Fleets Blast Hazmat Plan

This story appears in the Aug. 6 print edition of Transport Topics.

Proposed changes intended to strengthen federal enforcement of fleets that haul hazardous materials would have the unintended effect of damaging the safety ratings of some of the industry’s safest operators.

That is the conclusion reached by carriers and business organizations that filed comments with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration expressing concerns that reputations and bottom lines would be damaged if the agency implements its proposed changes for the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program (3-26, p. 1).

“As currently structured, the [hazmat Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category] assigns high scores to many reputable, safe motor carriers with laudable crash rates and low scores in all other categories,” American Trucking Associations wrote.

An FMCSA spokeswoman said the agency is reviewing the public comments and will publish final changes this month.

During the comment period, which ended July 30, FMCSA posted profiles for private viewing that showed how carriers’ scores would change under the proposed revisions.

The largest number of the roughly 80 comments were related to the hazmat changes and revealed how radically some scores could worsen.

Truckload carrier Knight Transportation, which ranks No. 30 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers, said that only 1% of its loads over the past two years contained hazardous materials and that, of its nearly 10,000 inspections, only 81 were hazmat-related.

“Does a carrier who has 90 relevant inspections out of 10,000 overall inspections pose the same risk as a carrier who has 100 relevant inspections out of 100 overall inspections involving hazardous materials?” Knight asked.

The carrier said that under the new Hazardous Materials BASIC, it would have an initial ranking in the 98th percentile, which is above the threshold FMCSA uses to determine which carriers need special attention.

In the CSA system, a lower percentile score indicates a safer performance.

Likewise, less-than-truckload firm ABF Freight System Inc., whose parent company, Arkansas Best, ranks No. 13 on the TT 100, said the proposed hazmat scores are not an accurate indicator of safety performance.

“This erroneous perception by shippers, insurers, the news media and the motoring public is damaging,” ABF said.

Todd Bunting, vice president of safety for flatbed carrier TMC Transportation, said his company had 4,611 roadside inspections in the past two years, but only 49 were hazmat-relevant. Under the proposal, however, the company’s hazardous materials score would likely be 99.3.

“When this score is made public, the shippers we use will view this score as a carrier that has significant issues in the hazmat area and could very well choose to cut us off as a carrier for their entire product, not just their hazmat products,” Bunting wrote. Con-way Inc., No. 3 on the TT 100, suggested that FMCSA further research its methodology.

“When evaluating our own data and working with other carriers, it has become very apparent that carriers with high percentile scores in the new hazmat BASIC have very low scores” in other areas, including the Crash Indicator BASIC,” Con-way said. “It appears the new hazmat BASIC falls out of scope of CSA’s intent to target carriers that may cause future commercial motor vehicle crashes, fatalities and injuries.”

Transport America, No. 60 on the TT 100, told FMCSA it has a very good safety record and was even told by an inspector during a 2010 compliance review that the company had “one of the best audits he had been on.”

“That being said, after previewing our Hazardous Materials BASIC score, I was very concerned to see we were in ‘alert status’ with a score of 91,” a Transport America executive wrote. “We have never had an injury or accident caused by hazardous materials.”

Werner Enterprises Inc., No. 11 on the TT for-hire list, said the new hazmat category “is a step away from the current path and purpose of CSA.”

“The current BASICSs are directed almost entirely at accident causation and prevention,” a Werner executive wrote. “The proposed HM BASIC, on the other hand, has very little to do with accident causation and instead is directed almost entirely at accident severity.”

Likewise, after reviewing its score, J.B. Hunt Transport Services, No. 5 on the TT 100, said, “The inconsistency in the pending hazardous material score compared to all other scores or data associated with J.B. Hunt gives rise to questions about its accuracy and validity.”

Vigillo LLC, a firm that crunches CSA data for carriers and brokers, said the proposed changes “do not address any of these badly needed improvements and, in fact, steer CSA further into a course of compliance management instead of safety management.

“Tissue-thin data is available on the new hazmat BASIC and the data that is available shows only placards and paperwork, with no tie to driver behavior that leads to crashes — the stated mission of CSA since 2004,” Vigillo wrote. “Yet this new, publicly available BASIC will become the focus of brokers, shippers, drivers, plaintiffs and law enforcement as equivalent to BASICs with true safety backbone.”