Executives See CSA, Hours-of-Service Rule Hindering Shippers

This story appears in the May 16 print edition of Transport Topics.

Shippers enjoying increases in manufacturing and production are being urged to start worrying about two federal regulations that could hinder their ability to move goods with trucks and could place them at risk in civil litigation.

Truckload executive Kevin Knight and attorney Henry Seaton told managers at the Transplace Inc. Shipper Symposium on May 11 in Dallas that the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program could be “a Christmas present for the plaintiffs’ bar” and that changes in the hours-of-service rule could tighten capacity by lowering truck productivity.

“CSA is a system that is rigged to fail. It is based on bad math,” said Seaton, who practices law in Virginia. Seaton argued that it is the responsibility of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to rate carriers as fit or unfit for service, but that FMCSA is fobbing off the judgment on shippers, freight brokers and third-party logistics providers, such as Transplace.

Seaton excoriated FMCSA for publication of most of the CSA scores, saying the numbers are fuel for lawsuits. “Wouldn’t an ambulance chaser love to crucify a carrier over this?”

A major shipper sitting on the panel said his Chicago-based company uses CSA scores in determining the carriers with which it will work. He urged trucking companies to be more forthcoming in declaring their CSA scores to shippers.

As soon as the shipper finished describing his practices, Seaton implored him to change them.

“If you use this information, then it will eventually go to a jury,” he warned.

Transplace CEO Tom Sanderson said “it is the role of the federal government to determine safety, not 3PLs. They shouldn’t put us in a position of sifting through data. It’s a waste of our time and money.”

Sanderson said his customer’s earnest attempt to select carriers with care is typical of the problem.

“The risk of liability over carrier selection is real now. Shippers are starting to use the CSA numbers, but our strong advice to them is that you shouldn’t. These companies have good legal departments, but they concentrate on manufacturing or retailing and they’re not transportation experts,” he said.

Knight, the chairman and CEO of Knight Transportation, spoke of CSA with a sense of disappointment and frustration.

“The information-gathering system is still very flawed. CSA scores for fatigue and accident rates don’t correlate,” said Knight, whose company ranks No. 34 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada and is the seventh-largest truckload carrier on the list.

Knight said he has researched CSA carefully and that “I have seen nothing more flawed than this in which we have participated. It will lead people to jump to flawed conclusions.”

Knight and Seaton touted U.S. trucking’s performance in reducing the rate of truck-involved fatalities, but Knight said the driver fatigue scores for his business and his main competitors do not align logically with accident rates (4-18, p.1).

Switching to FMCSA’s HOS proposal, Knight called it a “sacrificial lamb for a political agreement with the unions. Promises have been made to give contributors something for their money.”

Knight said law enforcement officers still have some difficulty in enforcing the current rule, and the FMCSA proposal is much more complicated.

“Wait until they get these new rules to enforce,” Knight said in expressing a concern. “I think the good carriers will be punished while those who cheat on the new rule will do better.”

Knight’s Phoenix-based company works in refrigerated and intermodal transportation in addition to dry vans. He said that he and his managers have talked to drivers about HOS and recommend several points.

“They want to be able to get a good seven or eight hours of sleep at night, and then maybe take a nap after lunch for an hour, but not have that count against the maximum,” he said.

Sanderson urged his shipper customers to take advantage of the comment period at FMCSA on the hours rule and told them to contact the agency.

“We could see incremental lost productivity, depending upon when a carrier delivers,” he said.

“FMCSA is trying to turn trucking into shift work, but it isn’t that,” said Seaton.