Dohrn turns to camera data to reduce fleet insurance costs

The LTL carrier, which employs about 2,000 people, reports a 20% reduction in accidents a year after completing its dual-facing camera rollout.

Insurance premiums continue to rise across trucking. Carriers cannot insulate themselves from that trend, but they can influence the risk history and claims record on which their renewals are based.

For Dohrn, a Midwestern LTL carrier with approximately 2,000 employees, that data now comes from AI-enabled cameras. The company completed a fleetwide switch to dual-facing event recorders about a year ago. Since then, accidents have fallen by nearly 20%.

Dohrn President and CEO Robert Howard told FreightWaves that no outside party forced the decision. The strongest push to control fleet insurance costs came from the carrier itself, not its insurer.

“No, we are definitely the ones driving this,” Howard said in an interview at Samsara’s Beyond event in June. Insurance costs are soaring, he explained, but they ultimately come down to risk history and claims experience.

Who is driving the effort to control insurance costs?

Dohrn operates independently within Chuck Hammel’s Pitt Ohio Transportation Group. The group acquired the carrier in 2014, the same year Howard joined. Dohrn operates about 25 terminals in a territory stretching from Indianapolis to Nebraska and from Minnesota south to Missouri, with 1,100 drivers, 900 trucks and 1,800 trailers.

Howard treats insurance expense as an outcome of operational performance, using that connection to help control costs.

The goal, he said, is to operate as safely as possible using available technology, including event recorders, AI and the other safety features added to newer equipment. Better safety, in turn, helps keep insurance costs down.

Claims handling is a secondary but tangible benefit. Video is removing some of the guesswork from decisions about whether to contest or settle a claim.

If the footage shows the company is at fault, Howard said, it can settle and move forward. Even so, the preferred outcome is to operate as safely as possible in the first place.

Customers make a similar assessment. In Dohrn’s requests-for-proposals discussions, safety now sits alongside price and sustainability as a consideration.

A shift in the way cameras are used

Dohrn began working with Samsara in 2016 to meet compliance requirements. The electronic logging device (ELD) mandate was approaching, the carrier needed a supplier, and Samsara CEO and co-founder Sanjit Biswas visited its terminal to present the product.

Howard said the relationship began with the ELD mandate and a primary focus on compliance, an arrangement that worked well for the carrier.

Later developments changed operations more profoundly than the mandate itself. Trailer trackers gave the carrier, which handles substantial drop-and-hook work, its first real-time view of fleet status. Outward-facing cameras replaced reliance on memory or the limited photographs a forward-thinking driver might take at an accident scene.

For the first time, Howard said, the company could see what had actually happened in a serious accident. In most cases, the footage helped establish that its driver was not at fault.

Dual-facing cameras were a harder sell, and Dohrn did not adopt them initially.

The devices were very new at the time, Howard said. Many drivers were cautious, and the company was cautious too.

Results from the outward-facing cameras ultimately helped make the case. Dohrn upgraded several years ago and completed the fleetwide transition about a year ago, including equipment acquired with other carriers.

Howard described it as a major shift in both operations and company culture.

The results show up in loss experience: Howard said accidents had fallen by nearly 20%.

Three companies, one technology platform

The camera transition coincided with a more demanding project. Dohrn acquired Sutton Transport, a carrier about 70% of its size, and US Special Delivery, nearly doubling its business. It spent 18 months integrating the three companies. Both acquired carriers had their own technology systems.

Howard said the businesses initially operated with different technologies and different ways of connecting freight information. The company decided early to replace those suppliers, exit the contracts and move all operations onto Samsara and its other transportation management system (TMS) platforms.

That required ending contracts and physically retrofitting the acquired fleets.

Dohrn had to remove the existing trackers across the fleet and install new equipment, Howard said, but the work was worth it.

Coaching before an incident, not after

Howard repeatedly returned to the importance of timing. Driver coaching used to be a response to something that had already happened.

Before 2015 or 2016, he said, an incident would occur and the driver would then receive coaching. Now the questions are different: What is the driver’s safety score? How fast are they driving? Are they braking hard?

Driver incentives have changed along with the data. Dohrn still rewards drivers whose inspections reveal no violations, but the scoring system has evolved.

Howard said Samsara’s dashboard and its gamification features are central to that approach.

Ride-along coaching without assigning another employee

At Beyond, Howard highlighted Samsara’s AI-powered ride-along product as a way to address staffing constraints. Scheduled ride-alongs at 30, 60, 90 and 120 days after a driver joins are common at large carriers, but harder for midsize operators to provide.

Dohrn is not large enough to schedule a physical ride-along for every new driver at each of those milestones, Howard said. With Samsara’s technology, it can review useful information prepared constructively by its coaches and help ensure new drivers meet Dohrn’s driving standards.

He also singled out Samsara AI Multicam and its bird’s-eye view for box trucks and equipment that does not require a commercial driver’s license (CDL). The feature combines four camera angles into a single video view.

Howard said combining those views, giving the driver a bird’s-eye perspective and adding AI to help respond when pedestrians approach was an impressive capability.

Modeling regulatory risk remains a gap. The fleet wants a dashboard that can predict how individual events will affect its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) scores.

Howard said CSA performance is critically important and the company wants to maintain strong scores. At present, it has an overall view of the fleet, but he sees room to improve.

Getting down to individual fault codes

Maintenance is the next issue. Predictive fault-code analysis can move decisions ahead of a breakdown.

Howard said being able to examine individual fault codes and understand the risk of delaying a repair was valuable. Citing Biswas’s keynote, he noted that an unreplaced part can create a measurable risk of failure in another component—potentially changing how the fleet approaches maintenance.

For a shop handling equipment from multiple original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), warranty recovery is a less visible benefit.

Howard said the company currently spends considerable time tracing warranty information and recovering payments for tractor defects. Samsara is positioned to help simplify that work further.

The longer-term direction is to move preventive maintenance away from fixed calendar intervals.

Howard said some equipment is brought back early for preventive maintenance (PM). As carriers and providers such as Samsara supply more data, the fleet may be able to make better-informed decisions and make PM schedules more dynamic.

Dohrn drivers spend about 90% of their time in the same truck. When different drivers rotate through a tractor, however, the accuracy of driver vehicle inspection reports (DVIRs) becomes a shared concern. Howard views these unexpected benefits as an important part of the story.

He said issues the company had not previously considered were beginning to emerge, leading it to make different decisions.