Safe & Sound

Dropped insurance coverage was a wake-up call J.B. Myers Enterprises needed to implement an award-winning safety program
Safe & Sound
Janice Clark (left) and Lori Dudzinsky pose with the Governor’s Award for Safety Excellence.

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The owners and employees of J.B. Myers Enterprises Inc. of Blairsville, Pa., went from being dropped by their auto and worker’s compensation insurance company as a bad risk to being nearly unsurpassed in safety and accident prevention over the course of several years. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry recognized this extraordinary transformation by giving the company the Governor’s Award for Safety Excellence in 2010.

How this longtime family company orchestrated a turnaround in safety in the face of an insurance crisis offers a lesson in small business preservation involving a topic that seldom makes headlines. As one of the company’s owners, Lori (Myers) Dudzinsky aptly observed: “If you don’t have insurance, you don’t have a business, especially if you have trucks going down the road.’’

Bringing stability back to the company’s liability picture involved recognition of a problem that threatened long-term profitability, temporarily paying heftier insurance costs, starting a safety program from the ground up with the help of experts, and making sure the workforce followed through on these new safety initiatives.

 

IN THE BEGINNING

The state safety award represented a satisfying outcome to the classic family business story: Brother and sister John B. Myers III and Dudzinsky bought the company in 2003 from their father, who retired and moved to Florida. John Myers Jr. had formed J.B. Myers Enterprises Inc. after he purchased two existing portable restroom rental companies and a septic service company in the 1980s.

Today they provide portable sanitation and septic system and grease trap service and employ nine people – more seasonally – in the three divisions. On the restroom side, work has evolved from handling small events and parties to larger weekend festivals. The company also has added service to oil and gas exploration companies to its customer base.

A few miles from the office, natural gas wells are being drilled in the active Marcellus shale play. Drilling crews live and work on a site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in all weather. This requires portable restrooms, clothes washing, and the associated work for J.B. Myers, including pumping holding tanks and hauling wastewater to area treatment plants.

 

TRUCKS AND RESTROOMS

The company runs a variety of service vehicles. It has three Ford service trucks, two 2008 and one 2004, all from Satellite Industries, with 600-gallon waste/350-gallon freshwater steel tanks; three delivery trucks – 2004 and 2006 Ford F-350s that haul up to six restrooms, equipped with 400-gallon waste/120-gallon freshwater steel tanks and Conde Super 6 pumps from Satellite, and a 2002 Ford F-350 with four-wheel drive and a 400-gallon waste/150-gallon freshwater steel tank and Jurop pump from Pik Rite Inc.; and two septic service trucks, one a 2002 Sterling Acterra with a 2,500-gallon aluminum Progress tank built by Lely Manufacturing Inc. and a 367 Challenger pump by National Vacuum Equipment Inc. The company recently added an International Paystar semi tractor with a 5,500-gallon aluminum Progress tank with a Wittig RFL 100 pump from Thompson Tank Inc. In addition, J.B. Myers has three flatbed trailers for hauling six, 10 and 12 units.

The company carries an inventory of 800 restrooms, mostly from PolyPortables Inc., PolyJohn Enterprises and T.S.F. Company Inc. It has about 50 special event units and a supply of holding tanks from PolyPortables. Accessory equipment includes a tank locator from Prototek Corp. and a Kubota backhoe.

 

RECEIVING BAD NEWS

A year after taking company ownership, the siblings received a non-renewal notice from their auto and worker’s compensation insurer due to an out-of-the-ordinary number of accidents and claims. It was a rock-bottom day. “It was a really hard, stressful time,” Dudzinsky says. “We didn’t know if we were going to be able to have our trucks go down the road anymore.” The future of the family business was at stake.

So they contracted with a new insurance company, Gooder Agency of Ligonier, Pa. Agent Tom Hoover “truly put forth tremendous efforts” to get them back on the right track, Dudzinsky says.

Myers and Dudzinsky met with a loss control specialist and set goals. They started a fleet safety program, daily safety communications, and annual first-aid and CPR training for every employee. They hired an on-site mechanic to do routine and preventive maintenance on vehicles. In short, they developed a new focus on safety.

