.png)
Red Truck Radio
Red Truck Radio, produced by Wausau Supply Company, delivers real stories from the road, the warehouse, and the front lines of building materials, told by the people who keep it all moving.
Red Truck Radio
Red Truck Radio Episode #7: Driving Safety Forward
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Safety at Wausau Supply Company isn’t about checking boxes—it’s about protecting people, communities, and the future of our business.
In this episode of Red Truck Radio, we go inside WSC’s safety culture with Kris Zwicky and Andy Johnson to explore what it really means to live safety as a core value in a 100% employee‑owned company.
🎙️ In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- How employee ownership changes the way we think about safety
- The difference between compliance and a true safety‑first culture
- Where environmental responsibility and workplace safety intersect
- Practical, everyday safety habits every team member can take today
- Real stories from the field that show safety culture in action
Whether you work in manufacturing, distribution, transportation—or anywhere in between—this conversation offers practical insights and real examples of how safety shows up day to day at WSC.
👉 Listen now and join us in driving safety forward.
🎧 Thanks for listening to Red Truck Radio!
Subscribe, share, and follow us to keep building smarter—together.
Welcome to Red Chuck Radio, the Lost Lost Supply Company podcast where we dive into the people, products, and progress shaping the building industry. Whether you're a contractor, architect, distributor, or just someone who cares about building smarter, we're glad you're here. Today we're diving into one of the Lost Lost Supply's core values, safety, and what it really means to live it, not just check the box. We've got Chris Zwicky and Andy Johnson with us to break down the habits, standards, and real-world stories that shape our culture and employee owners. Let's get started. Welcome, Chris and Andy. How are you guys doing?
SPEAKER_00Great, yourself.
SPEAKER_01Doing well. Glad to have you guys here on Red Truck Radio. Uh, we're here to talk about safety and environmental leadership and how we put that into action at Wall Supply. So thanks for joining me. Uh, Chris, I'm gonna kick it right off to you. In one sense, what's your mission when it comes to safety at Wall Show Supply?
SPEAKER_02Well, Adam, it goes much, much further than just making sure Fucco Bill Wump safe at the end of the day. It's about making sure that uh we're continuing to continue to improve and have everybody look out for each other and not be afraid to speak up when they see something wrong.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. So there's a lot of misconceptions around safety. So what would you love to clear up right away when it comes to those misconceptions?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So safety is not the uh safety department's responsibility, it's leadership's responsibility and every one of our employee owners' responsibility.
SPEAKER_01Makes sense. Love it, love it. So Andy, I'm gonna jump to you. Where do environmental responsibility and safety meet in your world? Because there's got to be overlap there. So where where do you see that happening?
SPEAKER_00Those two really go hand in hand. Uh you know, on the environmental side, obviously we want to be good stewards. We want to take care of this world that we live in. Um, and on the safety side, uh, those environmental regulations really help us maintain the uh or reduce the risks uh that our employees could be exposed to.
SPEAKER_01Excellent, excellent. So can you give us an example of where you see that connection, you know, either on the shop floor or in our warehouses? Where do you see that connect?
SPEAKER_00Our water-based coatings are better for the environment than high VOC options. Uh, that makes it a lot easier to keep our employees safe and reduces what goes out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I tell you, you know, we do a lot of plant tours and customers are customers, contractors, dealers are always amazed when they come into our facility, they see all those large uh toasts of paint, and and the first thing they notice is they don't smell any odor there. So very understandable. So kind of throwing this out to both of you guys, um, you know, being an employee-owned company, I'm sure that has an impact on on the way safety uh is viewed. So um, how do you think that employee ownership impacts how our employees look at safety?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think it changes everything, it's the ownership piece. Uh, every employee owner has a direct impact uh, you know, where we spend our money, having the ownership to make sure that they work safe and look out for each other and be able to make this a world-class safety environment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, setting those standards, there's got to be some non-negotiables when it comes to safety. So across the the network, whether it's on the shop floor and distribution, uh in our offices, what are those non-negotiables?
