Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/856429
PULSE August 2017 | Overdrive | 5 cheaper. "Brokers know we will take a load to keep from sitting. I'm one of the few guys who will get out and talk to the shippers – we know the shippers are paying $3,000 for a load of tomatoes, for instance, and the broker comes to us and says, 'Man, all I've got in it is $1,900.' Ask one for a rate sheet or transparency now, and know what they'll tell you? 'You have a good day, sir.' " Dennis Brannon: Should we require every business in every market to share their cost and profits? Why not Walmart, restaurants and bottled water companies? Look at the profit they make in tap water. Jolene Laughlin: One of the problems with "talking to the shipper" is that our contracts with brokers have a confidentiality clause about sharing rates. Not to say we don't ask or talk to other drivers about it, but even if we do, how exactly do you do something about it when doing so is an admission that you broke the contract? Tim: Your contract reads, "will not back-solicit." Never seen a contract that says I can't ask how much a customer pays the broker. I have become very good at reading upside down, and 99 percent of the time, if a shipper is looking at a load sheet, the rate will be written in ink on it. These are not secret documents. … I took my company from all-broker freight to maybe six broker loads a year in four years after my dedicated bulk haul went south. My rule is only use a broker to move to your next customer freight. Once again, the Compliance, Safety, Account- ability program has been evaluated and found lacking. This time the verdict comes from the National Academies of Science, a private insti- tution founded by Congress to provide objective research for policymakers. The 2015 FAST Act highway bill mandated the 130-page NAS report. The act also pulled the BASIC percentile rankings of CSA's Safety Management System from public view. NAS reached conclusions similar to those aired since CSA's launch in 2010 by owner-op- erators, carriers and other industry entities, including Overdrive's multi-year, in-depth CSA's Data Trail series by Senior Editor Todd Dills. His reporting also has shown that in some areas of enforcement, CSA's flaws have hurt indepen- dent owner-operators more than larger fleets. Here are some thoughts on the chief NAS criticisms on CSA: • Some BASICs lack correlation with crash risk. For example, there's been far too much em- phasis on equipment violations and not enough on driver behavior. • Data insufficiency. Part of this is the lack of inspections, or failure to record clean inspec- tions, that can slap an independent with an unmerited Conditional rating that strangles his business. Creation of a Level 8 electronic inspection, which is closer to reality now that the technology is more widespread, could help by adding thousands of annual inspections. • Relative rankings. Use of these percentile or comparative ratings creates a moving target that can paint safe carriers as unsafe and vice versa. • Use of non-fault or nonpreventable crashes. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administra- tion has moved very slowly on this longstanding complaint that it's unfair to penalize a carrier for being the victim of a reckless driver. See page 24 for news on a pilot program that lets owner-op- erators and carriers appeal Preventable rulings. • Variations in inspections, violations and violation coding. If you're going to impose a complex federal system on state and local law enforcement units, keep it consistent. • A lack of transparency of the SMS algo- rithm. Those being regulated have a right to understand any system that can shut them down. • The public availability of SMS rankings. It's extremely irresponsible to make flawed or inadequate data available to shippers and insurers, who will punish carriers accordingly. FMCSA says it will respond to the NAS report within 120 days of its late June release. The FAST Act encourages a com- prehensive response by requiring FMCSA to adopt the study's recommendations before the SMS can be made public again. The added weight of NAS as an objective party is welcome, especially knowing it gives Con- gress a clear vision of the CSA problems. FMCSA has made relatively superficial changes – slowly – to CSA. It's a shame that's it's taken so many voices to repeat the call that change needs to be faster and more substantive. Maybe this time mheine@randallreilly.com By Max Heine Editorial director Variation in enforcement procedures is one of many problems cited in the report on CSA. Max Heine