CVOR Podcast

Training, Which Training Are You Required To Give? CVOR Podcast

June 02, 2022 Chris Harris, Your CVOR Guy Season 1 Episode 3
CVOR Podcast
Training, Which Training Are You Required To Give? CVOR Podcast
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Welcome to the CVOR podcast. This podcast has made for those a CVOR operators, such as landscapers, electricians, towing, operations, bus companies, trucking companies, anyone who has a CVOR wants to know everything that there is to know about operating a CVOR company. I'm your host, Chris Harris, thanks for joining me every week. This week's episode, we are talking about the need for training. Why do we have to train our employees? Our CVOR operators are people that are operating any CVOR vehicle. It is required. Of course, that we train our people. The requirements can be found in the Eli's website or at the specifically for CVOR holders at the Ontario ministry of labor or at the federal health and safety documentation. And I'll put those links in the show notes down below, but you've got to have training. So it is all about safety and having your employees, operators trained. And I say operators because some of you may have employees. Some could have contractors and some may have driver Inc, not a fan of driver, Inc, by the way, I don't believe in it. However, some of you may have drive rink, just be aware that this episode, when we talk about training, we are talking about all full-timers, all part-timers and any temporary or even seasonal operators of your vehicles, as well as those people who are managing or directing the operators. So this could be dispatchers. They all need to be trained. And of course your safety officer and your maintenance personnel also need to be trained. Anyone working in your office should be trained in the way of how and some of the responsibilities of these drivers or operators. When I use the word operators, this gets confusing. I try to use the word operators or CVOR drivers interchangeably, but I also understand that an operator could be the CVOR holder and I'll try to be specific as often as possible. I will try to use the CVOR driver, but CVOR drivers need to be trained. And, and everybody does. And why? Well, because you want to be able to document your due diligence because stuff happens. And when stuff does happen, you want to be able to prove that you were a reasonable person and a reasonable person trains their employees or their CVOR operators and drivers. All right. So you gotta make sure that you're hiring quality quality. Yes, quality would be nice, but qualified, qualified staff in all the areas. And you want to document the responsibilities of that staff. So this is all what we're talking about. And when it comes to training, you've got to have it all documented. You need a written safety program. And some of the suggested policies that you need in writing could be speed limits, seatbelt, use drug and alcohol use, or their lack thereof of the use, a defensive driving. You want to have that in writing a fatigue management policies, a load security load, securement fueling all of that type of thing. You also want to have a policy around ELD or log book, use proper records, recording all the informations, such as the bills of lading. If you're using those dangerous goods, any manifests that you have, all right, all of these things need to be trained because every company, every operation, every CVOR operator is different. You could be a landscaper. Recently. I had a, a weed company come out to spray my front lawn in my backyard. Well, all their bills are different or all their manifests are different. And there needs to be training of all of that type of stuff. You need instructions for proper use of equipment. This includes the CVOR vehicle. How can you prove that you had trained the driver in the proper and safe use of AC VR vehicle? I have been an expert witness in a number of cases. And I can tell you that this comes up in court cases all the time that many of the CVOR holders, this, the license holder, they don't do a good job. Especially the smaller trucks, the landscaping units, a foam blowing companies, the F the installation companies. These are often small type of trucks that are automatics. They don't even have air brakes, and you can often drive them with a G class license in the province of Ontario. And yet you take a car driver who is legally able to operate this type of vehicle, and you don't give them any supplemental training. That's wrong. These are now commercial vehicles and supplemental training has to be much than just how to do, how to document your vehicle inspection. All right. So one of the areas that often gets brought up is blind spots. Of course, these larger vehicles have a larger blind spots. And if you don't educate your driver on those blind spots and have good documentation about that training, then if there is a crash, this is going to get brought up in court and you, the sea view, our company is going to look very bad. So you've got to have great documentation. You want training for the employees about the safety laws? Yes. You're supposed to train them on the highway traffic act, you know, and how the highway traffic act applies to them. Most CVOR drivers don't understand how the CVOR license affects them and how the CVOR driver affects the CVOR license. The two work together, and many drivers don't know how that all works. We'll talk about that in future episodes, but you need to train the driver, make sure you document all of this training. If you don't document it, then you are kind of wasting your time. Because again, going back to the due diligence defense, whether it's the labor board coming after you, or whether it's a court's coming after you, because of a crash, you need the documentation in place so that the driver, they can either be your best witness or your worst witness. And of course, the driver, the Seaview, our driver is going to tell the truth when they're on the stand. And when they're asked, where are you adequately trained in this area? The answer is going to come out in court and you want it to be well-documented