You might say Kool Pak Canada ULC is a cool company. It transports and warehouses frozen, chilled, refrigerated, and dry products.

Formerly Polar Express Transportation, Kool Pak is headquartered in Langley, BC, and celebrated 20 years in business in 2020. The company serves the Vancouver – Seattle corridor and offers less-than-truckload (LTL) and full-truckload (FTL) transportation services, with five temperature-controlled facilities in BC, Washington, Oregon, and Northern and Southern California. In January 2012, Polar Express joined Kool Pak’s transportation companies, which provide services across the contiguous United States.

With expansion, it was obvious a formal safety program was required. In 2015, Kavita Kohli was offered the opportunity to take on Kool Pak’s safety management. She charged ahead, learning as she went, taking SafetyDriven courses, becoming an internal auditor, to build Kool Pak’s safety program from scratch. The company became COR certified in 2017. It has 29 employees, including 15 drivers and owner operators.

Kavita recalls establishing policies and forming the safety committee with the support and approval of the executive at every step. Staff buy-in was immediate overall—drivers, warehouse workers, and office staff—which Kavita credits to “having really good staff who understand the value of safety. Everyone from the president down supports company safety.” Shortly after the program was implemented, Kool Pak held its first Safety Day to reinforce the importance of an operative safety program. It was very effective with the staff and with drivers in particular.

Kool Pak’s safety program involves everyone. The safety committee comprises one manager, one warehouse and one office staff member. Drivers have plenty of opportunity to participate when they aren’t on the road. The safety culture is open; all staff members receive the same information and everyone can bring their ideas and suggestions to regular safety meetings. SafetyDriven resources often inspire meeting topics.

Drivers and staff raise issues like workplace hazards, personal safety such as preventing back problems, incidents, near-misses, roadside accidents, and general driving practices. Suggestions are discussed in the meeting to decide if they will work on the ground as presented or with alterations. Managers and supervisors perform random spot checks, providing feedback immediately, and incidents are reviewed at safety meetings. The review gives the team the opportunity to support employees who are having problems and discuss safety practices. For drivers on the road, regular emails provide updates. For more immediate situations, drivers are called to ensure they remain informed. Regular communication with all staff helps improve the safety program continually.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kool Pak stocked up on personal protective equipment and introduced new protocols. Staff arriving at the worksite undergo a temperature check before their shift. Anyone with a fever is required to stay home; those whose jobs are conducive to working from home can do so. Before starting work in the office, staff sanitize their work stations. They wear gloves to handle paperwork and sanitize counters every hour. Drivers have their own office for paperwork with similar protocols. Only one driver can use the office at a time—they must wait in the warehouse if the office is occupied—and they are required to clean surfaces before working. A COVID update is provided every Monday.

The best reward of any safety program is, of course, keeping everyone safe, but Kool Pak ups the ante by offering cash and prizes. Annual Safety Days are held in September and October to reward those who have exhibited exceptional safety practices. Prizes, such as household items or Tim Horton’s gift cards, are awarded. The top prize for excellent safety performance is $250 in cash. Drivers with clean roadside inspections get $75 for level 1 and $50 for levels 2 and 3. Safety Days are also opportunities to remind drivers and staff about safety topics; during the pandemic, that has meant personal calls from Kavita to every driver out of town.

Along the way, Kool Pak has been awarded for its safety performance with the Overall Winner of Trucking Award from the National Occupational Safety and Health Week (NAOSH) in 2019 and an honourable mention in 2018. The safety committee won SafetyDriven’s Safety and Health Week Team Champion award in 2018 and the warehouse manager won an Individual award in 2019. And Kavita herself won an Individual Champion award from SafetyDriven in 2018 and Safety and Health Week Champion from NAOSH in 2019.

Though Kool Pak may seem pretty chill, when it comes to safety, it’s all business.

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Do you have an idea that could help improve workplace health and safety? Develop your idea into a practical solution with funding from one of our WorkSafeBC research programs. A

Apply for the Innovation grant

Important dates:

Competition launch: November 23, 2020

Application form due: February 12, 2021 at 4 p.m.