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, Adam, it's it it's really everything, right? You know, what we don't have a safety policy to not follow it, right? So everything, uh every policy has to be followed. But I would say what really stands out about just following just a simple policy, let's say, on wearing ear protection is the like critical policies. So we have specific like critical policies that address those behaviors or those uh situations where an employee could have a life-altering injury, right? Where they're gonna be going to the hospital, they might be losing, you know, uh hopefully a you know, hopefully not finger, but they could be spending several nights at a hospital, right? You think about lockout takeout. You know, if something isn't locked out, I mean an employee could we could have a fatality. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a lot of a lot of ownership there. Uh yeah. So, you know, I think a lot of times uh there's the idea that as companies institute safety as a more meaningful uh uh pillar, um, that you can have check the box. How do you how do you make sure that that we're not just doing that, just checking the box and not instead of living it every day?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think it it comes out to our leaders, right? So we have safety leadership training that we you have for all of our supervisors and managers and distribution and production. And the biggest thing that we challenge them on is getting out on the floor and verifying, right? You know, that's see if they pencil with the pre-job safety checklists, um, checking that they're uh following the rules when it comes to wearing safety glasses and in their gloves and just being present out on the floor is one of the biggest ways that uh we here at Wassa Supply have done a great job of not just checking the logs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good to hear. Good to hear. You know, I always look at uh I think about uh claims and warranty, and not too far after there is safety. It it always seems like you could be viewed as the bad guy. How do you personally stay motivated as leading us in safety?
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, it started at a young age, you're right. I grew up um with a family member that was in the paper industry, and as you know, many people know, paper industry can be very dangerous, right? That you can there's fatalities, there's major life-changing events that can happen with employees, and you know, it it kind of instilled a culture of safety and just doing the right thing and making sure that we're looking out for each other. So for me, what motivates me is just you know working with all levels of this organization and just helping, you know, helping to grow and helping to make sure that we're prepared for what's next. I mean, we're a fast growing company, and that's what makes really my job exciting, you know, being able to work with CamClad and you know, future acquisitions is is is a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome to hear. And you know, I watching the evolution since you've joined the team of how we've grown in safety and the improvements we made, I think are are very inspiring. And I know on the sales side, sales and marketing side of things, but really throughout the entire company, it's visible every day, yet we really embrace safety as a core value. So it's awesome. Yeah. So kind of give me a story, uh something big or small, that shows that safety first mindset action.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So uh this just happened recently. Um, I spoke earlier about how employees need to look out for each other and speak up and not be afraid. So just recently we had an employee, um, our early employee on the floor, saw another co-worker uh in a machine that wasn't locked outs. Wow, and it would have been very easy for that employee to look the other way up. And they said, No, I'm an employee owner, we have a stake in this business. And they stepped in and to got the employee out of the machine, and you know, that was a life critical violation, so we had to address it as such. But um that to me is how much of a change we made from a culture perspective, and we had to continue to drive that all the way down.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so when you get to an employee level where they know calling out uh something like that is really in the best interest of not only an organization, but that individual. Yeah, that that L Yellow making sense. Absolutely for sure, for sure. Yeah. So we always I you know on the sales side, we always talk about, you know, what it what is measured is managed. So what are what are the metrics that you use um to know if the culture is getting stronger?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So okay, okay, so there's the perception that it's all about TIR. Yeah, right. It's all about recordables. And it what is TIR? Total incident rate. Okay, right. So how many recordables per 100 employees, right? So what's interesting is um it it there's that perception, and we've done a great job of starting to change that. So in the last couple of years, we've rolled out what's called a balance to safety scorecard. And on there is not only TIR, but also proactive and reactive metrics that we have. So we're measuring how fast instant investigations are getting closed out, are action items getting closed out from those investigations. Are we doing proactive safety audits? Are we having discussions out on the floor and documenting that with employees that uh need to be coached or what we want to provide positive recognition and so on? So that scorecard allows us to see and measure and be able to gauge how well we are as a as a company.