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Category Archives: CSA Rebuilt
Time is Running Out
Have you added your 2 cents? The SMS preview of the new HM Basic and Cargo moving to the maintenance is currently available to carriers to see how they will look if the CSA changes as exhibited are implemented. Have you looked at your preview? Last week according to Dave Osiecki of the ATA only 5000 carriers have looked at their preview site. There are 90K carriers with sufficient data to generate a CSA score (11% of the active carriers). Only 5.5% of the CSA scored companies have checked their new status.
Comments are due on or before May 29, 2012. So while you are grilling your brats, watching the race, or relaxing by the pool Memorial Day weekend, think about your position on the CSA changes and get them in. Maybe think about it between now and then while you also ponder a mother’s day gift. Use this link to check your preview: http://bit.ly/SMSPre. Read more
Cha Cha Changes
“I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet”
Well, it’s time yet again for changes to the CSA Methodology. This time, it’s in “preview” form. The FMCSA has published the revised methodology for the new HAZMAT BASIC and is giving carriers a sneak peak into what it might look like when it becomes official in a few months. (FYI, that’s David Bowie on the left…..he wrote the song “Changes”. He foresaw CSA way back in the ’70′s!)
New Hazmat BASIC Preview due next week
Starting sometime next week, carriers will get a chance to preview their data under the proposed changes to the SMS system. In a story published by TruckingInfo.com Administrator Ferro said these enhancements come from discussions with enforcement, industry, FMCSA investigators and the agency’s own in-depth analysis.
Read More……………
Challenges Still Ahead in 2012
Now that CSA has been around for a year, we’ve had time to gather stories about how CSA has affected fleets. Read more
New Year Resolution or No Resolution
A new year is just days away. What resolutions have you have decided on? Or you are anti-resolutions? Instead of thinking of the typical healthy tasks we usually consider at year end for resolutions (remember a routine takes 21 days to get into your regular regimen to become effective), let’s think about organization and data. You probably have enough monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks to keep track of. Perhaps your goal is to clean off your desk every day before you leave, keep your email inbox under a minimum quantity – you know 2000 perhaps, or to keep your to do list current. While thinking about all those ways personal and professional life improvements, be sure to remember your not so ordinary time line of the FMCSA biennial task. Just out is the friendly reminder from FMCSA regarding VMT & PU updates.
Go Big or Go Home
We’re number crunchers over here at Vigillo. We eat them for breakfast… lunch… and a late afternoon snack… (dinner is non-numbers because beer goes better with real food).
Okay, so 3 square meals aside, we look at the digits all day long. For the most part, the numbers are expected and align themselves with what we know about the world around us. Sometimes, the numbers are hidden, and sneak up on us like the Chili we had the night before. You’re just humming along and then all of a sudden, “hmm… maybe I better take a minute…”
That’s what these numbers did to me. We’ve got a far more extensive data set at home with the kiddos, but I thought I’d bring out the fancy presents that got my attention. Nationally there are currently about 1.2 million fleets registered with the FMCSA. Of those fleets, only 4.4% have a public BASIC with an alert: about 56,000 fleets. Not a big deal right? Read more
Safety Event Groups: And why you should care!
Safety Event Groups seems to be a huge part of CSA that appears simple, but really just add to the confusion. In August, 2010, the FMCSA shifted the methodology from Peer Groups to Safety Event Group when they stopped using Average Power Units (APU) to group fleets. This lead to a lot of concern as suddenly many fleets saw drastic shifts in their percentile rank. Why the sudden shift in rank if there wasn’t a sudden shift in performance?
Read more
Tiered Speeding: A Year Later
So… That tiered speeding… Carriers were excited in August of 2010 (yeah, a whole year ago!) when the FMCSA introduced tiered speeding with the CSA Methodology revision.
Maintenance Violations – What Changed?
I recently posted about the significant changes to the Cargo BASIC violations with the release of the new CSA SMS Methodology, version 1.2. Well, it turns out that the FMCSA made changes to the Maintenance BASIC as well – though not nearly as numerous. No severity weights were changed – only a handful of violations added or removed.
As you can see below, several of the “removed” violations were actually given a slightly different violation code and brought back as a new violation. These changes, however incremental, are a good reminder that CSA is likely to be moving target / rolling stone / [insert your own metaphor here for a constantly changing and evolving system]. Whatever the case, we’ll keep you abreast of new developments here on the Vigillo Blog.
Maintenance Violations REMOVED: Read more
What A Relief!!
Today, the Commercial Carrier Journal published a story indicating that barely 12% of all carriers have any ranking at all in the 5 BASIC categories made public under the CSA initiative.
What a relief! Finally, proof that the throng of Chicken Little’s out there are mistakenly screaming “the sky is falling”. This will surely be cited by many as testament that CSA will have little or no impact versus the recently terminated SafeStat system.
With all due respect to our close friends at CCJ (roll Tide!) I would submit to you that this cursory analysis provides little solace to for-hire, LTL, and private fleets. Why you ask? How can this be? Let’s take a closer look. Read more