Apply for the Research Training Awards

Important dates:

Competition launch: November 23, 2020

Application form due: January 29, 2021 at 4 p.m.

Please contact us at info@safetydriven.ca and your inquiry will be forwarded to the correct department and responded to accordingly.

To continue to increase safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, ICBC customers will soon need to make an appointment before their visit to five ICBC driver licensing offices. This pilot project begins Nov. 23, 2020, at the Burnaby Metrotown, Richmond Lansdowne, Surrey Guildford, Kamloops and Victoria Wharf Street driver licensing offices.

The pilot will help minimize the number of customers waiting for service in-person, ensuring that the appropriate number of customers are in an office at the same time, while maintaining physical distancing as required by the Provincial Health Officer and WorkSafeBC.

To help customers transition to the changes during the pilot, these five locations will also designate time each day to serve walk-in customers.

Locations and walk-in times

Customers who are unable to book an appointment may visit their ICBC office at the following times:

• Burnaby Driver Licensing (Metrotown), 232 – 4820 Kingsway, Monday – Saturday from 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
• Kamloops Driver Licensing, 937 Concordia Way, Monday – Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
• Victoria Wharf St. Driver Licensing, 955 Wharf St., Monday – Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
• Richmond Driver Licensing (Lansdowne), 402-5300 No. 3 Road, Monday – Saturday from 2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
• Surrey (Guildford), Unit C1A 15285-101^st Ave, Monday – Saturday from 2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

All other times will be reserved for customers with appointments. See the locator for full details.

Booking an appointment

The easiest way to book is online at www.icbc.com/appointment. Customers may call 1-800-950-1498 if online access is not possible. Depending on appointment availability at the preferred location, customers may search for a same-day appointment or book one up to 12 weeks in advance. Customers will receive a confirmation email as well as two reminder emails with instructions ahead of the appointment.

Based on the results of the pilot, ICBC may consider making these changes permanent, expanding the pilot to other offices, or returning to taking walk-in customers and appointments, at all times.

Disclaimer: The information above is accurate as of the date of publication. For the most up-to-date information on ICBC’s services during the COVID-19 pandemic, visit https://www.icbc.com/about-icbc/contact-us/Pages/covid-19.aspx.

Take the Time for the National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims

After November 11 has passed each year and the poppies have been put away, there’s another sobering day of remembrance that’s less widely known. On the Wednesday following the third Sunday in November, Canada observes the National Day of Remembrance (NDR) for Road Crash Victims.

Canada’s NDR is part of a global effort, the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, which seeks to:

• remember all people killed and seriously injured on the roads;
• acknowledge the crucial work of the emergency services;
• draw attention to the generally trivial legal response to culpable road deaths and injuries;
• advocate for better support for road traffic victims and victim families; and
• promote evidence-based actions to prevent and eventually stop further road traffic deaths and injuries.

According to the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, almost 300 people are killed each year by road crashes in this province, and many more are seriously injured. Our fatality rate of 5.7 deaths per 100,000 population is higher than the Canadian national average.

The sad fact is that road crashes are a leading cause of unintentional injury or death for British Columbians of all ages. The term “road crash” is used rather than “accident” because almost all crashes are preventable. Speeding, distracted driving, and impairment are all major factors in crashes, and all are avoidable.

Speeding topped the violations recorded during this year’s Operation Safe Driver Week held across North America in July, with almost half of the citations given to commercial drivers linked to excessive speed. Given that speeding remains the number one contributing factor to fatal road crashes in BC, this “need to speed” can be a deadly habit. ICBC states: “Speeding is a major contributing factor to car crash fatalities in BC. The faster you go, the longer it takes to stop—and the more dangerous a crash can be.”

With almost everyone now heavily reliant on smart phones for everything from driving directions to social connections, distracted driving has become an even more serious issue in the past few years. Although distractions can be anything that takes the driver’s mind, eyes, and ears off the road, phones are like magnets that many people cannot ignore, even while driving. In the article “Distracted Driving Puts all Canadians at Risk,” the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF) writes: “Constant stimulation and short attention spans have become the norm, with phone alerts providing the soundtrack in our hectic lives….[M]ore than half of Canadians admit their cellphone distracts them while driving.”