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So, Andy, let's uh jump over to you. And how does responsible environmental practices protect not just team members, but really our neighbors, our our our communities that we're in? Tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00Right. Oh well, when we take responsibility for what we use, obviously there's the uh the base level liability, those are our products, our waste. Uh uh, so it's important for us to make sure we're not creating future issues for ourselves or for our customers or employees. Uh we have uh air permits for pretty much all of our pain lines. And so it's very important that we follow the guidance for for what's acceptable. Um and then from there making sure you know you commented about air tours noticing the snow is is not present. Um but those are the types of things that you know if we change different materials, we could affect our neighborhoods, and we don't want to do that. We want to make sure our neighborhoods enjoy having us around. Um another thing we do every spring, uh we do a cleanup where different departments are assigned um for different sections of the exterior of our property. They go around to clean off any of the waste, any any, you know, scraps that accumulated over winter or you know, trash that might have gotten thrown out, passing vehicle or anything like that. Um really keeping our property looking good and making sure uh the neighborhood books do it too.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. Uh, you know, I'm always told me uh if you you don't judge a book by a cover, but uh I think you do, and our facilities always always represent very well to SARHs. Um so on an emerging trend side of things, uh was regulatory landscape. So what's changing there and how is that impacting your GAB?
SPEAKER_02When it comes to the regulatory landscape, there haven't been a ton of changes, but we are very close on monitoring it through newsletters that we get from you know in different environmental agencies to OSHA letters that come out, but we also part look partner very closely with an environmental consultant here in the United States and now and in Canada. And uh there just hasn't been a lot, but we are very we are watching it very closely. Um and uh, you know, we'll just continue to watch and if we need to adjust, we will.
SPEAKER_01Very good, very good. Uh so if if a team member, loss of supply, owner, employee was to remember three things about safety this week, what would you want those to be?
SPEAKER_02So let's talk about the three. So there's what's called rush factor. What's that? Rush factor is where employees, for whatever reason, feel like they need to, you know, for example, run, right? Where all of a sudden they see something wrong on one of their production lines, and instead of taking their time walking, they literally run to the problem and they can trip, they can fall, and they just put themselves and other people's in hard other people in harm way. So we preach a lot about the rush factor in getting people to just realize, okay, we're paying you to work safe, we're paying you to come in every single day on time, work together, look out for each other, and and just make sure that nobody gets hurt, right? And that is so important. The next one is mindset, right? So this all this has to do with distractions. And I preach a lot about this in toolbox talks and just throughout the year that you know, especially right now, spring is coming. Spring has a ton of distractions. You think about how many people want to get out and enjoy the weather and get up, get their pontoon out, or go to their uh baseball game or whatever it may be. How bad would it be if you were stuck in the hospital because of a major injury? Right. So managing those distractions is huge and it's a constant challenge, and we have to constantly remind our employees to do that. The last one is basics, stick to the basics, right? PPE, line of fire, doing your pre-job safety inspections, uh, personal attire, just following the policies. So those are the three rush factor, mindset, and stick to the basics.
SPEAKER_01Awesome, awesome. Thanks for sharing those. So I hear a lot, you know, we talk about uh, you know, uh preventing or when things happen, but I I hear this term near misses. What is near misses in the safety world?
SPEAKER_02So near misses, you we almost got hurt, right? You we could have had a major injury, and I look at near misses as our golden opportunity to address and prevent uh a recordable or serious injury from happening.
SPEAKER_01Very good, very good. Yeah, yeah. So no, I I mean if we can prevent something from happening, that's that's the best thing. So uh we have a platform where we can report near misses?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So we have a system called WASA Safe, right? So any employee can log in. Uh traditionally it's reported to a supervisor and they log in and enter it. But yeah, everything is tracked from from near misses to first dates to recordables to inspection. It's all tracked in that system, and that is uh company-wide uh program uh at all of our locations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So when somebody notices something there, what what's the best sentence to use when something just doesn't look right, but you're unsure?
