Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/805422
16 | Overdrive | April 2017 Logbook HEALTH & WELLNESS PAVILION GATSonline.com Registration sponsored by © Pilot Travel Centers LLC REGISTER NOW and we will keep you posted on EVERYTHING to look forward to this year in Dallas! TRUCK PARKING COMMUNITY • Free health screenings • Cooking demos • In-cab fitness demos • Healthy food options • Health-related vendors • Daily meet and greets and celebrity appearances • Live performances at the booth • Prize giveaways and drawings drawings • FREE Truck Parking • Shuttle bus transportation to convention center • Showers, food vendors and entertainment • RV parking (no hook-ups) • RV parking (no hook-ups) Safety fitness rule pulled after industry pushback The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last month with- drew its January 2016 proposal to rework the way it rates carriers and determines their fitness to operate. The withdrawal of the Safety Fitness Determination rule was published March 23 in the Federal Register by FMCSA, a few weeks after industry groups asked new Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to kill the proposal. The SFD, which had been in the works for a decade, initially was issued as a notice of proposed rulemaking last January. FMCSA planned to issue a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking this year to tweak the rule and solicit feedback on the changes. However, there has been wide- spread concern over the rule's reliance on the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program's Safety Measurement System BASIC rat- ings. The ratings have been pulled from public view due to concerns about their accuracy in judging carriers' safety. So FMCSA says it decided to withdraw the SFD pro- posal altogether and start anew. Congress in late 2015 used the most recent highway bill, Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act, to require FMCSA to pull the SMS BASIC carrier rankings from public view because of what many believe is their limited ability to score carriers accurately. Congress also required the agency to work with the National Academies of Science to reform CSA to address its ability to target unsafe operators. The agency says it will wait to re- issue a Safety Fitness Determination proposal until after the CSA SMS revamp has been implemented. The proposal, if made final, would have done away with the Conditional, Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory rating system in favor of a simple Fit and Unfit designation. The rule also would have allowed FMCSA to put car- riers out of service based on CSA BASIC ratings alone instead of an intervention and onsite compliance review. The American Trucking Associ- ations said FMCSA's withdrawal of the rule was a positive step for the agency toward eventually improv- ing CSA. – James Jaillet DAIMLER TRUCKS recalled about 450 mod- el-year 2015-18 Western Star 4900 trucks manu- factured between March 3, 2014, and Jan. 31, 2017, because of a service brake problem. MACK TRUCKS is mak- ing its telematics plat- form available to about 50,000 legacy trucks not factory-equipped with GuardDog Connect. After installing a small plug-and-play Geotab telematics device, the Mack Uptime Center can monitor the same critical vehicle codes as Mack's GuardDog Connect hardware. ROADCHECK INTERNA- TIONAL, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance's annual 72-hour inspec- tion blitz, is set for June 6-8. The focus for this year's event is cargo securement. Last year's focus was on tire safety, and 9,080 trucks – more than one out of five inspected – were placed out of service, mostly for brake violations.