One in five carriers is still at risk of an intervention even under the new CSA 2010 procedures, according to a report issued this week by auditing service Rair. The company did another in-depth analysis of more than 60,000 fleets to gauge how the risk factors for carriers were impacted by the revisions the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently made to CSA 2010.
Using essentially the same methodology as the federal government, RAIR uncovered some significant changes, according to JJ Singh, CEO, but one thing remained the same: 20% of carriers overall are still at risk of an intervention. The big difference is that the smallest fleets (1-5 vehicles) saw their increase by half. It rose from 10 to 15%, according to the report. Fleets with 6-15 vehicles also saw a slight increase - from a 23% risk of intervention to a 25% risk. At the same time, the very largest fleets (501+ vehicles) saw their intervention risk fall from 72 to 42%. Fleets with 51-500 vehicles now have a 34% risk of intervention, down from 54% under the old procedures.
“The larger companies got the better part of things under the new procedures,” Singh told Fleet Owner, “but that is not to say the changes were necessarily unfair. A number of the changes made the rules fairer, in fact. For instance, truckload carriers tend to run a lot more miles than others, and the new procedures account for that and balance things out. Forty-two percent is also still a big number [and overall risk still does increase with fleet size under the new methodology].”
The CSA BASICS that are particular problems for carriers were also changed somewhat under the new procedures, according to the Rair report. Fatigued Driving is now the number one risk factor for fleets of all sizes. Under the former guidelines, only the smallest carriers were most likely to be deficient in Fatigued Driving. “It was the most problematic BASIC overall before, too, but there is more emphasis on it now,” he says. Under the former system, Unsafe Driving was the number one risk factor for fleets with 16 or more vehicles.
Improper Loading also dropped from number 4 to number 6 of the seven BASICS in terms of how problematic it is for all carriers under the new system, while Crash Indicators assumed the number 4 spot. “The changes to the Improper Loading BASIC benefitted everybody,” Singh notes.
According to Singh, the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC is apt to swing attention away from the driver and back to the vehicles once CSA is fully implemented at the end of the year. “It is the dark horse of the BASICS,” says Singh. “All eyes have been on the driver, but we think that will change.”
This last-minute rework of CSA 2010 evaluation procedures does not impact fleet marching orders, however, according to Singh. “Big fleets may be able to rest a little easier now,” he says, “but the CSA approach is still intact, still essentially the same. When the first intervention letters go out in November and December, it will certainly get everybody’s attention, if it hasn’t already.”