SPEAKER_02Start asking questions, just stop, right? Let's just take another look at it, right? Is does it does this feel right or do we need to get help? That's the biggest thing. Just stop and ask, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so and again, going back to that the stigmatism that many times uh has been associated with safety, I think we've gone leaps and bounds to to remove that. But how do we normalize speaking uh across apartments and locations about safety?
SPEAKER_02So we've done a lot of work with safety committees, all right. And that is one of the best ways we can normalize and get people to real to recognize that okay, we have a safety committee, let's say in our our 83 Diamond Core facility, we have representatives from all the areas on the floor that uh are just are supposed to be the voice of those employees. So, hey, you know, if I don't feel comfortable going to my supervisor, hey, there's a there's a safety committee member in my area, I want to get that person engaged to help uh find a solution. So then that safety committee member goes to the meeting, brings up the concern, and then leadership can help that committee uh address it and help that unfold you.
SPEAKER_01Awesome, awesome. Real world scenario. Yeah, uh I'm an employee and I see a blocked exit. What should I do? Who should I tell?
SPEAKER_02So ideally, you find it and you fix it, right? So you you you you address it yourself, right? Simple things like that. We want to empower our employees to be able to, you know, take that ownership piece, right? We're employee owners, we all have a stake in this business. Let's let's fix it, right? That's not just let it let it linger and have somebody else take care of it. Obviously, if you need to get a forklift involved or or something, but if it's a simple cart or a chair or something that you can address it yourself, do it.
SPEAKER_01So that that those are great. We're gonna have employees actually engaging in the solution, I think, is is another part of safety culture. Yeah, but there, as you mentioned, there's instances where that employee may not be able to address that. It's gonna take some more involvement. Uh, how do you ensure then after something has been brought to light that we actually follow through and and get that taken care of?
SPEAKER_02So the so we train our leadership to on that follow-up piece a lot during safety leadership training because it's so vitally important that employees recognize okay, if they bring up something that they're gonna see a solution or see something change. I think the big piece too from an owner employee ownership perspective is getting the employee to when they're presenting that issue, to present the solution as well. Yeah. Right. Not just not just having it where now leadership has to come up with a solution. Our employees on the floor see this ATC and work with the equipment every single day. A lot of times they have sometimes the best solution. So come to us with this with a potential solution right away, and we can work with you on getting it resolved.
SPEAKER_01So I think about some of our products, obviously building materials. We've got a lot of big, unwieldy, heavy, long products, the decking 20 foot long, uh, diamond coat sided, 16 foot long. Tell me a little bit about the handling of that. We have a lot of that.
SPEAKER_02And uh, you know, when you look at our uh diamond coat division, we've done a lot of work on conveyors and uh equipment that handles that and where our employees do not have to lift it. However, you know, there are times where the line breaks down or in or in distribution, they have to, you know, a custom order mean that maybe they might only need a few pieces. That's where teamwork really comes into play, where it has to be a team lift where you have to reach out and say, hey, you know what, I can't lift this by myself. And we're also looking at other tools and equipment to also implement to reduce the risk of that hazard.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, and I would say, you know, uh looking at the recent uh uh additions to Wadena and the technology there, that really plays into safety too. I mean, we got no longer do we have guys trying to wield uh slabs that are air actuated. So yeah, we're using technology to help with safety as well.