Taking the wheel when impaired by alcohol or drugs is extremely dangerous and, of course, illegal. Being caught could cost you your vehicle, your driver’s license, or your job, or even put you in jail. Not being caught could cost you your life, or someone else’s. Although cannabis is now legal in Canada, driving under its influence is not. Remember that driving within three hours of consuming cannabis doubles the risk of being in a crash, and using alcohol and drugs together increases the risk even more.

When it comes to avoiding crashes, drivers of large commercial vehicles need to be even more cautious than the general public, both because they spend more time on the road and because their trucks are more dangerous. TIRF’s “Road Safety Bulletin: A Question of Size” states: “It is estimated that in Canada about 15% of highway deaths each year are due to collisions involving large trucks.” Professional drivers can and should be role models for the best in road safety practices.

Due to COVID, gatherings to mark the National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims are not possible this year, but it’s a good reminder for everyone to reflect on how we can all drive safer. In his blog post on the NDR, road safety advocate Paul Hergott wrote: “If we pause to contemplate the magnitude and preventability of this ongoing loss, we might become motivated to take constructive steps to reduce it.”

Safety success

“How can we make it safer?” This question reflects one of Quality Move Management’s integral values: Safety is top of mind at every turn.

Quality Move Management (QMM) was established in Vancouver in 1996 and hit the ground running; by 2000, it had become Allied Van Lines’ first-ever dedicated corporate agent in Canada. It expanded into Calgary in 2004, Edmonton in 2010, and Toronto in 2017. QMM has become Allied’s largest agent in Canada and largest cross-border agent in North America. It hauls more than 3.6 million kilos (8 million pounds) of household goods between Canada and the US each year and has been the Allied Cross Border Agent of the year for 13 consecutive years. In 2019, Allied named QMM the Agent of the Year in the US, a first for a Canadian company.

QMM attained COR certification in 2013. Their initial COR audit provided the opportunity to identify key areas that could be updated and improved to create a comprehensive health and safety program. Today, the company is a shareholder-owned company with 39 owner operators and contractors. Its President and Chief Operating Officer, Tim Nager, who joined QMM in 1997, has played a key role in the company’s growth and expansion. Under his leadership, QMM demonstrates its values of respect, teamwork, excellence, and safety.

Christina Welsh, co-chair of the Joint Health and Safety Committee, notes that QMM’s safety culture has grown over the years, with open discussion becoming the norm. Everyone receives the same safety information, whether they sit behind a steering wheel or behind a desk. Everyone can provide feedback and often it is an owner operator who raises an issue and makes a case for improvements. Every meeting at QMM opens with a safety moment. If something goes wrong, there is that question to be explored: How can we make it safer?

Communication includes a safety information board in the office, emails to drivers on the road, and Q4 News, the company newsletter, which is circulated to all staff. With operations across a large geographic area, adhering to safety protocols requires effective communication at a distance. Operations managers have daily contact with drivers and crews, including during cross-border operations.

Managers do on-site visits when crews are within reach. Otherwise, owner-operators, who are rated on their practices, ensure loaders work properly. Additionally, QMM operations managers engage drivers with tool box talks and twice a year, owner operators have a large group call. They know the door is always open to talk with management or safety committee members. And employees watch out for each other; they can nominate local team members with excellent safety practices for gift cards and kudos under QMM’s Playing-to-Win program, and for QMM’s annual safety Stars Award.

Driver-related resources from SafetyDriven support the QMM team, as do events that help people interact over safety. QMM holds an annual Summer Safety Week as a broad overview of occupational health and safety issues. It is as interactive as possible with get-togethers and the SafetyDriven safety carnival, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed interactivity in 2020.

During the pandemic, safety practices have had to be more reactive to situations drivers encounter. For example, QMM handles many moves between Alberta and Texas; American clients have different protocols. The company has had to adjust to changing provincial and state rules, federal rules in two countries, and border restrictions interpreted differently depending on location. QMM has adopted digital versions of surveys and paperwork so the only places drivers handle paper is border crossings and scales. Requiring customers to ensure they can provide clean, COVID-safe spaces for workers means imposing their protocols on people not subject to their rules. Relying on familiar workers within the Allied network has helped, but in general, clients have accepted QMM’s requirements.

