100% of Commercial Trucks to Contain Electronic Logging Devices by December 2017

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requires ELDs on all trucks by 12/18/17. Essentially, this means drivers will no longer have written log books, and errors contained on those logs will disappear. The ELDs, when calibrated properly, will demonstrate with certainty, how many hours a driver may drive.

This is a major development in capacity, and in freight security. The fines carriers receive from law enforcement for breaking hours of service are severe, and will likely continue to worsen. Likewise, shippers will undoubtedly see changes in carrier behaviors that might seem frustrating. For example, in heavy traffic, or delayed by weigh station, a driver may run out of hours just minutes from pickup or destination, and shut down (as they should anyway). With the new “Driver Coercion” laws in effect, pressuring the driver or carrier to proceed, in the name of service, timeliness or safety will land someone in jail!

It’s all part of a seismic shift in how we understand the freight transportation market, and how we manage our businesses. The new regulatory and supply/demand dynamics require new thinking, and savvy planning and communication among business partners. Some experts who study disparities between traditional logs and ELDs, have found as high as double-digit percentage errors between the two. Whether it’s a percent or two, or 10% or more, you should plan on capacity disappearing over the next 23 months, with the conversion from paper to ELD. How solid is your capacity? Talk to Tucker.

CSA Absolute Measure Scores Coming Back!

In a confounding move, FMCSA headlines freight news this week. FMCSA is preparing to repost its “absolute measure” CSA scores, weeks after the FAST Act required FMCSA to remove from public view CSA’s alert symbol; each of the five relative BASIC scores; and the intervention threshold for each score. While it is not illegal for FMCSA to post these absolute scores, doing so represents an affront to the intent of Congress, in passing the FAST Act, and reintroduces the uncertainty about the use or non use of these scores in play. This harms safety, and isn’t in the public interest.

FMCSA defends its move, pointing to this paragraph in the FAST Act -- Sec. 5223 (c) CONTINUED PUBLIC AVAILABILITY OF DATA.— “Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, inspection and violation information submitted to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration by commercial motor vehicle inspectors and qualified law enforcement officials, out-of-service rates, and absolute measures shall remain available to the public.”  FMCSA interprets “shall” as “must” regarding these scores. Our trade association representatives in Washington have spoken with relevant Congressional leaders this week, who disagree with FMCSA’s interpretation, but neither are they surprised.

CSA’s BASIC scores, their weighting and their methodology have proven to be unsound and in need of extensive review. It took years and an act of Congress for FMCSA to remove the scores from public view, so that shippers, brokers and the public don’t rely upon them to make commercial carrier selection decisions. By publicly posting absolute measures instead of relative measures, FMCSA is intentionally muddying the waters--again.

Congress’ intent in hiding CSA BASIC scores is clear—it’s to stop the public from relying upon CSA scores for commercial carrier selection purposes, and to send the BASICs back for increased study. The parties who introduced and pushed the FAST Act language did so for exactly this reason. Congress passed the law for this reason. It appears once again, the only fix to FMCSA’s continued muddying of the waters is to seek a Congressional mandate, by hitting Capital Hill again.

Tucker’s position is that FMCSA’s “absolute measures” are absolutely useless to the public, for any purpose. Meanwhile, FMCSA is busy at work on a new Safety Fitness Determination (SFD) which will apply an algorithm to all 7 BASICs (even the 2 the public can’t see), to determine “unfit” carriers. The fact that their algorithm isn’t final, and the public won’t ever be able to apply a final algorithm (because 2/7 of the scores are hidden), and accidents will not be predicted, is further evidence that the scores are useless. If FMCSA’s decisions and reactions to criticism weren’t so harmful to public safety, they could be the stuff of a sitcom. Stay tuned.

Driver Shortage? It’s Worst at the Big Carriers

There’s a driver shortage, right? Maybe yes. Maybe no. It depends on who you ask.

The fact is, since early 2012, the number of for-hire drivers has increased by 409,286, representing a 21% increase, and bringing the total number of drivers to 2,354,547. This is a huge story that nobody’s talking or writing about.

