On-site with HCCB - Celebrating Driver’s Day in Full Swing

India is a sprawling map of interconnected highways, roads and narrow gullies. These roads are a lifeline to India’s economy in many ways, facilitating the smooth transit of millions of goods and services each day and propelling our economic growth forward. At the very centre of this interconnected network, are our truck drivers.

These are the people who know every in-road and by-lane like the back of their hands, who can navigate their way through the trickiest pathways, be it Bangalore's infamous traffic or Mumbai’s perennially rocky roads. And this Driver’s Day, it is time to give our drivers and transport teams the acclaim they deserve. 

Driver’s Day celebrations at HCCB

At HCCB, our transport teams are the key players in our distribution and supply chain. At any given point in time, we have 3000+ trucks and drivers employed within our transport network. These drivers facilitate the smooth flow of HCCB products, right from our factories to every corner of the country.

Our transport teams have been playing a key role in driving revenue through service to sales. They’ve consistently shown a stellar performance, braving through every adverse situation, even during pandemic times. In order to show our appreciation to our transport team, we conducted a series of Driver’s Day celebration programmes at each of our factory locations, on the 17th of September.

In preparation for the programme, the rest stops for the drivers were done up with decorations. Each driver was welcomed with a rose and a cap and a short road safety oath-taking ceremony was carried out. We organised interactive sessions with statutory authorities (from the RTO, police force and labour commissions) for the drivers to brush up on their road safety knowledge and to reinstate the fact that safety should be put above all while on the road. The drivers and their families were invited for a special Driver’s Day celebration luncheon, where they interacted with cluster and corporate leadership. We also planned factory tours for their families so they can show them a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their professional lives.

These activities were carried out in addition to the usual programmes we organise on a yearly basis, such as an award ceremony for the best-performing drivers, leadership talks from the factory managers, and various fun-filled competitions such as a drawing and slogan-making competition, and a storytelling competition.

Through such programmes, we aim to recognise the contribution of our drivers in ensuring the safe and efficient delivery of products to our consumers.

Driver’s safety initiatives

It is our focal aim to have sum zero road fatalities during transit and ensure the safety of our drivers. For this purpose, we have piloted various initiatives, such as the setting up of 23 Driver Management Centres in key locations cross-country. These centres use technology to monitor the number of transport trucks running at any given time, as well as to access the information of the drivers manning the wheels. The centres also act as rest stops, they are fitted with basic facilities such as beds, a canteen, and restrooms. This allows our drivers to get proper rest mid-journey and ensure that they are refreshed before resuming their routes. A large percentage of accidents in India are attributed to driver’s fatigue, through these DMCs we ensure that our drivers always have the right facilities available to them to rest during lengthy transits. 

As advocates of road safety, we also launched a road safety campaign, Sadak Suraksha Jeevan Raksha, earlier in the year. The campaign aimed to achieve zero road fatalities across factories by promoting road safety awareness and training drivers to be alert and compliant with road safety rules. 

We’ve conducted various safety programmes over the years such as Defensive Driver Training (DDT) and Fleet Safety Programme, with the sole aim of reinstating the importance of road safety. All transport vehicle drivers employed with us go through stringent training procedures during onboarding and we provide trip insurance for every leg of the supply chain.

Keeping the essence of Driver’s Day in mind, we thank our team for their essential services in keeping the supply chain running. It is a day when our drivers and transport team can celebrate their profession and take pride in their indispensable role in keeping the logistics industry afloat.