Northern Logistics Scales Safety Alongside Rapid Growth With Netradyne

Company Summary

Northern Logistics is a general freight carrier headquartered in Michigan, running full truckload, LTL, and expedited service across the continental United States, Canada, and Alaska. The company operates nearly 300 trucks alongside Sprinter vans for time-critical moves and has grown from roughly 50 employees to about 360, including 300 drivers.​​

That growth creates a constant safety challenge. Northern can add as many as 14 drivers in a single week, bringing new and unknown driving histories into the fleet. With insurance being among the most significant expenses for trucking companies, driver performance directly impacts the bottom line. As Northern Logistics insurance broker and risk advisor, Zach Trepanier, Acrisure’s Head of Transportation for North America, introduced Northern Logistics to Netradyne.

"This is a really innovative product. It checks a lot of boxes in helping our customers coach their drivers in real time and better understand, capture, and measure their data and performance. From a culture standpoint, the in-cab coaching Netradyne delivers is unique in the marketplace."
— Zach Trepanier, Head of Transportation, North America, Acrisure

Challenge

For most of Northern's history, a good driver was defined by what did not happen. A driver who finished the year without a ticket or accident was considered a good driver, leaving Compliance Manager Eric Mathews​​ with “no measurable way of saying which driver is better than the other driver.” Excellence and luck looked the same on paper.

Northern previously used Samsara for five years as a record of what happened when an incident occurred. As AI alerts were added, Mathews​​ found that some were too inaccurate to support effective coaching.

Unbuckled seatbelt alerts were a recurring example. Mathews could review footage of a driver clearly buckling in and still see a violation reported because the inward-facing camera could not distinguish a dark seatbelt against a dark shirt. Northern even purchased high-visibility seatbelt covers, but false positives continued. In addition, Northern’s safety team was dismissing roughly 240 of every 300 videos it reviewed, consuming hours that could have gone toward coaching and gradually eroding confidence in the system.

Northern was also looking for a more connected relationship with its technology provider. When Mathews​​’ Samsara representative left, there was a period of uncertainty around who his new point of contact would be. Mathews ​​is careful not to suggest that additional support wasn’t available, but without a clear connection, he wasn’t sure where to turn. For him, that experience reinforced the importance of having an accessible, consistent partner. “When you don't know your sales rep, how is that a partnership?”

At the same time, the financial stakes were growing. According to Trepanier, the difference between a top-performing carrier and a poor-performing one can mean a difference of $5,000 to $30,000 per truck each year in insurance costs. Across a fleet approaching 300 trucks, driver safety had become a business issue as much as a compliance issue.

Solution

Northern issued a formal RFP and narrowed the field to Netradyne and Lytx after comparing the platforms feature by feature. The company then ran a two-month trial with both systems.

“We knew Samsara and Lytx both offered AI alerts and in-cab camera detection. But when we compared how each of the three systems worked, we instantly knew Netradyne was probably where we'd end up.”
— Eric Mathews​​, Compliance Manager, Northern Logistics

Northern tested the technology with both veteran drivers and new hires to see whether experienced drivers could improve and whether new drivers could develop safer habits faster. Drivers reviewed their own footage, watched their GreenZone® Scores change as the system recognized safe driving alongside risk, and began sharing their results with their peers. That word of mouth helped drive engagement with drivers.

Netradyne analyzes 100% of drive time and delivers instant in-cab alerts at the point of risk, which shifted Northern's approach from documenting events to preventing them. The Driver•i app gave each driver access to their own score, video, and performance trends, turning safety data into something drivers could actively use.

For Ma​t​hews, driver access was essential. When a couple of new hires mentioned they had driven with Netradyne at their previous company, he asked how they had scored. They had no idea what he meant, because their former employer had never let them use the Driver•i app.

Northern reinforced the program with recognition-based coaching. The GreenZone Score became part of the compensation conversation, with drivers able to earn higher wages by improving their score. Mathews​​ also introduced quarterly contests focused on specific driving behaviors.

The first contest set a high bar. Any driver who reached a GreenZone Score of 1,000 or higher in any single month of the first quarter earned a personalized Netradyne Elite vest. Mathews​​ expected 80 to 90 drivers to qualify. He handed out more than 125 vests.

When Northern focused on red-light events next, Mathews​​ expected 70 to 100 drivers to go a full month without one. 136 did, earning a custom Signal Slayer hat stitched with "No Red-Light Club" across the back.

Results

By combining real-time coaching, driver self-coaching, and recognition, Northern turned safety performance into something drivers could measure and improve themselves.

Key results:

• 96% fewer severe alerts and 82% fewer moderate alerts than fleets of comparable size and driver tenure
• 29% year-over-year reduction in severe alerts
• Fleetwide GreenZone Scores now hold in the high 900s, up from the low 800s at the start of the trial
• Nearly half of all drivers completed a full month with zero red-light events
• More than 125 drivers reached 1,000 points in a single month during the first quarter

Roughly 87% of Northern's 300 drivers actively engage with their scores, and the company has not lost a driver over the cameras.

The safety team's workload changed as well. Northern added about 20 trucks without adding staff to its safety team because time previously spent reviewing and dismissing inaccurate videos could be redirected toward coaching. The drivers flagged by the system as needing attention also matched the drivers Mathews​​ had already identified through his own experience.

That gave Northern something it had been missing: a way to act before an incident instead of simply documenting one afterward. Mathews​​ used to go home knowing nothing about what had happened on the road that day. Now, he starts each morning with a full account of the day before.

The results also carry into Northern's insurance strategy. Mathews​​ requests a Netradyne peer comparison report before renewal and uses the data to show underwriters how Northern's safety performance compares with similar fleets.

“They've engineered the results they're getting, instead of chasing results and lagging behind them.”
‍— Zach Trepanier, Head of Transportation, North America, Acrisure

Next Steps

Northern is continuing the same approach: focus the fleet on one behavior, coach it, recognize the drivers who master it, and move to the next.

Following distance is the current focus. Drivers who maintain 3.8 seconds or better with zero following-distance alerts for a full month earn a gold-finished tape measure engraved with “measuring up to excellence.”

For a company still hiring at scale, the model gives Northern a repeatable way to bring new drivers into its safety culture. Instead of waiting for an incident to reveal a problem, the team can identify coaching opportunities from a driver's first weeks on the road.

For Mathews​​, that ability to stay ahead of risk is what makes the technology valuable, and what keeps Northern looking for its next competitive edge.

“You're not pulling the engine out of a 1979 NASCAR to race today. You must have the latest and greatest technology to compete, and that's Netradyne.”
— Eric Mathews​​, Compliance Manager, Northern Logistics