With all the technology, all the media, all the knowledge, and all the challenges it is easy for us to lose sight of the big picture as an industry. As an industry we will never be divorced from regulation.
That is understandable.
Human error, and the need to uphold safe roads, forces regulation on us. The regulation still has to come under the umbrella of democratic principals. All regulatory agencies have to be fair in how rules and regulations are applied. This is a non negotiable point. On a national level it is known as equal justice under the law.
This in mind, why is their such a fairness gap in the CSA results. After almost three years it has been repeatedly documented that:
-
The CSA doesn’t have ANY data on a majority of carriers.
- The FMCSA recommends the use of carriers who have been inspected, penalizing the vast majority of carriers who have not.
- Due to their fleet size, larger carriers have lots of inspections to balance out the impact of a bad CSA score.
- Many of the large fleets have electronic equipment that allow them to bypass many weigh in stations.
- The FMCSA actually assigns a random high CSA score to carriers without inspection records which assures they WILL get inspected. So if this first inspection is bad, they will immediately feel the impact from companies that see them as too risky because of one inspection.
In fact, if you look at how how it is setup, it appears that the system is overwhelmingly designed to benefit large carriers. This in itself is unacceptable. Government regulations should be there to protect the people, not regulate small business people into bankruptcy.
A few thoughts...
I think that CSA scores should not even be published if a certain number of inspections have not taken place for small carriers. The only exception should be if a pattern of two or more serious violations is discovered where public safety is at risk.
Also, the FMCSA should not make recommendations to use or not use a carrier. If a carrier has not been inspected, the records should just say " no inspection recorded yet."
But most of all, you cannot let a system continue which is running trucking companies out of business due to unfair standards. Until the kinks of this system are worked out, we should preserve the drivers and truckers we still have to avoid deepening the effects of the driver shortage.
