We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2022 Samsara Connected Operations Awards. This year, we expanded our awards program to honor fleets, operations, and individuals for their achievements in safety, efficiency, performance, sustainability, and innovation. Our Awards Committee is grateful for each and every applicant that took the time to submit their story. We broke last year’s record for submissions and were impressed by the ingenuity and commitment to excellence on display in our customers’ stories. 

We're proud of the role Samsara plays in partnership with these operations, helping them achieve their goals and move their companies forward. Read on to learn more about the winners of the 2022 Samsara Connected Operations Awards.

• <a href="#section-1">Safest Operator: Chalk Mountain Services</a>

• <a href="#section-2">Excellence in Efficiency: Southern California Edison</a>

• <a href="#section-3">Most Sustainable Operations: Summit Materials</a>

• <a href="#section-4">Operations Innovator: Liberty Energy</a>

• <a href="#section-5">Digital Transformation of the Year: Artera</a>

• <a href="#section-6">Excellence in Performance, Public Sector: City of Orlando and Clayton County Public Schools</a>

• <a href="#section-7">Technology Leader of the Year: Nathan Slemmons, Univar Solutions</a>

• <a href="#section-8">Driver of the Year: Jaime Herrera, All Aboard America!</a>

<div id="section-1">Safest Operator: Chalk Mountain Services</div>

The Connected Operations Award for Safest Operator recognizes organizations that protect employees, prevent incidents, and safeguard the communities they serve. The winner of this award has built an incredible safety program that positively engages drivers and delivers powerful results for their business.

Chalk Mountain Services is a leader in the oilfield services industry, managing transportation and logistics for customers across Texas and New Mexico. In 2021, Chalk Mountain rolled out dual-facing AI Dash Cams across their fleet. Using video-based safety, Chalk Mountain transformed how they reward, coach, and protect drivers.

As a result, Chalk Mountain has improved safety and reduced costs. They improved their CSA scores and achieved a record milestone of over 20 million miles without a DOT-recordable preventable accident. 

Proactive coaching helped improve driving behavior, leading to an 86% decrease in preventable accident costs and a 43% decrease in worker’s compensation costs. Chalk Mountain further enhanced their positive safety culture where they reward, celebrate, and protect their drivers from false claims, improving driver retention by 15%—cementing their reputation as a place drivers want to work. 

Finalists:WeDriveU, Univar, Heniff

<div id="section-2">Excellence in Efficiency: Southern California Edison</div>

The Connected Operations Award for Excellence in Efficiency recognizes organizations that demonstrate exceptional gains in operational efficiency. This year’s winner has built an impressive maintenance system that drives efficiency across their vast operations, saves countless hours, and keeps drivers safe.

Southern California Edison (SCE) is one of the largest public utility companies in California, providing electricity to five million customers in their service area and with a fleet of approximately 4,500 vehicles. Maintenance on those vehicles is of the utmost importance to ensure timely service to their customers and avoid costly repairs. Using Samsara’s Vehicle Gateways, SCE has been able to automate work orders and streamline communication between drivers and the garage. And, SCE created a dedicated alert for any DVIR or DTC issues so the garage can prioritize those repairs immediately. 

By digitizing maintenance processes, mechanics are now spending more time working on their vehicles and less time managing paperwork and requests. 

Finalists: All Aboard America! Holdings, Carter Machinery, Reddy Ice

<div id="section-3">Most Sustainable Operations: Summit Materials</div>

The Connected Operations Award for Most Sustainable Operations recognizes organizations that are leading the charge on building greener and cleaner operations. This year’s winner is raising the bar in their industry by making great progress against ambitious sustainability goals.

Summit Materials strives to be the most socially responsible integrated construction materials company on the market. They set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, but with distributed operations spanning 23 U.S. states and Canada, it was difficult to track how they progressed against their goals. With help from Samsara’s advanced fuel data and reporting, Summit was able to get a more unified picture of their operations and set meaningful targets. 

