Three years ago, in the summer of 2012, the laser focus on safety at Tucker Paving Inc. got the attention of the people at Summit Consulting Inc., a Liberty Mutual insurance company that specializes in the arena of workers’ compensation. Our company was featured in an article on the front page of Summit’s newsletter, under the headline of “Tucker Paving: Using Safety and Return to Work to Save— and Earn— Money.”

The gist of the article was this: A construction company that makes safety a priority and maintains an excellent safety record can leverage that record to attract new customers and new business.

As the Summit article reported: “In 2008, when most of the construction industry saw only a sagging economy, (Tucker Paving) owner Larry ‘Chip’ Tucker, Jr., saw a new opportunity. He noticed potential clients looking at contractor safety records as a major factor in their bid selection process. Chip, already safety conscious, notes that ‘strengthening our solid safety record would make us a strong candidate for national contracts.’”

With that thought in mind, Chip Tucker enlisted Terry Tucker first to unify company safety policies and procedures and then to become Tucker Paving’s full-time safety director. Chip Tucker then built on already established relationships with longtime workers’ comp insurance agent Duke Mills, of WorkComp Solutions, and Summit Consulting, Tucker’s comp company of 25 years, to make safety a daily priority— to keep accidents and injuries to a minimum and to keep employees working.

At Tucker Paving, “ . . . (E)very person out here understands that safety takes teamwork, and that it’s part of being in business for us,” Terry Tucker told Summit for the newsletter article.

Even better, as Chip Tucker learned many years ago, safety on the job is part of growing the business for us. There’s success in safety— in so many ways.