If you have read more than two blog posts on ShipEX.com you will know that we are obsessed with safety. Keeping our equipment safe and undamaged is certainly nice, but our biggest concern is making sure that every Driver on the road, Professional or civilian, is as safe as possible.
Safety drives some of our most beloved policies, like asking our Professional Truck Drivers to pull over rather than use the snow chains that come equipped with every truck and trailer or paying for our Drivers medical benefits, exist because we strive for safety in all things.
Safety is more than just being a safe Professional Driver though.
Eating healthy is part of Safety. Exercising is part of safety. And so is being visible on the road.
Visibility is too often overlooked when it comes to safety, especially for Professional Truck Drivers.
You are probably asking yourself, why do I, a Professional Truck Driver that has over a million safe miles under their belt, need to worry about wearing a Hi-Vis vest?
First of all, congratulations for the million safe miles.
But there is a lot of reasons why you would need to get out of your truck and remain visible to other motorists.
Your workplace is the road and the road is a lot more dangerous than your typical office, which means there are extra precautions you have to manage in your workplace.
More and more Shippers and Consignees are requiring that Professional Drivers wear a Hi-Vis vest while on their property.
You may need to set up safety measures like road flares or Hi-Vis triangles, but nobody can see you on a dark stretch of roadway when you are setting up your safety measures.
Or you could be helping another motorist on the highway, but if you are virtually invisible to oncoming traffic you are unnecessarily gambling with your life.
Wearing the proper High Visibility vest can warn others of your exact position on the road. The key word being “proper.”
When most people think about a Hi-Vis vest, they think those orange mesh vests that sometimes have a yellow or white stripe on them.
Turns out, those are not very helpful.
The most useful and common Hi-Vis vest is a Performance Class 2 vest. These are vests that have become the most common over the years. The cycling community has taken a liking to them.
While wearing a Hi-Vis vest is not required by the DOT (yet), being as safe on the road as possible is never a bad thing, which is why we equip every truck in our fleet with a Hi-Vis vest.
InVESTing (ha!) in a Hight Visibility vest is a very inexpensive way to keep yourself safe on the road.