And with Samsara Fuel Reporting, Summit was able to track actual fuel usage, idling time, and emissions, rather than simply tracking fuel purchased, as they had with their previous provider. As a result of greater visibility on vehicle performance, reduced idle time, and improved fuel efficiency, Summit is targeting savings of approximately $1 million per year. 

Finalists: Certarus, ITS ConGlobal

<div id="section-4">Operations Innovator: Liberty Energy</div>

The Connected Operations Award for Operations Innovator recognizes organizations that are improving performance by connecting data and technology. This year’s winner is looking to reshape the future of hydraulic fracturing through their innovative use of technology, increasing their safety, efficiency, and sustainability in complex work environments. 

Liberty Energy specializes in hydraulic fracturing and engineering services for exploration and production (E&P) companies in the oil and gas industry. With major operations in four of the nation’s largest oil-producing states—many of which are in rugged areas—they needed to ensure that their operations were running smoothly, safely, and sustainably.

To ensure employee safety while operating in remote locations, Liberty Energy looked to Samsara’s AI Dash Cams and coaching workflows to improve visibility in the cab and keep drivers safe. As a result, they reduced their motor vehicle accident rate by 50%. Dash cam footage also helped them exonerate drivers in 50% of reportable incidents that same year.

They also sought to transform their back office as well. They needed a way to easily connect and manage multiple disparate systems—from tax and payroll to maintenance and dispatching to load planning. By implementing custom integrations via Samsara’s open API, Liberty Energy saved over 10,000 hours and $300,000 in administrative costs per year. They’ve also created a custom integration with their tax service provider that they expect to save them $10 million a year due to the accuracy of Samsara’s real-time location tracking.

Finalists: American Cementing, Gravity Oilfield Services, UniGroup

<div id="section-5">Digital Transformation of the Year: Artera</div>

The Connected Operations Award for Digital Transformation of the Year recognizes organizations that are using technology to drive significant changes throughout multiple facets of their business. This year’s winner consolidated data distributed across their enterprise to provide insights that drove a number of efficiency and safety improvements as well as impressive cost savings.

Artera is an organization that provides innovative infrastructure services to the natural gas and electric industries, comprised of ten operating companies spanning over 40 states. Multiple business divisions all using different solutions meant teams were siloed, making it difficult to have visibility across their various operations. The Artera team along with their operating companies transitioned from using multiple disparate solutions to a standardized platform with Samsara.

Most importantly, centralizing their information systems meant they could scale safety best practices across the organization and ensure every business unit was coaching driving behavior effectively while customizing coaching approaches to suit the needs of their different regions. As a result, they decreased their Preventable Motor Vehicle Incident Rate (PVMI) by 25% in the first year and have seen a more than 40% decrease, year to date.

Further, with greater visibility into their expansive fleet, Artera was able to pinpoint inefficiencies and right-size their fleet, driving savings of over $1 million. They reduced their rental fleet by 10% last year and reallocated underutilized assets across their operating companies. Now, Artera is employing utilization data to help provide direction for the scope of upcoming lease agreements, while still providing their operations teams with the equipment they need to serve their customers.

Finalists: MacAllister, BioTrans, Pitney Bowes

<div id="section-6">Excellence in Performance, Public Sector: City of Orlando and Clayton County Public Schools</div>

The Connected Operations Award for Excellence in Performance: Public Sector recognizes organizations that are driving change for citizens and communities. This year, we have two winners, one for cities and one for K-12 schools: the City of Orlando and Clayton County Public Schools.

City of Orlando

The City of Orlando provides services for over 315,000 residents. As part of their plans to become a Future Ready City, the City of Orlando had committed to the lofty sustainability goal of using 100% alternatively-fueled vehicles by 2030, so finding the right solution to help them electrify their fleet was critical. 

By installing Samsara across the vast majority of their 2,800 vehicle and equipment inventory, the City of Orlando now has full visibility into the status of their fleet on a single pane of glass. Now, the City can easily identify which vehicles should be replaced with electric vehicles (EVs) using a series of comprehensive, Samsara-generated reports. They also use Samsara routing data to identify where to place charging stations, to ensure that EVs have the power and range they need to conduct their daily services.