Between 2006, when the company formed a state-certified safety committee, and 2010, it experienced zero accidents and injuries. As you might expect, the climb from rejection to success was conscientious.

After getting the non-renewal notice, the company went on the state’s worker’s comp plan – “You get picked up by the state if nobody will cover you,” Dudzinsky notes. “Being picked up by the State Workers Insurance Fund for worker’s comp insurance is very costly. There was a 51 percent increase in both our workers comp and commercial auto policy premium that year.” 

The owners created “how-to” safety plans for every task. Among the plans are pre-trip and post-trip truck inspections by each driver. Before leaving the shop, drivers use a Heli forklift to load restrooms onto the truck, secure them and ensure that the truck has all supplies, including a fire extinguisher, first-aid kit, wheel chock, dolly, cell phone and personal protective equipment.

Returning to the shop after a daily route, drivers complete paperwork, fill out an inspection form that is given to the mechanic, and help prepare for the next day’s run. They use a pressure washer to clean the truck, and replenish supplies including toilet tissue and deodorizer.

 

ACTION LIST

The siblings’ vision for improving the company safety record included the following actions:

1. Do not hire drivers without a good Motor Vehicle Report from the state.

2. Partner new drivers for two weeks with an experienced employee who shows them, for example, how to properly load and unload equipment onto the truck.

3. Give new hires an employee handbook that contains policies, procedures and general safety rules.

4. Show new hires a video about techniques to be used in the job to prevent accidents and injuries.

5. Administer a pre-employment drug test for all new CDL drivers.

6. Require new drivers to get a physical exam and carry a medical card to show they are physically fit for the job.

7. Equip each truck with a set of wheel chocks so the truck does not roll while the employee works. Previously, two of the accidents the company experienced occurred when emergency brakes failed and trucks rolled away.

8. Supply dollies for each truck to ease strain on backs.

9. Support drivers in communicating with customers about safe placement of restrooms for users and service technicians.

10. Require the customer to dig necessary access holes to reach buried tank lids, lowering employees’ risk of back injury.

 

DEVELOP GOOD HABITS

Notice the emphasis on new hires. “It’s harder after people have gotten into bad habits to change those habits,” Dudzinsky says. “We try to start everyone off doing things the safe way from the beginning.”

The owners and all employees attend monthly safety meetings in which they talk about any incidents, situations or “near misses” they encountered, Dudzinsky says. “At each meeting, employees are able to speak freely about how they handled different situations that may have been thrown at them.”

J.B. Myers also worked with its local insurance agent to increase umbrella liability coverage, which includes catastrophic coverage. “We want to protect our assets to the fullest” with the policy, Dudzinsky explains. “Every company has to decide for themselves whether they need the (expanded umbrella) policy or not. For us, it’s an added sense of security.’’

The company is privately insured for worker’s compensation again, having gone from a 1.89 to a 0.85 Experience Modification Rate, a measure of expected losses expressed in a formula that includes a percentage of payroll for similar sized businesses. A 1.00 rating is average, and the lower the score, the better. For example, if a company has a 4.00 EMR, it is paying four times the average cost for worker’s compensation.

Dudzinsky is gratified with the improvements that reduced the number of accidents and brought its insurance costs down. She says the safety program will help ensure the continued viability of a family business. “We’ve done well with the company. We are proud that we were chosen for the safety award. It’s definitely an honor.”

 

A VISIT FROM THE STATE

J.B. Myers was one of seven winners of the Pennsylvania safety award. In the state, 8,800 businesses have safety committees, covering 1.1 million workers. Of those companies, 85 were nominated for the governor’s award. Companies with state-certified workplace safety committees are eligible to save 5 percent on worker’s compensation premiums.

When the nominees were whittled to 13 finalists, representatives from the state Department of Labor & Industry Safety and Labor Management toured the J.B. Myers facilities to see what the company was doing.

The award and certificate were presented during the annual Governor’s Occupational Safety and Health Conference in October 2010. The certificate notes the company’s “exemplary commitment to safety in the workplace through labor/management cooperation and implementation of successful accident and illness prevention programs and practices.”

“Dad went with me to accept the award,” Dudzinsky says. “There was a presentation about us on a big screen, and we were in front of 900 people. It was exciting!”



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