Since we started our drive safe program about the 3rd-4th quarter of '04, when I compare year over year, our accident ratio has dropped over 50%, very, very significant. We've had an over 40% reduction in our DOT recordables, which translates into a number of factors. Fewer accidents means fewer dollars that we have to pay out.

A very simple exercise we do right off the bat that grabs the attendees' attention, is our four lane turn demo. A very simple question - how much room does a truck need to make a turn? Not in just one particular circumstance, but in all turns? And you ask a room of professional drivers and you'll get 50 drivers - 50 different answers. We take 'em out and we explore it and we ask 'em to believe the evidence of their own eyes.Then we get into the second hook. Something so basic and so common that nobody thinks to teach it. We have out behind our training facility what we call our Mirror Station. Very simple set-up. Just 20 barrels on either side of a truck set up straight. They go down a line of the truck and then they're spread out 12 feet apart out to the side. We put one of them in the truck and show them the three leading causes of over-steering when they're backing, things that they've looked at all their lives and think is normal. We show them how their way of setting the mirrors impacts their perception of what they are seeing, based on how they set the mirrors. The third thing we do is try to grab their attention on a intellectual, emotional, ethical and moral level. We simulate the last moments of a fatal accident. What that does is it reminds that driver that it could just as easily have been them in that simulation. And that usually gets their attention immediately. So now they're not just listening to some speaker up front talking to them about safety. They're actually thinking about what that would be like if they were the one behind the wheel of a fatal accident. And we think once we get them emotionally involved, they're going to pay much closer attention and they're going to have learned a lot more when they walk out of that orientation class.

Looking at every aspect of what we teach during our orientation week, we made several changes to our orientation program. Orientation is much more than just presenting facts. Orientation is a driver's first taste of the company itself. A driver's willingness to work with you is set right in those first days. They have to see that you're people of integrity. They have to see that the company values them as an individual. It cannot be a simple military process through the orientation... bare bone facts. I like to believe that aspects of our training program are very unique in the industry: the focus and the attention that we have around the driver's behaviors and around the characteristic of the driver. The driver's willingness to make changes to the way he or she drives I think is very unique. It's something that we had not focused on until most recently when we made the changes 18 months ago to our training program. Aspects of it I'm sure are very consistent with what others in the industry are doing; aspects around managing the safety aspects of the truck and the trailer, the physical aspects of the truck and trailer. Those are going to be very common. But when we envelope that around the drivers driving habits; how they drive; what they think about when they're driving. I think those are some new things that not everybody looks at; in particular, around the driver's willingness to take feedback, their willingness to learn. Those, I think, might be a little bit more unique across the industry.

Companies are in such competition for drivers right now that the drivers have to feel ownership of the company right from the get-go. They have to feel that not only that you're people they can trust, but that they're people you're going to trust. One of the greatest things that we have happening here at this company is Bob Fitzgerald, our Chief Operating Officer, makes the effort to get over every Monday of orientation to visit with the class. And there are not a lot of companies where they get to meet the guy who runs the business. The fact that the drivers get to meet the Chief Operating Officer of the company as one of the first people in orientation, has a tremendous impact on the drivers. Drivers can go for years at a company and never see the owner, the president, the vice-president. They like the fact that there's an open door policy for them to come face to face with the people that run the company itself, as opposed to just their driver manager. It gives them confidence in our commitment to the driver.

The relationship between the orientation and the driver development department, obviously the instructors are very much involved with orientation, with all the hands-on training that we do. That's really the first step in developing the relationship with the driver. The relationship we establish here is really establishing the relationship with the company. Setting if you will the tone for what they can expect from the rest of the company. But it goes much beyond that. It ties together throughout all our training, through the continuous education of the driver throughout his career with us. If you really look at it, orientation becomes the foundation of everything else that we're going to be building on and that building a strong foundation here provides the stepping stones for the driver to keep improving throughout his career.

I think what we're trying to do is very simple. We want to have every person's encounter with Arrow Trucking Company, an employee, a company driver or some other representative to be a positive and a safe experience. It's very, very important to me that the driver understands what his or her position is on the road and whenever they come across, whether it be a pedestrian, a four-wheeler or any other encounter with anybody else, that it be a safe encounter.

Like many trucking companies, we were under pressure for putting drivers in trucks and to some degree we were paying the price for that with the increasing frequency and severity of accidents. So in October of 2004 we decided to re-evaluate where we're going and accept the reality that we may have some empty trucks. But we wanted to make sure that we were getting quality individuals and make sure we're training them the best that we can. We're not just trying to rush people through an orientation to get them a truck. The most positive responses we get are of course tied to that basic philosophy: hire good people, you get good results. Good personnel benefit from good training. Negative people don't benefit from training.