CSA 2010 is out and Compliance * Safety * Accountability, or CSA, is in. And this just in, it appears truckers have feelings, too! The word Deficient has now been replaced with the much less harsh "Alert". They have also changed the alert color to Orange instead of Red. Can you believe this stuff, instead of looking into the continued accuracy of the data, the FMCSA just wants to soft sell the bad news. I think FMCSA Administrator Ann Ferro is more concerned with hurting a carrier's feelings than with the effectiveness of her own program. Ok, now that I got that out of my system, I want to go over some of the changes that took place since August 16th.

First though, something that's been puzzling me. While CSA 2010 is quite simply one of the biggest changes to hit transportation since deregulation, according to FMCSA only 2.6% of all carriers have bothered to review their CSA 2010 data. Wow, go figure! What the heck are you waiting for? As big of a joke as it might be, I am starting to get the impression that a whole lot of carriers believe CSA stands for "Clean Slate of America".

Let's review the numbers: there are approximately 500,000 carriers. This means only 13,000 carriers have bothered to take the time to review their data, and those were more than likely some of the bigger ones. That leaves a whole bunch of carriers, truckers, owner operators, and anybody else you can think of that owns or manages a truck, that haven't gone online to find out where they stand. Who's not looking? More than likely it's the small guy, the Mom and Pop carriers that make up a very important piece of today's transportation puzzle. Of the carriers that have looked, nearly 70% were deficient in at least 1 BASIC category.

Now, let's take a quick look at the changes that went into effect August 16th:

1. Fatigued Driving, Driver Fitness, Vehicle Maintenance, Cargo-Related BASICS, and Controlled Substances are now divided by relevant inspections that equal which Safety Event Grouping carriers are peered with.
   
2. In the Unsafe and Crash BASICS a formula of VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) along with the power unit count: The more miles traveled, the larger the number which divided out represents a smaller overall number that is better for the carrier.
3. SMS Methodology changed: 270 violations were removed, 260 changes to severity weight and a 5% increase in driver responsibility points. What does this mean and why should we care? The top 10 violations will become even more important to manage because they've just made the menu of violations smaller to make enforcement easier.
4. Another big change is industry segmentation: tractor trailers are now considered a Combination class, or Combo, and straight trucks are classed as Straight. These classes will no longer be combined in the same peer groups.
5. Intervention thresholds have been changed: in the Unsafe, Fatigued Driving, and Accident categories the threshold has been lowered to 65%. Meaning if you are in the 66% and higher percentile, you are deficient in that BASIC. Oops, sorry, you've "exceeded the threshold". The other 4 BASIC's have been raised to 80%, so you really have to be bad in these to be found deficient. There I go again, found "in excess of the threshold". Sorry, my bad.

Here's the bottom line, changes or no changes, regardless of whether you're a carrier, a trucker, an owner or a manager, you better get on the FMCSA web site, go to the CSA 2010 site and take a look at your data. You DO NOT want to be the guy or gal responsible for the surprise of finding out that your company is in bad shape under these new regulations. You do, however, want to be the person that's been pro-active and given the data a look and determined what your company needs to focus in the near future. I wish everyone good luck with this new process.

Let me leave you with this last thought: Treat everybody like you want to be treated and the rest will get along just fine. This is my CSA 2010 blog entry and I'm out.

• CSA 2010
• DataQ
• SMS Methodology
• CSA 2010 FAQs