that you did a great job of training in this area. And if you need any help, please reach out. All right, you need training. So management has to be aware of all the critical items. Do you know what that it's the law that you must disclose to the CVOR driver or any employee, the hazards of the job? Well, guess what? Driving is a big hazard. Can you prove to me that you outlined to your CVOR driver, all the different hazards that may be, that may rear their head out there and how to avoid them? So this is the type of training that we're talking about here. You got to train the drivers in incidents and what to do at an incident site, what to do, if there's a collision, what to do, if they receive a conviction and that conviction could be in either their personal vehicle or in the CVOR vehicle, what to do, what to do about an accident, again, in the CVOR vehicle or in their personal vehicles, many CVOR drivers don't know that they have a responsibility to report to the CVOR license holder, all crashes that happen in personal vehicles as well, because of course for you, the CVOR license holder, it may now exclude that driver from your insurance policy. So we gotta be careful. You got to know about it all. You want to make sure that you are offering training to all dispatchers or management personnel who have a responsibility for employees. It is required that you train those people because how the interact with the employees is very important and could get you the CVOR holder into lots of trouble. So make sure the management and this could be dispatchers, customer service, people, all of that. They need to be trained. So develop a written policy. Everything needs to be in writing. So you need all of your CVOR drivers to receive a written policy manual. And to understand that here's the key point. They need to understand everything that is in that manual. And you need to be able to prove that they understood it at the time of the training. So you need to document the training. I would suggest that you quiz the drivers in writing on the training and that everything gets signed off by the trainee and the trainer in place. Then the training file. So you do absolutely have an obligation under the occupational health and safety act to ensure that all staff is properly trained for what they have been assigned. So make sure that of driving is part of it while they've been properly trained in things like speed and space management, how to do a vehicle inspection, how to fuel the truck. I've seen some horrendous problems when drivers don't know how to properly fuel the truck or how to add oil. I once saw a driver add oil to the radiator. Not very good, because again, that driver, it wasn't the driver's fault. That driver was not adequately trained drivers. Don't go out to purposely do this type of thing. At least most of them don't, it's an honest mistake. And that mistake is a result of the lack of training. So again, please make sure that you are training the drivers. You got to evaluate that training. And then of course, discipline when the driver does mess up. Part of training is to discipline. The driver could be a written warning, could be a verbal warning, but verbal warnings need to be writing. By the way, I know oxymoron, verbal warnings need to be in writing. They need to be documented. And then usually with that goes retraining to make sure that the driver does not mess up a second time. And of course, training, when you first hire the driver, you've got to train them because your equipment may be different than what the last operated. It doesn't matter if it's the exact same as the last employer. You don't know if that employee has ever been adequately trained. And it's now your responsibility as the CVOR holder to adequately train everyone who works for you. So I think I've beaten this training thing up quite enough. You've got to do training. It's got to be the topics of all the risks that the CVOR driver is exposed to, or any staff is exposed to. You've got to train them so they know what the hazards are and what to do. And then of course, you need to document that training as part of your due diligence, great documentation. And you need to be training all of the staff, including any dispatchers or customer service, anyone that is working with you. So with that, that's it for this week, let's try to keep these as CVOR podcast short. If you're getting value from this, please like, and subscribe, leave me a comment as to what your greatest challenge is while operating a CVOR vehicle. And at the end of each episode, we ask a CVOR test prep question, which you can get more of these there's 110 that I've now recorded, and you can have access to that. I'll put that link in the show notes down below the CVOR test prep. That is an unfortunately that is for purchase. All right, but it's a way that you can support CVOR.ca and Chris Harris, the safety dawg channel. All right. So second question. What class of license is required to drive a straight truck with commercial plates and a registered gross weight or an RGW of 12,000 kilograms? Is it a G class or above? Is it an M class or above class D or above class? B as in Bob or above. And the correct answer is class D or a above. So if you get above 12,000, you got to have a class D as in David or D as in debt, a class D all right, thanks so much. Have a great day. And what topic do you want me to tackle in the CVOR podcast? If I select your topic, there is a free gift for you. So please leave me a comment. If you're getting value, give it a thumbs up and that's it for this week. Chris Harris, CVOR.ca, and we'll see you next week. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. This is the CVOR podcast. We talk about everything. See if you are related, if you're getting value, please click a like and subscribe. And don't forget about our contest. Leave me a comment. And if I choose your suggestion for content on another episode, I will be thankful and give you a access to the CVOR driver file course. All right. So leave me a comment with suggestions for topics. All right. That's it for this week safety dog and the CVOR podcast is out.