Business owners generally have important questions to answer: 

What makes my comp-
any profitable?
What are my biggest expenses?
How can I increase my profits and reduce my expenses? 

Is it a waste of money to have a safety program? The answer to that question is a strong “no.” Why? Injuries are expensive even when they aren’t fatal, and if you can prevent them, you have automatically reduced your expenses. That is why the best way to think about the cost of a safety program is to view it as a source of reliable hidden profits.  

The U.S. depends on trucks for its transportation needs, but people outside the industry often don’t realize the risks faced by drivers. In fact, if trucking companies don’t focus on safety programs, injuries from accidents can easily become their biggest expense. The question shouldn’t be whether your trucking company can afford a safety program. It might take time to set up, and it won’t be perfect, but money spent on a safety program is probably going to be much less than money spent after an accident occurs. More, a good safety program should prevent people from being killed or injured. You can’t put a price on that. 

Some of the expense caused by trucking accidents is direct and easy to see. It consists of the cost for an ambulance, the cost of medical care that often takes place in emergency rooms, and pharmacy expenses. 

Indirect expenses, although less visible, are bigger than the direct costs and go on for much longer than you might expect. They include, but are not limited to, the following issues:  

• The time that could have been spent on business is spent dealing with accidents instead.
• A driver who is killed or injured has to be replaced.
• Time has to be spent on issues related to the accident. Some of this time is administrative, but you also have to include time spent training new hires or working overtime because you don’t have as many employees available anymore to do the work.
• OSHA fines are possible.
• More accidents mean higher insurance rates and higher workers’ compensation rates.
• There are incident investigation costs.
• The company may have to pay attorneys.
• Revenue is lost, and replacing it costs more than the amount lost. 

According to the National Safety Council’s Injury Facts website, estimated work injury costs in 2017 totaled $161.5 billion. 

• The amount per worker was $1,100. This amount is the offset cost — that is, the value of goods or services that has to be produced to offset the cost of work injuries. It isn’t the average cost of the work-related injury itself.
• The amount per death was $1,150,000.
• The amount per injury involving medical professionals was $39,000.

What’s the breakdown for the $161.5 billion? 

• Administrative expenses ($52.0 billion).
• Wage and productivity losses ($50.7 billion).
• Medical expenses ($34.3 billion).
• Employers’ uninsured costs, such as the value of time lost by other employees and the cost of investigations and reports ($12.4 billion).
• Losses caused by fire ($7.3 billion).
• Automobile damage ($4.9 billion).

On the same website page, the page includes a graphic showing time lost due to work-related injuries. The total number of days lost in 2017 was 104 million. Seventy million of those days were for injuries that took place in 2017. The remaining 34 million days were caused by injuries that took place before 2017. The estimated number of days that would be lost after 2017 was 55 million. The estimates don’t include people who were injured but not disabled, and it also doesn’t include additional people who were directly or indirectly involved in the accidents. 

According to records from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2012, Kentucky had higher injury, illness, and fatality rates than the rest of the U.S. The injury or illness rate per 100,000 workers in Kentucky was 4.1. The national rate was 3.4. For fatalities, the national fatality rate per 100,000 workers was 3.5. In contrast, the Kentucky Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation reported a rate of 4.6. The same organization broke down the fatalities by type of incident, and the category with the largest number of fatalities (28) was motor vehicle crashes; the next two highest categories, with nine fatalities each, were caused by suicide and falls. The three most dangerous occupations in Kentucky, measured by work-related fatalities, were transportation and material moving (25), management, including farming (18), and construction and extraction (14).

That’s why the Kentucky Trucking Association has decided safety programs are so important in Kentucky. 

The cost of an accident, and its impact on a company, has a direct effect on the company’s profit margin. Profit margins generally are between 1-5%. The higher the margin, the lower the replacement revenue. For example, suppose the yearly injury costs $1,000. If the profit margin is 1%, it would take $100,000 to cover that $1,000 loss. If the profit margin is 5%, that number drops to a still-expensive $20,000. Keep in mind this is money that has to be earned in addition to the regular revenue a company makes. 

How can a company pay for an injury? The company can find ways to lower workers’ compensation insurance or to increase profits, especially by decreasing expenses. If the company still cannot afford to pay for an injury, then it is likely that the money will have to come out of the owner’s pockets instead. It may take many years for the owner to be able to finish paying for these inevitable and unavoidable costs.  It