Alex Guariento is Trimac Transportation’s Vice President of Safety. The Calgary-based freight carrier’s 3,400 employees make sure that every shipment they’re charged with delivering all over North America reaches its destinations on time without sacrificing safety. Alex has always been connected to transportation and logistics, but his transition from the operations to the safety side was something he didn’t expect.He began his career in the U.S. Army where he served as a transportation officer and paratrooper. This experience, plus working as a manager of Greyhound bus drivers immediately following his military career, gave him the unique perspective of someone who has worked on both the operations and safety sides of a large organization. During a Greyhound restructuring, he was asked to work as a senior manager of duty compliance, which led to his nearly three-decades-long career in safety. Over the course of 14 years as a top safety and security executive at Greyhound, Alex helped shape a vigorous safety and compliance training program. Its driving instructors often had 10+ years and in some cases, multiple decades of accident-free miles behind them. The company’s success underscored to Alex the relationship between safety and market leadership. “A company’s safety record has a huge impact on its bottom line,” Alex says on this episode of No Accident. He further explains the connection between safety and a company’s financial health, noting that accidents can result in costly lawsuits and that employees and customers don’t want to associate with organizations that have poor safety records. Though Alex doesn’t manage Trimac’s drivers directly, he strongly believes that a great safety leader has to be able to influence what happens on the front lines. “Typically a safety leader has no direct operational control of the people who do what it is that the company does. In my case, I don’t manage drivers and have no direct operational control on dispatch,” he says on the podcast. “But if I’m not able to influence the way the operational leaders do things, I will not be successful on behalf of the company from an operational safety perspective. I have to be present without physically being there.” Featured Guest👉 Name: Alex Guariento👉 What he does: As the Vice President for Safety of Trimac Transportation — a 75-year-old, Calgary-based logistics company that uses the motto: “Service with Safety” — Alex uses his extensive military and private industry experience to ensure driver safety and the safe delivery of hazardous materials to clients. 👉 Company: Trimac Transportation👉 Key quote: “Being on the leading edge of incorporating safety best practices is the only way large companies in the transportation industry can stay in business today.” 👉 Where to find him: LinkedInSafe Takes⚠️ Talk less. Listen more. Be willing to step in. Alex says the ability to do these things are essential to great safety leadership. “Great safety leaders have empathy and the moral courage to intervene and say, ‘This is not going to work, stop what you're doing.’” Alex describes it as an ability to acknowledge disagreement and a willingness to step in when you see a strategy that could be unproductive or worse, unsafe, being discussed or implemented, regardless of the repercussions.⚠️ Work with your operations partners. Alex considers himself fortunate because he and his operations team are always able to reach a middle ground that satisfies him from a safety perspective and addresses their concerns..⚠️ Keep pushing for improvement, even after hitting your benchmarks. “We are a very progressive company when it comes to integration of the culture of safety in the car. That doesn't mean that we cannot improve. We absolutely can improve. It’s a never-ending process for us,” he says. Safety concerns are ever-evolving, and striving to adapt to changes in the marketplace that affect safety means going above and beyond KPIs and bare minimums.Resources⛑️ Trimac Transportation Looking Ahead to Future Opportunities - Marking Trimac’s 75th anniversary, this article covers its vision for the future. ⛑️ Top 12 Characteristics of Great Safety Leaders - Empathy and continuous learning are just some of the qualities that make a safety leader indispensable to their organization. Top quotes from the episode:“Safety is not the responsibility of the safety department. Safety is the responsibility of everybody in the company.”“At the end of the day, our ultimate goal is for everybody to return home whether it's an employee or an associate or another motorist.”“Nobody wants to work in an environment where there is a likelihood they’re going to get hurt. Not being safe is going to have a ripple effect that affects retention.”“I've been fortunate enough to work exclusively with and that companies that have same end goal ━ to ...
