2024 CEO Spotlight

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Jeff Cassell, President & CEO – Transit & Paratransit Company (TAPTCO) and School Bus Safety Company

TAPTCO creates training courses for Transit and Paratransit Operators. We also have a division that creates training courses for School Bus and Motorcoach operations.

I  was born in Manchester, England and have had the good fortune to live in seven different countries. At age 17, I started working for the insurance broker Sedgwick’s.

Sedgwick’s transferred me to work in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a year.

I then worked for seven years with AIG in Bermuda and Barbados servicing captive insurance companies.

Laidlaw

I then joined Laidlaw, located in Burlington, Ontario. Laidlaw operated 38,000 school buses, 10,000 transit and paratransit vehicles and owned Greyhound 100%.

Busing has the highest cost of risk. This can be between 9% and 15% of revenue.

My responsibilities included the safety and training and we standardized the training at ­every location using ­video-based programs we created ourselves.

The results were outstanding. We reduced our accident and injury frequency by 60% and our cost of risk by 46%. Our cost of risk was reduced from 11% of revenue to 6.5%.

The school bus revenue was $1.4 billion and a 4.5% reduction in the cost of risk equated moving $63 million to the bottom line. Now, that is results.

Laidlaw led the industry in retro fitting 38,000 front of the bus crossing gates and 38,000 child checkmate devices to ­ensure drivers check for sleeping children.

First Group

In late 2007, First Group ­acquired Laidlaw and I left.

I decided to use my safety knowledge to partner with Mark Gardner and create generic outstanding training materials for bus operations.

Mark was a mentor who helped create all the safety ­materials we used at Laidlaw.

School Bus Safety Company

More than 3,000 school districts and ten of the eleven largest contractors now use our school bus driver training materials.

Transit and Paratransit Company

The courses are designed around an easy-to-understand Safety Management System that identifies the 18 potential unsafe behaviors that lead to virtually every accident. We help to change these behaviors.

Everything we teach is built around a Safety Management System poster that identifies the 18 hazards in operating a bus and persuades drivers to avoid the hazardous behaviors.

The TAPTCO courses fully comply with the FMCSA ELDT requirements,

More than 300 agencies and most major contractors use the TAPTCO courses. In fact, 35 of the top 100 fleets use the TAPTCO training courses.

10 Out of 10

We have 100 of the strongest testimonials where 65 agencies rate the course a 10 out of 10 – yes – perfection – 10 out of 10 – WOW.

Comments include:
“I absolutely love it”
“The course is outstanding”
“This course is a 10”

We are happy to share a link to all 100 testimonials to anyone interested, so they can see what our customers say..

What is Safety?

Our courses teach that safety is freedom from risk. If you remove or reduce risk, you are safer. So, how do you do that? You follow the 18 safe practices on the right side of the poster.

We explain that almost every accident is caused by a conscious and deliberate unsafe behavior. Accidents do not just happen, they are caused. The 18 behaviors detailed on the left side of the poster are the conscious and deliberate behaviors that cause almost every accident.

The rewards for taking risks are minimal and short term. You stop someone cutting ahead of you, you make a turn 30 seconds faster, you get through a traffic light without waiting for another cycle.

But, the penalty, having an accident is huge, permanent and may be catastrophic.

You don’t get a do over, you have to live with the consequences of your behavior.

Having worked at one of the largest insurance brokers, the largest insurer and the company that has the highest level of risk, my experience has taught me what works and what does not work.

My Swansong

While I do still work full time, I really have a hobby and my hobby is making busing safer everywhere we can.

Between School Bus Safety Company and TAPTCO, we know we contribute to making busing safer and have helped save lives.

We continue to help make busing safer and I am not ready to retire yet!

TAPTCO
5611 Hudson Drive, Suite 100
Hudson, Ohio 44236​
1-885-963-3900
www.taptco.com