As a result of adopting Samsara, Orlando is on the way to transforming into a Green City. The City of Orlando plans to use Samsara to transition more of their fleet to EVs. Today, 91% of their fleet is powered using alternative fuels, up from 85%—this puts the City of Orlando right on track to hit their goal of using 100% alternatively-fueled vehicles by 2030 and becoming a Future-Ready City.

Clayton County Public Schools

Clayton County Public Schools is the fifth-largest school district in Georgia, serving over 52,000 students throughout 65 schools. Every day, drivers would transport students to and from their schools across over 350 routes. Their former GPS solution often provided inconsistent data on bus delays, so the school district was overwhelmed with calls from parents seeking answers about bus locations. 

Using Samsara’s Fleet Tracking GPS solution, Clayton County now has the data to pinpoint a school bus along any route, at any time. If bus delays occur, parents have access to real-time ETAs and full visibility into where buses are. 

By leveraging Samsara’s Fleet Tracking GPS solution, Clayton County was able to reduce parent call volume by 50%. On top of improving parent satisfaction, Clayton County also used Samsara’s GPS solution to accelerate response rates for events such as bus breakdowns and student-related emergencies. 

Runners Up: City of Memphis, City of Atlanta's Department of Aviation

Finalists: City of Sacramento, Army Exchange

<div id="section-7">Technology Leader of the Year: Nathan Slemmons, Univar Solutions</div>

The Technology Leader of the Year Award recognizes an individual who has embraced technology to transform their operations. This year’s winner seized an opportunity to transform his business, starting with their telematics solution, into a more nimble and innovative company.

Nathan Slemmons is the Senior IT Analyst at Univar Solutions, a leading global commodity and specialty chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value-added services. Slemmons is responsible for enabling the transportation unit of Univar Solutions, from implementing and improving the telematics system to managing integrations and enhancements, to pulling data and reporting.

Slemmons helped Univar Solutions bring more robust reporting, integrations, and technological sophistication. This helped the company build deeper relationships with their customers. 

By adopting Samsara, Slemmons could help provide Univar Solutions with more data and flexibility. He successfully rolled out the new telematics solution to 900 drivers, 300 admins, and 1000+ vehicles in only five months. Since then, Univar Solutions has seen a reduction in service visit points for technical hardware issues and a reduced SLA time with their service provider. 

Univar Solutions has also advanced its impressive safety program by using Samsara's platform to help reduce driving-related incidents. This commitment to safety is part of the reason why Univar Solutions has a very low driver turnover rate.

Finalists: Praveen Edwin from Reddy Ice, and Russell Werra from Viking Corp.

<div id="section-8">Driver of the Year: Jaime Herrera, All Aboard America!</div>

The Driver of the Year Award recognizes an individual with an exemplary driving record. This year’s winner cares deeply about providing an excellent experience for his passengers, taking his responsibility for their safety very seriously. 

All Aboard America! is part of the fourth-largest motorcoach operator in the United States. Safety is ingrained into their company culture, and one of their top-performing drivers, Jaime Herrera, deeply embodies this value.

All Aboard America’s team prioritizes safety above all else. With a goal of continuous improvement, they effectively coached safe driving behavior with the help of Samsara AI Dash Cams. Herrera has been a passionate advocate for Samsara Dash Cams and consistently promotes their use to his peers. 

Through regular coaching sessions and practice, Herrera reduced speeding incidents by 100% in 2021. He sees this as a way to create a positive customer experience— when he’s behind the wheel, passengers feel confident that they will be transported safely to their destination. 

Finalists: Michael Brown from SAIA, Michael Congdon from Dohrn Transfer Company

Congratulations to our Connected Operations Award Winners

The 2022 Samsara Connected Operations Award winners stand apart as industry leaders and innovators among their peers and within their communities. We’re honored to support these organizations as they provide the services and products that power our economy.