August Newsletter – Glostone News
posted in Newsletter by Brian Gray
August Newsletter – Glostone News
FMCSA Lays Out 9-Year Driver-Fitness Plan
We all know that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s CSA program measures and scores a motor carriers safety compliance. The CSA program also has enhanced the FMCSA’s ability to perform interventions and demand improvements in a carrier’s safety compliance performance. The carrier is faced with improve compliance or incur fines, penalties and even being forced out of business. It has been the FMCSA’s plan all along to one day, implement these same types of safety compliance enforcement actions at the individual driver level. With the passage of MAP 21 in 2012, the FMCSA was given the green light to proceed towards this goal. When implemented, not only will the carrier be faced with being measured, scored and responding to FMCSA interventions, but individual drivers will too. The FMCSA has laid out a 9 year time table to implement their Driver Fitness program: Year 1: The FMCSA would assess the feasibility of establishing a new driver fitness plan by identifying driver-level data sources for monitoring individual drivers’ safety performance on a continuous basis and establishing a severity weighting system for various violations of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and identifying options for considering drivers’ crash involvement. Year 2: The agency will identify and develop a driver safety management system aimed at: identifying who the most unsafe drivers are, intervene with the driver to either modify the behavior or to remove the driver from service. ”The FMCSA would also initiate regulatory impact analyses to consider the number of drivers who would likely be rated unfit, and estimate the potential safety benefits in terms of crashes, injuries, and fatalities prevented by removing unfit drivers from the Nation’s roadways,” the report states. Years 3—5: The FMCSA will test the new driver safety fitness methodology and make modifications. Year 6: The FMCSA will use what they learned from the new driver safety fitness methodology and establish a notice-and-comment on rulemaking to establish a new driver fitness safety program, including enforcement penalties. The FMCSA will issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Year 7: The FMCSA would evaluate comments on the NPRM and issue a Final Rule and final regulatory impact analyses. Compliance with the new driver fitness rules would likely be 1-2 years later. Year 8: The FMCSA would work to implement the new driver fitness program, including training state and federal personnel, motor carriers and drivers. Year 9: The FMCSA would fully implement the Driver SFD program beginning with the compliance date established by the Final Rule.
Read more at http://cdllife.com/2013/top-trucking-news/fmcsa-lays-out-9-year-driver-fitness-plan/#gSpqxQcH2700rF3x.99
The Secret To Keeping Your CSA Scores Low!
I am often asked “how do I lower my CSA scores?” and usually, this question comes after the Carrier has been refused a load or lost a contract because his scores were too high. The answer of course is that there are no quick fixes or shortcuts. Lowering CSA scores and keeping them low takes commitment to safety by the entire organization, knowledge about what is being measured, training, procedures and constant follow up. Time and not repeating the same mistakes will lower your scores. Setting up, implementing and maintaining the proper safety procedures, known as “Best Practices”, will keep them low. Implementing Safety Best Practices is not an easy task and when done correctly, touches every person involved in your organization including owners, drivers, dispatchers, mechanics, supervisors, fork lift operators and administrative staff. Even adopting procedures that involve your customers, insurance company and vendors can help. When looking for a place to start implementing Best Practices, consider this: 25% of all roadside inspections are initiated because the enforcement official visually observes a defect on the truck. 75% of all violations written come from these inspections. Using these statistics it’s easy to see that reducing visual defects could reduce the number of inspections received by 25% and if you are not being inspected, you are not receiving violations! It stands to reason that if an enforcement official can see a defect, why can’t the driver? The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations outline a mandatory visual inspection process by drivers that include pre-trip, post-trip and Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIR). Building best practice procedures around these visual inspection processes makes sense to not only comply with the regulations but will get the driver to fix the defect BEFORE the enforcement official sees it! Consider these best practice policies and ideas for your organization:
- Establish a culture within your organization that the pre-trip, post-trip, and DVIR process is extremely important to your company and is mandatory with no exceptions allowed.
- Make sure your drivers are properly trained and periodically retrained on what to look for in pre-trip and post-trip inspections.
- Have a process that tracks the written DVIR document, audit for completeness and notify you when drivers fail to turn one in. The written DVIR is only required for companies with more than one driver but its importance makes it a great idea for the owner/operator as well.
- Make sure the driver knows exactly what to do when defects are found so that the problem is fixed prior to becoming a violation.
- Have a process in place that when a mechanic performs a repair that should have been listed on the DVIR but wasn’t or a violation was written for a pre-trip inspection item, the owner or safety director in notified.
- When a visual defect was missed by the driver, meet with them, and make sure they receive proper training (along with documentation) to ensure this does not happen in the future.
- Periodically do spot checks on the truck for any issues that may have been overlooked by the driver. If the driver knows that you will be checking up on them, they will do a better job.
- Randomly put some sort of a sticker or marker in various locations on the units that the driver should see if he/she does a proper pre trip inspection. Reward those who find the markers. Follow up with those that don’t!
Best practices don’t have to be complicated but without them, a company will struggle to survive in this highly regulated and competitive industry. Starting or enhancing your best practices around the pre-trip, post-trip, and DVIR process will make a positive, long term impact on your CSA scores.
NATSA TO HOST DOT COMPLIANCE WORKSHOP. Last Chance to Register!
Glostone Trucking Solutions is a proud member of the North American Transportation Services Association (NATSA). NATSA will be hosting a two day DOT compliance workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on September 18th and 19th, 2013. This unique workshop will not only focus on the essentials of an effective DOT safety program under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations but will also cover properly licensing trucks under the International Registration Plan, fuel/mileage tax reporting under the International Fuel Tax Agreement, audit preparation using paper or GPS data along with record keeping requirements. The workshop is ideal for Fleet Managers, HR Professionals, Admin Staff, and Owner Operators. To learn more and for registration information, visit the NATSA website at www.natsa.info.
