By MARK GUNDERMAN | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Posted in The Chippewa Herald: Saturday, December 17, 2011

Chippewa Sand Transport Operations Manager Doug Titera says the most frequent complaint he has heard about the company’s frequently-running trucks is that they are going too slow.

Actually, the trucks hauling sand from a mine in the town of Howard to the EOG sand processing facility in Chippewa Falls are usually going the speed limit – never more. On some stretches of the roads they travel, they go a bit slower than the speed limit for an extra measure of safety.

The trucks are certainly not speeding up and down the road, and Titera doesn’t have to take his drivers’ word for it. The Chippewa Sand Transport trucks and facility next to the sand plant on County S are high-tech wonders.

From a control center at the facility, the location and speed of every truck is constantly monitored.

It is that kind of quality control that has Titera and others at Chippewa Sand Transport boasting about their commitment to safety and their desire to be good neighbors.

That was the idea behind an open house the company held at its facility Thursday. People along the truck route were invited to come take a look around and share their concerns.

And while they were there, the Chippewa Sand people could communicate to them their efforts to maintain a good safety record.

In fact, it was an outstanding safety record that led to the creation of Chippewa Sand Transport.

The company is owned by Bill Rands, who also owns Rands Trucking, a Ladysmith company with offices in Ohio and Pennsylvania that has been around for 30 years.

“Our safety record is one of the best in the nation,” said Rands. “We’ve yet to have a truck on its side after 30 years.”

Rands said he has to hesitate to say that, for he knows accidents can happen, especially when Rands Trucking drivers log 12 million miles a year. But avoiding accidents is an obsession for Rands and his companies.

It was that outstanding safety record that led EOG Resources to call and ask for a meeting with Rands when it was looking for a trucking subcontractor.

“They researched it and looked at the things we did in safety in our company. We are probably in the top five percent in nation in safety in our industry,” Rand said.

So Rands made a substantial investment in the purchase of 21 specially-made sand hauling trucks now seen frequently on certain county roads. He made an additional investment in the property next to the sand plant and construction of the base facility for the sand transport fleet.

And while there is money to be made for Rands and his company hauling sand, he is not the only one profiting. Titera said Chippewa Sand Transport currently has 72 employees, including 60 drivers plus office, maintenance and training staffs. The median pay is $50,000 a year, with full benefits.

“Our goal is to be absolutely the best place in the Chippewa Valley to work, bar none,” Titera said. “We are going to treat people right. Bill treated people right for so long and it has come back many times over.”

It is not easy to get hired by Chippewa Sand Trucking, however. The company hires drivers with good safety records, and has has hired four top training people from other companies and from the technical college system.

Having good people is part of the safety plan, but technology is also part of the equation.

Rands said his companies have satellite linking capability and GPS tracking in all of its trucks. That doesn’t just help track speed and location but also truck safety factors.

Certain “fault codes” can come up in the operation of a truck, and those are relayed back to the control center and a decision can be made on whether to immediately pull the truck from the road.

“Everything in that truck is monitored. If a tire drops five psi (pounds per square inch), we know about it,” Rands said.

One the human side, the company has a lounge for drivers, who are encouraged to take a break if they need one. That’s in addition to the regular breaks they get, including when the trucks are pulled off the roads during school bus hours of 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.

The open house was to help the company connect with the public and to hear feedback, which Rands and Titera said are important. So far, they say they’ve been getting positive feedback on how courteous their drivers are.

The company’s phone number is on every truck, and they encourage people to call.

“We like to hear their input. We want to know. That’s why we invited people here today,” Rands said.

Read more: http://chippewa.com/news/local/article_d8eaef90-2851-11e1-9d5f-001871e3ce6c.html#ixzz1hCH6ZTzW