SPEAKER_02It's incredible what we're doing at Wadena. Great example. So when I first started, employees were lifting doors above their head by themselves. Now it's all for the most part, it's we're moving to conveyors or moving to lift tables, tilt tables, the all nine yards. It is incredible. What the future that that facility is gonna have is gonna be amazing. The the amount of ergonomic risk that we've reduced, um, it's it's gonna it's gonna pay off.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I think that shows the uh you know shows the investment the company is willing to make in the center of our employees. It's not only to make better products, to be more efficient, more profitable, yeah, but it's also to be a safer company.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, and be able to uh make it so that hopefully you know we can hire anybody on the anybody out there and they can just step in and run the equipment and not have to put themselves at arm's wider.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's great to hear. So uh Wallsaw Supply is an Uber uh uh competitive organization. So there's gotta be some streaks out there going on. Can you tell me about any safety streaks and then what are you what's what are they doing differently, you think? Okay, but I should go other places.
SPEAKER_02Very good question, Adam. So we we have some pretty incredible facilities out there right now. So night of our distribution facilities, I've gone a thousand days without a no-sure coral. Our diamond coat division just hit in January 500 days between all facilities recordable three. That's incredible. In fact, our Stuart Diamond Coat facility like 1200 days. Wow, amazing. Yeah. So you asked me, you know, what are they you in differently? I already talked about them. It's the three the rush factor, the mindset, and the basics. They've mastered that. And uh, when you step into those facilities, you just you can just tell that there's a lot more ownership uh across the board.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, always using real world examples helps people relate to things. So um, as we think about, you know, really relying on employees bringing to light safety concerns or opportunities for improvement. Can you give uh one change that we've made because of feedback for an employee?
SPEAKER_02One of the things that was brought up shortly after I started um by basically uh every single division was our safety shoe program. So back in the day we had we partnered with Lehigh uh safety shoes, and it was a clunky system. Employees had to log on into the system, kick out their shoes, they would get it mailed to them, hopefully it fit. If it didn't fit, you had to send it back, and it was just a cluster. And one of the things we did is we actually uh completely eliminated Lehigh and we basically allowed employees to go anywhere they wanted and they would get reimbursed while um on their next check after turning in the receipt. And that was very well received because it was speedback, direct feedback from our employees. Now, granted, you know, you can't satisfy everybody, but at the end of the day, um, you now had the ability to go anywhere. Yeah, it made a huge impact.
SPEAKER_01Good. I I think that's important that employees see that when they're providing feedback, then there's action taken. That's how you create that uh flywheel, you know, to get that going. So uh recognition is is super important, and I think that's also a contributing factor in creating the safety culture. What are you guys doing to recognize safety champions and these where we have great streaks? How do we recognize that?
SPEAKER_00So, uh, first off, the more informal way is that direct interaction, you know, that shout out from the safety department when we're passing through. Um, but we also do a lot of more formal things. Uh, the facilities that are setting those records, they're doing things like special lunches. Um, sometimes there's some swag involved. So uh it's always nice to wear a shirt that that makes that announcement that we set a record.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of that. A lot more Wassau shirts and safety called out on that. So while we're always working to on new things, new initiatives. So from either of you guys, what important initiatives, upcoming initiatives do you guys have on docking?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we just got through the employee engagement survey, right? So we got some feedback there. Uh, there's three things that we're looking at there. Uh one is uh climate in our in our work environments, what can we do with that? There's a rush factor rush factor piece where employees, you know, just feel like they're being rushed. And the other one is big one is training, right? So obviously, you know, we we know that there you have to have a lot of safety training for compliance reasons and and just be able to try to prevent the next recordable or next serious injury, but we're taking another hard look at that to see is there ways for us to spread it out more, um, cut back and just streamline it so that um it's gonna be more specific to to every employee across the board.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, excellent, excellent. So if loss of supply grows, you know what what do we need to protect about the culture? And then what do we need to evolve to continue the safety trend?
SPEAKER_02So I would say. We got to protect the employee ownership piece where employees feel like they have a stake uh in the in the direction that we're going. But I think what we got to involve is is is the example that I gave earlier where the employee uh hourly employee saw another hourly employee uh not following the rules and get to the point where our employees feel comfortable uh speaking up to other employees, the ones that they work with every single day, because that's how we're gonna get to world class. That's how we're gonna make this one of the safest businesses in the country.
