FOODSERVICE DISTRIBUTOR
How Upper Lakes Foods Improved DOT Compliance with CSA Monitoring
Supporting a Growing Fleet with Better Compliance Oversight
Upper Lakes Foods is a family-owned foodservice distributor that has been serving restaurants, schools, healthcare facilities, and other foodservice operators across the Midwest since 1967.
As the largest independent foodservice distributor in Minnesota and Wisconsin, the company relies on a large fleet of drivers to deliver products safely and efficiently to customers throughout the region. With drivers playing a critical role in daily operations, maintaining visibility into driver compliance, license status, and safety performance was essential—but increasingly challenging. This prompted Upper Lakes Foods to look for a more proactive way to strengthen driver safety, improve visibility into risk, and support ongoing compliance efforts.
● THE CHALLENGE
Manual Processes Made Compliance More Difficult
For Darin Hatch, Director of Environmental Health & Safety at Upper Lakes Foods, staying on top of DOT inspections and CSA violations was a constant challenge.
Like many fleets, the company relied on drivers to turn in roadside inspection reports. Unfortunately, that process wasn’t always reliable.
“The driver gets the report, throws it on the seat, forgets all about it, and it ends up under the seat or in the garbage,” Darin explained.
This created a compliance risk. If violations weren’t reported promptly, the company could miss required corrective actions, documentation deadlines, or opportunities to challenge inaccurate violations.
To stay informed, Darin often had to manually check the FMCSA portal, a process he described as time-consuming and difficult to navigate.
“I don’t go into the FMCSA website anymore, because I don’t have time for that. Embark does it for me. And they send it to me right away, as soon as new reports are uploaded,” Darin shared.
“I don’t go into the FMCSA website anymore, because I don’t have time for that. Embark Safety does it for me.”
● THE SOLUTION
Moving From Reactive to Proactive
To solve these challenges, Upper Lakes Foods implemented Embark Safety’s CSA Monitoring solution.
Instead of relying on drivers to self-report violations or manually searching the FMCSA portal, Darin now receives alerts whenever new inspection reports become available.
“The data comes to me now. Embark does it for me, and they send it to me right away.”
The platform also allows Upper Lakes Foods team to filter inspection reports by driver, vehicle, violation type, inspection level, and DOT number, making it easier to identify trends and recurring issues. Reports can be marked as reviewed, and notes can be added to document corrective actions and DataQs challenges.
“The thing I like the most is that it alerts me, but then I can come in and sort by all these various categories,” said Darin.
Better Visibility, Faster Action
With quicker access to inspection data, Darin can immediately work with supervisors and drivers to resolve issues and meet required deadlines.
“I can hit that timeline every time,” reiterated Darin.
The increased visibility has also helped Upper Lakes Foods identify recurring maintenance concerns. After noticing a pattern of ABS trailer violations, Darin and his team were able to adjust their preventative maintenance processes and reduce repeat violations.
“I’m seeing much less of those ABS trailer violation issues now because we’re able to get those vehicles in for preventative maintenance sooner,” explained Darin.
● THE IMPACT
From Chasing Data to Solving Problems
By implementing CSA Monitoring, Upper Lakes Foods has been able to:
- Eliminate manual FMCSA portal checks
- Reduce reliance on drivers to report inspection paperwork
- Respond to violations faster
- Track corrective actions and DataQs challenges
- Identify recurring maintenance and driver behavior trends
- Improve CSA scores and compliance visibility
Most importantly, Darin no longer spends his time chasing inspection data.
“It’s a good ROI. It’s really a good, affordable investment. It frees up a lot of time for me to do other stuff so that I don’t spend all my time chasing data. Now the data comes to me.”
“There’s no lag time anymore. I can usually fix problems within 24 to 48 hours.”