About this episode
Cris Sierra runs ComfortCare Transportation, which moves roughly 1,500 riders a day across Texas and Florida and completed close to 600,000 transports last year. He walks through the measures he actually acts on, on time percentage, acceptance rate, idle time and deadhead miles, and explains why rising idle time against flat volume signals routes that are too loose. Sierra, who sits on a NEMTAC standards and certification advisory board, credits fleet telematics with cutting accidents and insurance exposure, and tells operators under 10 vehicles to pick a single metric and work it for 30 days.
Key takeaways
- Sierra reads idle time against transport volume. If idle time climbs while volume stays flat, he treats it as evidence the routes are too loose and adds rides per driver.
- He grew the internal fleet from just under 120 vehicles to a little over 200, and still subcontracts to like minded operators because demand exceeds the capacity he can cover.
- Poor route optimization shows up as throughput. His example is a driver running 10 transports a day instead of 15, which he treats as a scheduling failure rather than a driver failure.
- Sierra ties driving behavior back to driver pay. Speeding, harsh braking and hard cornering raise fuel and maintenance cost, which shrinks the bonus money he has available to reward them.
- Start in Excel. He tells small operators to run spreadsheets until volume justifies Power BI or Tableau, and to capitalize on GPS units, which now come at many price levels.
Chapters
- 0:00 Introduction
- 0:32 Cris’ background
- 4:13 NEMTAC advisory board
- 5:25 Overview of using data analytics
- 10:01 Measuring and taking action
- 17:50 Analytics for small fleets
- 23:27 Telematics
- 31:22 Improving safety, reducing cost
- 36:21 Final takeaway
