Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/536670
CHANGING LANES 10 JUNE 2015 // WWW.CHANGINGLANESDIGITAL.COM Industry Insider By Todd Dills An industry with a voice Trucking's opportunity to make it heard over CSA "We are an industry with a force," said Dave Heller, Truckload Carriers Association Director of Safety and Policy (pictured). "We are an industry with a voice. Freight trains don't stop at malls, they stop at train stations – and there's nobody in the world that goes to the train station to buy bread." Heller spoke last month as part of the opening general session at TCA's 34th annual Safety & Security Division meeting in Charlotte, N.C., and the remarks followed an invocation of the 28,000-plus comments that came in during the last rewrite of the hours- of-service rule. Attendant to that, "countless hours of Congressional interaction" also helped turn the wheels of government toward a more refined hours rule, at least temporarily, with the rollback of the restart late last year. At once, the party celebrating what many see as a victory for the industry has gone on too long. Moving forward, continued engagement of carriers and drivers would be key to ensuring the federal government gets the hours of service rule and other critical programs right. While the industry, he said, has never had an opportunity to weigh in on the Compliance, Safety, Accountability to the tune of 28,000-plus comments, that opportunity is coming shortly. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has the Safety Fitness Determination, which would tie carriers' safety ratings to the same data that underpins carriers' CSA scores today, on the regulatory agenda, Heller pointed out. "Who wants to be rated on data that presents an inaccurate picture?" While CSA, by many measures, is working to increase the attention to safety among trucking companies Keith Tuttle "I'm not supposed to talk about my personal preferences" as new TCA chairman, noted Keith Tuttle (pictured) in his opening remarks. At once, he said, he was "taking the chairman's prerogative to move off script" when he expressed his belief that "when ELDs become standard equipment on all trucks, we will be a safer industry."