to minutes.

Digitized workflows streamline driver tasks and cut manual paperwork

With Samsara, R.E. Garrison has been able to digitize and automate several driver workflows, including HOS compliance, DVIRs, and damage reports, as well as unloaded and empty route reports. This has reduced manual paperwork across the company by 40% and saves over 250 administrative hours each month.

Seamless integrations create a better, more efficient driver experience

Before Samsara, R.E. Garrison drivers were overwhelmed by multiple systems and points of contact for different issues, such as training, inspections, citations, and HOS tracking. Now, the R.E. Garrison integrates a range of solutions with Samsara to create a seamless experience for both drivers and driver support. For example, integrating the company's Learning Management System—LUMA Brighter Learning—reduced driver onboarding and training time by 30%.