Sky Transportation is a Texas-based carrier operating a fleet of over 230 trucks across the Southwestern and Southeastern United States. The company specializes in transporting dry goods and time-sensitive loads. Known for strong service and safety standards, Sky has long maintained competitive CSA scores—but in 2023, they set out to raise the bar even higher.
At a Glance...
The Challenge
Sky Transportation was already a safe fleet, but rising CSA scores—particularly in Unsafe Driving, Vehicle Maintenance, and Hours of Service—prompted leadership to take action before problems worsened.
The Solution
Sky implemented Idelic’s Safety Suite to:
- Centralize driver data
- Monitor new hires with custom 90-day PDPs
- Proactively coach at-risk drivers using the Watch List
- Share CSA and Idelic scores with drivers during orientation and safety meetings
The Results
Under the leadership of Jenny Sanchez, Director of Safety, Sky improved their BASICs categories significantly:
- Unsafe Driving: 24% → 10%
- Crash Indicator: 14% → 2%
- Vehicle Maintenance: 16% → 10%
- Hours of Service: 37% → 16%
They also saw a meaningful reduction in backing accidents.
The Impact
Sky shifted the role of safety from punitive to developmental and embedded accountability across drivers and departments, including safety, maintenance, and operations.
The Full Story
From Good to Great
In April 2023, Sky Transportation—an El Paso-based fleet specializing in time-sensitive freight—implemented Idelic’s Safety Suite. Although their CSA scores had historically been in the single digits, due to the fleet’s strong safety focus, they began to see a spike in unsafe driving violations and observed a string of preventable DOT-recordable accidents. We sat down with Jenny Sanchez, Director of Safety, to better understand the transformation she's led.
“We were struggling a lot with our unsafe driving. We were having a lot of citations and failed inspections affecting our unsafe driving category. In February [2023], we had a few DOT recordables back to back and they were major accidents… all preventable,” Sanchez shared.
When the fleet’s Unsafe Driving score reached 21%, the safety team knew it was time to switch up their approach.
Centralizing Safety
The team identified a few challenges that were really holding their safety program back. Namely, reviewing a driver’s full performance history was a time-consuming and fragmented process.
“I would struggle. We had some stuff here, some stuff there…I had to go into their many files to get all the information I needed to review their driving performance."
The Sky team began looking for solutions that would help them pull their driver performance data into one place that is easily referanceable. That’s when they came across Idelic and determined it was the right choice to fully integrate their systems and data.
“With Idelic, I just go into their performance and I have all their coaching, write-ups, accidents, incidents, telematics—speeding, harsh brake alerts. It tells you the story of the driver.”
The safety team gained a full picture of each driver’s history, including coaching, telematics, inspections, and incidents.
Proactive Coaching
Sky also took the opportunity to deploy a more proactive coaching process, based on the now visible, but previously hidden, indicators that a driver might be trending towards unsafe driving.
They customized Idelic’s professional development plans to closely monitor new hires over a 90-day period and flagged drivers using the Driver Watch List, a risk monitoring tool that applies predictive analytics, to intervene early.
“Before they even get into the red zone, we’re already talking to the drivers, monitoring, coaching, and putting them through professional development plans. We’re not waiting for something bad to happen.”
Results: From Strong to Standout
With the support of their Maintenance Department and other leadership, Sky targeted key areas and saw improvements across the board:
- Unsafe Driving: 24% → 10%
- Crash Indicator: 14% → 2%
- Vehicle Maintenance: 16% → 10%
- Hours of Service: 37% → 16%
Collectively, Sky Transportation took 51% off of their scores.
They also made progress in reducing frequent backing accidents:
“We’ve always had a lot of backing accidents. We’ve been able to reduce those meaningfully, as well.”
A Culture of Safety, Not Fear
Sanchez and her team didn’t just improve scores—they made improvements to how safety is perceived across the company.
“Before, drivers thought “I have to go to Safety because they’re going to yell at me.” Now, they know that we just want to make sure that you, as a person, are safe out on the road.”
They also began sharing safety performance company-wide:
“Anytime we get our safety scores, we share them with the entire company. We get a lot of ‘congrats’ from other departments. We also congratulate the maintenance department. Our new inspection lane has definitely helped maintenance scores go down.”
Still Striving
Even after achieving significant results, Sky has no plans to slow down. When asking about where they’re going next, Sanchez shared:
“We’ve always had scores in single digits—2%, 5%, 9%—and then unsafe driving spiked. Now we’re at 10%. We’re so close to being back in the single digits and I think we will be there very soon.”
The progress Sky Transportation has made is the result of more than just implementing a new platform—it’s the outcome of committed, hands-on leadership from a team that refuses to settle for “good enough.”
Sanchez and the Sky Transportation team have not only driven measurable safety improvements across the fleet, but also reshaped how safety is understood throughout the company. Their transparency, structure, and consistency have helped build a culture where drivers understand expectations, take ownership of their performance, and see the safety team as partners—not enforcers.
Their work proves that when you pair the right technology with the right people, real change happens.