Ask the largest carriers if there’s a driver shortage ─most will say “absolutely.”  And they’re right, from a certain limited point of view. The biggest carriers have a very hard time filling seats and keeping them filled. So yes, there’s a driver shortage if you’re a large carrier. No doubt.

Ask the largest shippers if there’s a driver shortage. Most will say “yes.”  And they’re right, too. The biggest shippers often deal with the biggest carriers, keeping a number of the nation’s largest 100 carriers on speed dial. So by definition, the biggest shippers, because they make heavy use of the biggest carriers, have a driver shortage.

So where are the 409,000+ new drivers? Since 2012, they’ve largely supercharged growth in the micro-, small and mid-sized fleets. For example, the number of micro-fleets (1-6 trucks) increased by 42%; the number of small fleets (7-9 trucks) increased by 29%; mid-size (20-100 trucks) increased by 22%. While during that time the number of larger fleets (101-500) grew 14% and the largest (501+) grew by 10%. Every fleet size grew since 2012, but the clear winners of the driver war are the smaller and mid-size fleets.

The takeaway: align yourself with smaller and mid-size fleets, and brokers who specialize in the thriving middle of the market. Establish strong partnerships and open lines of communication. Some words of caution regarding the big name brokers—they make prolific use of owner operators. You’ve got to ask yourself—is that the kind of capacity you need? Is that the kind of capacity a business can rely upon?

(Data source: FMCSA & QualifiedCarriers.com)

CSA Scores Removed from View

On December 4, 2015, President Obama signed into law the FAST Act, the first multi-year surface transportation highway bill in a decade.  It’s a five-year authorization to fund federal surface transportation programs, like the repairing and building of highways, bridges roads, etc.  States can now proceed with projects, with some certainty that funds will be available. 

Specific to shippers, brokers and carriers, the FAST Act also corrected FMCSA, the administration within USDOT charged with truck and bus safety.  As required by the FAST Act, FMCSA removed from public view much of the data generated by the CSA program, including: analysis of violations, crashes where the motor carrier or driver is not at fault, CSA alert symbols, and the relative percentiles for each BASIC score. 

Tucker Company Worldwide, and its affiliate QualifiedCarriers.com, have both consistently advocated for years that publicly facing CSA data is flawed and conveys unintended, unreliable information that shippers and brokers should not use as part of their carrier selection criteria. Congress and the President finally agreed! This represents a big win for shippers, brokers, carriers, and the motoring public.

TIA Industry Professionals Advising the FMCSA

Darin Day, General Counsel at Tucker Company Worldwide, has replaced Tucker’s CEO, Jeff Tucker, as TIA’s only Broker Representative on the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee (MCSAC). Darin recently spoke about the importance of industry professionals advising the FMCSA.

“This is the one place…the most effective place…where the industry can have an impact on the rules that are being proposed by the FMCSA and the way that the CSA program is developing,” he said.

Darin’s presence on the TIA Committee helps to bring some balance to the table in Washington – the perspective of a 3PL Provider who is also a TIA member – which enables all parties involved to accomplish their respective goals.

“We all care about safety,” he continued. “Everybody wants as few accidents, incidents, deaths of course, on the highways as possible. But at the same time, the whole point of the transportation industry is to get important goods to people on time, efficiently, and in a way that doesn’t slow down commerce.”

Learn more and watch the full feature on TIA TV here.

Jeff Tucker Among Industry Stakeholders To Commend GAO Report

Jeff Tucker and other industry stakeholders recently endorsed the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) recommendations for "vigorous changes" to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to improve the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program.

Read Tucker's recommendations in the full article by Logistics Management:

Industry Stakeholders Commend GAO Report on CSA Scoring System

MAP-21 Also Raises Broker Bond

Another change in MAP-21 increases the FMCSA’s required performance bond for freight brokers from $10,000 to $75,000, which is an amount equal to the bond required of NVOCCs and Ocean Freight Forwarders. The law also places some additional requirements around the structure of the bonding companies, in order to better protect the public from undercapitalized bonding companies. A lawsuit challenging the higher bond failed. To give the industry time to adapt, for the moment, there is no penalty (or teeth) for failing to raise your bond to $75,000. As information, Tucker has voluntarily carried a higher bond amount for years, and was compliant prior to the new law.

