Heavy Duty Trucking, January 2021

HDT JANUARY 2021 28 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM THE NEXT CRISISfolding pandemic so quickly because a longstanding crisis management team is in place and ready to meet the moment a problem arises says Jaime Maus vice president of safety and compliance for Werner Weve had our hands and our people in a lot of disasters over the years Maus says And for many years we did what most businesses do Just try to wing it and muddle our way through the problem and out to the other side But we understood that this approach wasnt helping us perform as well as possible in these situations And we realized that without an overarching plan we often had different personnel in different parts of the country or sometimes even in different parts of the company dealing with these critical situations in very different ways Its very hard to perform at your best when you dont have your entire team working together to solve or at least manage a problem Werners crisis management team dates back to 2009 when the H1N1 flu virus threatened the country It was obvious that we werent simply going to be able to deal with this outbreak as it unfolded Maus says now And given the potential scale and scope of the outbreak we knew that the only way we could ensure all of our employees safety regardless of where they were was to have a comprehensive plan in place with contingency options for best and worst case scenarios A big umbrella When the COVID 19 pandemic first sprang into the national consciousness in late February Werner Enterprises one of the nations largest trucking companies visibly and publicly took the initiative on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter It worked to educate employees drivers and the trucking industry and public about the size and scope of the emerging outbreak and share advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to contain the spread of the virus and stay healthy as the novel coronavirus began to rapidly spread across the continent The carrier was able to react to the unplan in place Of fleets that did have emergency plans fewer than one third of those plans specifically addressed pandemics Of course having a plan in place on a shelf somewhere only gets you so far You need not just the what but also the who Thats why some fleets have developed dedicated crisis management teams that convene in the event of an emergency to map out a clear coordinated response and action plan to deal with an emerging disaster disease or unrest We talked to fleets about what they learned from responding to the COVID 19 pandemic and how it will help them plan for the next crisis As a leadership team we had been talking about developing a dedicated crisis team for some time Amanda Thompson U S Xpress Werner Enterprises is often in the thick of providing relief supplies during emergencies so its well versed in crisis planning and management PHOTO WERNER ENTERPRISES PHOTO GETTYIMAGES COM XIJIAN