QMM has won a number of awards during its tenure. In 2013, QMM was awarded Allied’s Canadian Safety Recognition Award for their “exemplary safety record, policies and procedures in British Columbia and Alberta.” It won Allied Van Lines’ International Customer Choice Award and Canadian Agent of the Year in 2019. Allied has also awarded safe driving, million-mile awards to QMM drivers.

In 2018, the Canadian Association of Movers (CAM) recognized QMM as the CAM Agent of the Year and the Move for Hunger Mover of the Year for their donation of 27,000 kilos (61,000 pounds) of food to local food banks. In 2019, QMM was a winner of SafetyDriven’s Health and Safety Innovation Award for their leadership and innovative methods in maintaining a vibrant workplace and industry safety culture. Three QMM drivers were winners in SafetyDriven’s 2020 Driver Appreciation Week.

QMM strives for excellence in all areas and ensures safety policies and practices exceed industry standards. Its safety culture prioritizes employee well-being, making safety a keystone of its success.

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Imagine being hired as a trucking firm’s safety manager with no trucking and little safety experience and in less than three years building an award-winning, COR-certified safety program that has the enthusiastic support of the company’s workforce. Sounds incredible, but it’s what David Law has done as the Safety and Compliance Manager at F&G Delivery. After working in warehouse management, Law was hired to fill a vacancy because he showed promise. It was a wisely prescient decision.

Walter Ford and Ken Gibson founded F&G Delivery in 1958 in Burnaby, providing local delivery service with pick-up trucks. In the 80s, they sold the company to their sons, Lloyd Ford and Brian Gibson, and moved it to Port Kells, Surrey. Today, as a major provider of truck and crane services, it has 140 owner operators with vehicles that include flat decks, Hiabs, cranes, and tractor-trailer equipment to service BC’s Lower Mainland.

When Law joined F&G two-and-a-half years ago, he was concerned about being accepted. He not only had to win over the owner operators, he had to learn the ins and outs of two unions. At F&G, truck drivers and administrative staff are Teamsters, while crane operators belong to the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). It sounds tricky, but Law has made it an opportunity for communication and openness grounded in safety.

Law climbed a very steep learning curve by taking every course he could to learn about load securement, defensive driving, vehicle inspections, transporting dangerous goods, and all applicable regulations, including the National Safety Code. He wasn’t alone; F&G supported him and SafetyDriven helped build their safety program.

The company’s existing safety practices didn’t go far enough. Law created a collaborative environment by breaking down barriers, essentially becoming the face of safety at F&G. Although one person can make a difference, he cannot be the safety policy—team buy-in is necessary. Before any policy is finalized, Law seeks individuals’ input. He also consults with the four other members of the safety committee, who collectively represent about 100 years’ experience, to review proposals to determine how well they will work on the ground.

Safety committee member Rob Lowey, a crane operator with 13 years at F&G, says the approach has made a huge difference because Law never just cites the rules; he works with people to figure out how to get the job done safely. Individuals having a voice has enhanced the company’s safety culture. Lowey says “people feel valued and protected by a safety program that is proactive, not punitive.”

F&G sees great results through collaboration. In 2019, F&G attained COR certification and won SafetyDriven’s Innovation Award, COR Best Overall Large Employer, and COR Achievement of Excellence. Also in 2019, National Occupational Safety and Health BC (NAOSH) awarded Law as their Trucking Champion and Law and Lowey as Individual Champions. One of F&G’s long-time drivers was a winner of SafetyDriven’s 2020 Driver Appreciation Week.

Drivers and operators are engaged in their safety; they ask for training rather than being sent. F&G will have every driver through COR training by the end of 2020. They feel more secure and understand better how a safety program helps them. They feel they own their safety, can use their knowledge to make decisions, and if things go wrong, the program is there to support them.

SafetyDriven.ca has safety courses, training videos, templates and more to make your company safer

The modernization of the Canada Labour Code is having a significant impact on federally regulated workplaces.

