Cameras are everywhere these days. Jim Reisinger, owner of R & R Sanitation in St. Louis, Missouri, has them in his office and his yard and now wants one in all his vehicles — 14 vacuum trucks, eight pickups and eight roll-off container trucks.

He says it’s expensive but feels the benefits outweigh the cost. “It keeps track of what the driver is doing,” he says, “making sure their seat belt is on, making sure they’re not on their cellphone.” If a driver gets caught on a cellphone, not only do they get a fine, but the company gets a bigger fine.

He believes it will increase driver safety, lower costs and provide proof of what happened in the case of accidents or general mishaps. “It benefits our insurance, not only truck insurance but liability insurance and, most important, workman’s comp.”

The camera is mounted such that the image includes the side of the truck, the front and the cab. It runs all the time and gets fed into the home office. “If there’s an accident or we want to check something that happened, we can pull it up,” Reisinger says. 

The company is currently in the process of implementing the program using the DriveCam system from Lytx, and so far, there hasn’t been too much pushback from the drivers. 

“They’ll get used to it,” Reisinger says. “It’s just like when we put GPS on the trucks, and now they don’t even think about them anymore. If they’re not doing anything wrong, they don’t have to worry about anything.” 

Reisinger knows he can’t eliminate accidents altogether. “When they’re in the truck eight to 10 hours a day or driving 80,000 to 100,000 miles a year like my pickup and delivery guys do, there’s going to be accidents and we’re going to make mistakes. I don’t care if it’s me or them. We’re very reasonable about it. But this protects us from the outside world — we hope, anyway.” 

Read more about R & R Sanitation in this month’s issue of Portable Restroom Operator magazine.