SPEAKER_01Excellent.
SPEAKER_02Great to hear.
SPEAKER_01So kind of a little lightning round here, just throw this out there and see whoever's gonna answer. But uh uh most underrated piece of PPE, safety glasses.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I dries are disgusting and they normally don't heal.
SPEAKER_01True, yeah. Like to have both eyes, so yeah, it's very good, very good. Um what about a housekeeping habit that you mandate everywhere?
SPEAKER_02Clean floors, just you know, don't let it get sloppy, just pick it up right away and keep it maintained.
SPEAKER_01You know, I tell you, that's another thing. Probably before customers mentioned that they don't smell the uh any odors from our our coatings. Uh, one of the first things they notice is just the overall cleanliness and and uh the way our facilities look. So kudos to you guys and really to the employees embracing that as well. So yeah, um, when you're out on the floor, what's the phrase you want to hear? Maybe I have an idea. Ah, there we go. No doubt. Yeah, love it, love it. Best safety win you've seen this quarter.
SPEAKER_02I would say diamond quotes 500 days. That was huge for three facilities, three different states coming together, looking out for each other, speaking up. Um, that was an incredible accomplishment. Along with, and I gotta say it, I can't leave them out. Um, at the end of last year, uh distribution hit uh world-class safety TIR. 0.58. Wow. An incredible accomplishment.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy. So where where do you where do you classify? Where's world class Raymond on that TIR?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right now it's 0.75. Okay. We haven't hit it yet as a company, but uh I'm gonna ratchet it down. I can tell you it's already coming. As soon as we hit it, we're gonna continue to strive to do better, and I'm gonna drop it to a 0.5.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, under your leadership, we've made phenomenal strides. So kudos to both of you gentlemen and your organizations. Okay, you're cute. We're gonna kind of wrap it up here, but uh if I ask you both, what's one takeaway you want every listener to remember from this conversation?
SPEAKER_02Well, I hate to bring it up again, but it's it's the three that I already mentioned, right? It's the rush back to peace, the mindset, and the basics. Those are the three. I need you to ingrain that into your head and and constantly uh let that uh guide you and and uh make this company one of the safest in the world.
SPEAKER_01No doubt about it. Andy, you got anything to add in closing?
SPEAKER_00Uh with the ideas you guys bring up, uh, those are so valuable for us. So I would just say keep keep bringing that up. The idea of the idea you guys bring up, those are really valuable. Uh so when you share something, not just the hey, this is all messed up, but hey, here's an issue and here's a thought for a direction it can go, though those are are a massive advantage for our company.
SPEAKER_01My thing has been, you know, one of my takeaways here is no difference than you look at the evolution of our diamond coat society, really came from feedback from the contractor. It sounds like our safety is really uh formed around feedback from Ron's Wool Eve.
SPEAKER_02Yes, absolutely. You know, you look at our safety committees, I mean, the Wadena Safety Committee is on fire right now. They are bringing up tons of ideas, working together, taking action items outside of the committee, working, working those action items to completion and just making such a huge impact on that division. And I can't wait to see what the other safety committees can do. But also, like what you said, you know, what what other ideas and solutions can we get from our employees every single day?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, want to thank you guys for coming. Safety is obviously a core value at Wastel Supply. Uh, it is something that we think about and live every day. So thank you guys for everything you do, and thanks for joining us here on Bread Truck Radio. Thank you, Adams. Thank you, Chris and Andy, for sharing the insights and passion. If there's one thing we hope sticks with you today, it's that safety doesn't happen by accident. It grows from choices we make every day. So this week, try focusing on the big three rush factor, mindset, basics. Slow down, stay present, and take care of the fundamentals. They're simple, but they make all the difference. Thanks for listening to Red Trip Radio. Stay safe, stay aware, and we'll see you on the next episode.