Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/324702
June 2014 | Overdrive | 23 T hree and a half years after Compliance, Safety, Accountability began its radical scrambling of how trucking safety is rated and scored, owner-operators and carriers continue to suffer from its prob- lems, while bureaucrats struggle to repair the complex program. Among carriers receiving a ranking in any of the CSA BASICs (Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Catego- ries), none feel the program's inadequacies more than the smallest independents. As one respondent noted in Overdrive's recent survey on CSA, the "small guys get looked at because a single incident shows up as a bigger percentage" with a more dramatic effect on rankings, and "not because we are unsafe." Unreliable small-fl eet scoring was ranked the number one CSA problem in the survey. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration acknowledges CSA problems and strives for improvements. At the same time, the agency rigorously defends the system as is, with confi dence in the CSA Safety Measurement Sys- tem's numerical evaluation of carriers. "It is a good tool, and it is one of the factors that should be looked at" by all industry participants to measure carrier safety, says Bill Quade, FMCSA associ- ate administrator for enforcement. But a growing chorus of drivers, own- er-operators and others call for scores to be removed from public view until the agency gets the kinks worked out. In Overdrive's poll, seven in 10 called for re- moval of the scores, and nearly half of that group also wants all inspection and violation data to be removed. Such sen- timent refl ects the reality that shippers and brokers treat the scores as gospel truth, refusing to do business with fl eets that, in some cases, are just as safe as they were prior to CSA's activation. CSA scores: To be or not to be public It wasn't so long ago that suppression of CSA scores was an active debate. In February 2013, a majority of the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Commit- tee's CSA Subcommittee came close to offi cially urging the agency to withhold percentile rankings in the BASICs from public view in the CSA SMS. Removing scores from public view, however, was not an option on the table when the CSA subcommittee met this past April. Removing the scores might not even be feasible as long as the program exists, said subcommittee member Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. That's because there's a "cat's-out-of-the-bag" effect in third-par- ty reliance on the scores. If the scores were available only to law enforcement and carriers themselves, Spencer said, some shippers then likely would require disclosure as part of carrier contracts. Another potential consequence would be a piling on of further workload for an already taxed federal agency with a fl ood of Freedom of Information Act requests for carrier SMS BASIC scores, said MC- SAC member John Lannen of the Truck Safety Coalition of public safety advocates. Tom Sanderson, chief executive offi - cer of broker/3PL Transplace, told the CSA Subcommittee that "several large shippers have told us that even one CSA'S DISTORTED RANKINGS Independents are most concerned about reliability of scores, but the system's many fl aws haven't halted third-party use of the rankings in business decisions. Don't expect fi xes anytime soon. BY TODD DILLS CSA's FALLOUT Reliability NEXT MONTH: Getting out of safety jail: How stepped-up hours enforcement landed one small carrier in the lockup, and what it took to get it out. PART ONE CSA_0614.indd 23 6/3/14 10:27 AM