This fireside chat recap is from the FreightWaves Small Fleet & Owner-Operator Summit on Wednesday.

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Citations and your CDL — What every professional driver and fleet need to know

DETAILS: Nick Hillesheim, chief sales officer at Oklahoma City-based TVC Pro-Driver, provides an overview of CDL legal services, showing how a professional driver can leverage outsourced legal benefits and services to their advantage. The chat also includes Lysa Bockoven and Chelsea Pieczko from Dodge City, Iowa-based Decker Truck Line, sharing their first-person experience working with multiple legal providers. 

SPEAKERS: Nick Hillesheim, chief sales officer at TVC Pro-Driver; Lysa Bockoven, compliance and work comp specialist at Decker Truck Line Inc.; and Chelsea Pieczko, compliance specialist at Decker Truck Line Inc.

BIO: Hillesheim oversees all sales channels for TVC Pro-Driver, bringing extensive experience in the transportation industry. Bockoven is responsible for handling workers’ compensation at Decker Truck Line, along with drivers’ claims, DOT inspections and citations. Pieczko’s duties at Decker Truck Line include gathering information and creating electronic files for all accidents and equipment damage, monitoring expirations, and assigning web-based training for new hires.

KEY QUOTES

“If you’re an individual or a fleet, if you’re looking into legal services, there’s some important things that you should probably consider. Make sure you’re asking the right questions. One of the big areas is you really need to dig into the types of violations that are covered. Some providers only cover moving violations, for example.” — Hillesheim

“The biggest thing would be your homework. Make sure that you are choosing a [legal] company that’s going to work best for you and your company, drivers and fleet. You want to make sure that you’re choosing a company that is good with communication and make sure that you’re both on the same page. If there’s an issue, you want to make sure it’s taken care of. You don’t want to be ignored if there’s problems that do arise. — Bockoven

“We typically see speeding violations, overweight violations, lane changing violations and failure to obey traffic control devices violations. — Pieczko

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