Definition of a Tank Vehicle Changing

In 2011, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration changed the definition of a tank vehicle, and considerably expanded what is considered a tank truck, to include trailers containing bulk containers greater than 119 gallon capacity, with an aggregate capacity of 1,000 gallons or more. This shocked transporters and shippers alike, and impacts driver CDL endorsements and other shipper and carrier considerations, as well as capacity.

On September 25, 2013, FMCSA offered shippers, carriers and drivers some cause for hope, in the form of a notice of proposed rulemaking to revise its definition of a tank vehicle. Principally, they are amending the definition to exclude the requirement for tank vehicle endorsement, if the tanks are manifested as empty or as residue as part of the load. In other words, empty tanks, or tanks that only contain residue do not require the tank endorsement.

The Highway Act Criminalizes Coercing Drivers to Break Law

Ever told a driver to be on time, or else? After October 2013, this seemingly innocent act of business urgency may bring down criminal sanctions. The new “Highway Bill”, called MAP-21, includes new and revised provisions that essentially criminalize several fairly common practices in the interest of promoting safety.

One of the handful of “game-changers” that became law with MAP-21 is the “prohibition of coercion” provision, which criminalizes certain behaviors aimed at pushing on-time performance where a truck driver must bend or break hours of service rules or other safety measures. A rulemaking from FMCSA to clarify how this law will be enforced is expected in early 2014. In any event, shippers, brokers, anyone who hires a motor carrier, must be very careful in their communications with carriers, or risk losing insurance coverage — or worse — facing criminal penalties!

FMCSA ADMINISTRATOR FERRO NAMES TUCKER TO CSA SUBCOMMITTEE, SUBCOMMITTEE MAKES RECOMMENDATIONS TO FMCSA

Administrator Ferro named Jeff Tucker to the CSA Subcommittee of the Agency’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee (MCSAC). Tucker was selected from many applicants, due in part to his work with the TIA Carrier Selection Framework and many years serving as an advocate and educator in the area of motor carrier safety and shipper and broker liability.

There have been four meetings of the MCSAC subcommittee since October 2012. The subcommittee is comprised of bus operators, state police officials, a truck insurance firm, a large motor carrier, a bus operator, a bus driver union representative, a representative from an owner operator’s group, and two professional safety advocates. Senior FMCSA officials attend and participate in the meetings. 

      On April 9, 2013, the MCSAC agreed to pass to FMCSA the CSA Subcommittee’s recommendations for improvement to the CSA system.  Tucker remains baffled that the agency didn’t recognize and act on the obvious need for these changes long ago, but we believe certain elements within FMCSA have internal agendas that outweigh reason and due process. Those elements seem to be ruling the day.  We hope this partial list of recommendations will begin to turn the tide: 

1. For a carrier’s Crash BASIC, exclude crashes where there is a clear determination that the carrier was not at fault or (in the language of the regulations), the crash was non-preventable. (e.g., don’t penalize the carrier when a car runs into it while the truck was stopped at a red light) 
2. Evaluate changing the definition of reportable DOT crash for purposes of CSA to include only fatalities or injuries (e.g., exclude deer kills where no cars or people were involved).
3. Remove CSA scores from public view (their purpose is exclusively law enforcement) or, at a minimum, remove the Controlled Substance/Alcohol and Driver Fitness BASICs. (Carriers with higher scores in two (2) BASICs are involved in fewer accidents than carriers with lower scores!). 
4. FMCSA should standardize the data it gathers from the individual 50 states. 
5. FMCSA should not encourage non-law enforcement personnel (e.g., shippers, brokers, insurance companies, etc.) to use CSA data for carrier selection, and should not provide “guidance” on using CSA data to determine a carrier’s “qualification” for use.  The purpose of SMS is exclusively for internal law enforcement prioritization.