Over the past year, the Canadian government has introduced several changes to federal standards including flexible work arrangements, vacation pay, employee termination policies, pay equity, and more.

One important new piece of legislation is Bill C-65, which protects against harassment and violence in the workplace. Bill C-65 introduced the Workplace Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations, which were published in late June. The new legal framework will come into force Jan. 1, 2021, just three months from now.

The new regulations apply to all federally regulated employers, including trucking and logistics companies that operate outside of their home province. These employers now have a legal obligation to understand and implement an anti-harassment framework for their workplaces.

Trucking HR Canada is working with Labour Canada to prepare our industry for these changes. This work started a year ago and included the following:

• Surveying more than 300 industry employees and 100 employers on how workplace harassment and violence affect them;
• Interviewing employers to probe further into how they manage these issues;
• Researching best practices in terms of policies and training; and
• Developing resources and training that will help trucking and logistics companies address harassment and violence in the workplace while ensuring their legal obligations are met, if not exceeded.

Through this work, we have learned a lot about what kinds of issues will be important for the industry as we move closer to the entry into force of the new regulations.

For example, we have learned that trends in trucking and logistics follow those in the general workforce. The industry’s harassment and violence incidence rate of 15% is similar to the Canadian workforce average (16%). Incidences of physical assault (2%) and unwanted sexual attention (2%) are also on par with Canadian averages for these types of incidents, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent General Social Survey (GSS) conducted in 2016.

Work to do

Part of the rationale surrounding the emergence of Bill C-65 was to make sure that all federally regulated employers are working from the same rule book when it comes to addressing harassment and violence in the workplace. For the trucking and logistics sector, there may be an adjustment period as employers adapt to new federal obligations. For example, half of the employers we surveyed said they had no formal process for preventing or managing incidents of workplace harassment and violence, and 60% did not provide mandatory workplace harassment or violence training for their employees. This will all have to change under the new framework.

As an industry, we clearly have much to do. It is time to fully recognize workplace harassment and violence as a key moral and operational concern.

Join us

Rest assured, Trucking HR Canada is here to help.

Please join us for an informational webinar Nov. 14 with an attorney who specializes in employment law. The webinar will brief employers on what has changed with the arrival of Bill C-65, cover new regulatory requirements, and discuss key compliance topics.  Trucking HR will also provide details on training and other resources we have developed specifically to support trucking and logistics employers.

For those interested in learning more about how workplace harassment and violence affect our sector, Trucking HR will also soon be releasing a summary report on its findings. Check out our website for more details, and stay tuned as we bring more information your way.

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Join WorkSafeBC, and other employers in your region, to learn more about the preliminary rates for your industry and what you can do to reduce injuries, claim costs, and your insurance rate.

Here’s what you can expect

As part of our commitment to continue serving our stakeholders while reducing the potential spread of COVID-19, we are hosting this year’s rate consultation sessions virtually.

The virtual sessions will be presented on a secure online platform. We will email the session link to employers who have registered for a session in advance of the scheduled date. The sessions include a 60-minute presentation, followed by a question and answer period.

The presentation topics include:

• The financial state of the workers’ compensation system
• Rate and classification changes
• How you, as an employer, can influence your rates through improved health and safety and return-to-work activities

Register for one of the sessions

Monday, October 5, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m.

Monday, October 5, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m.

Wednesday, October 7, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m.

Wednesday, October 7, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m.

Resources to help you reduce your premium

While your base premium rate is set using the historical costs of injuries for your industry, you have the opportunity to earn a discount for your business by reducing your claim costs.

We offer tools and expert advice on how to do this through injury prevention, workplace safety, and disability management and return-to-work programs for injured workers. For best practices in injury prevention and injury management that could help you lower your costs, visit our industry health and safety pages.

To learn more about what’s driving costs in your industry, browse our industry health and safety data.

If you have a question or feedback

• Send an email to Rate Consultation
• Call 604.247.7333
• Write to WorkSafeBC at PO Box 5350 Stn Terminal, Vancouver BC V6B 5L5

Additional resources and registration