Overdrive

August 2018

Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info

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August 2018 | Overdrive | 31 SOME PAIN AMIDST THE GAINS MOST INTENSE ENFORCEMENT * Maryland 18 California 17 Texas 10 New Mexico 10 Washington 8 1 Kentucky 8 1 Indiana 7 1 Arizona 8 3 North Carolina 6 9 Mississippi 6 LEAST INTENSE ENFORCEMENT 2 Wyoming 2 Idaho 2 North Dakota 2 Virginia 3 Rhode Island 3 Oklahoma 3 Wisconsin 3 Massachusetts 3 Vermont 3 Minnesota More than 60 percent of inspections conducted at roadside. More than 60 percent of inspections conducted at a fixed location. INSPECTIONS PER LANE-MILE *Arrows indicate the number of places the state's truck enforcement unit moved up or down the rankings in 2017. blemished record for operators such as Hose. His measure in the Hours of Ser- vice Compliance category of the CSA program shot up from 0 to 9 with the single false-log violation. He's not sure where that might have put his percentile ranking as a one-truck operator, but as past reporting shows, single violations can have dramatic effects on scores in today's iteration of the CSA system. Such rankings, though, have been dilut- ed in importance for carriers in the wake of congressional action that put CSA percentiles behind a veil for the general public, including freight partners. There's evidence the dilution is less than complete, however. Since the pull- ing of public category percentile rank- ings in late 2015, and in the two years since OverdriveOnline.com readers were surveyed on whether a private party had required sharing of operators' private scores as a condition of doing business, more readers with authority have had it happen, based on recent polling. Still, slightly more than half of inde- pendents with authority reported not having to share their scores. Among those who did, the largest share reported a freight broker or shipper requesting them. For those readers, avoiding ELD viola- tions of the kind that snared Hose holds the most import for their success. CLEAN INSPECTIONS ACCOUNTING FOR BIGGER SHARE OF CHECKS One piece of good news from 2017's enforcement trends is that most of the rise in inspections was due to increased clean inspections. There were 172,938 more clean inspec- tions of for-hire carriers' trucks in 2017 than in 2016. Or, to count inspections that weren't clean: About 100,000 fewer roadside or fixed-location inspections in 2017 contained a violation. In 2017, total heavy-duty truck and driver inspection numbers counted by Overdrive sister company RigDig Business Intelligence (RigDigBI.com) rose by more than 70,000 to 3,336,231 inspections. That 2.2 percent rise is about half the pace seen between 2015 and 2016, when Overdrive and RigDig documented a larger rise after years of over- all declines. RigDigBi.com mines data from all inspections of trucks/drivers for property carriers with an associated U.S. DOT number and for-hire authority. Compared to last year, only North Carolina was new among the top 10 states rated by the number of inspections conducted per lane-mile of National Highway System in the state. North Carolina climbed up the rankings in a big way, boosting its inspection total by nearly 16,000 inspections in 2017 over the prior year. It's the first time that the state has appeared in the top 10 since Overdrive began tracking inspections-per- lane-mile in 2012. Maj. Freddy Johnson with the North Caro- lina Department of Public Safety, the federal Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program lead in the state, assumed his position at the head of the unit in March 2017. He says he helped the department to focus more on improving the state's position in truck- and bus-involved crash fatalities. "We're in the top 10" among states, he says. A look at North Carolina's violation prior- ities reveals a slight shift in emphasis from vehicle-related violations to truckers' hours of service. While violations per inspection declined a bit in North Carolina in 2017 with an influx of more clean inspections, hours of service violations made up a greater share of total violations the state issued, moving a percentage point upward to 8.5 percent. A $19.7 million investment in a weigh and inspection station at the port of entry from South Carolina on I-85 was complet- ed in November 2016. The new site was operational throughout 2017, from which the numbers above are drawn, though most of North Carolina's increase in inspections seems to have come from roadside patrols. The percentage of fixed-location inspec- tions fell by a percentage point in 2017 from 2016.

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