The New Hours Rule Has Been Released
It is found here. The 11 hour rule remains. They drastically cut the number of hours you can work a week. You must take a 30 minute off-duty or sleeper break for every 8 hours of driving. They added a provision which says if you exceed the 11 hour driving limit by 3 hours or more, they can fine the motor carrier up to $11,000, and the driver up to $2,750 per occurence. Most of these rules go into effect on July 1, 2013. The increased penalty amounts go into effect in 60 days.
ATA’s comments on this are here. They view the rule as a disaster. They are correct. It is a disaster. Of course, we all knew it was coming. The main change is the 70 hour rule. At present, you can take a 34 hour off-duty break, which resets your 70 hour clock to zero. Easy, simple, effective.
Under the new rule, your 34 hour break, must encompass two periods covering 1:00am to 5:00am in order to count. In other words, if you start your 34 hour break at 2:00am on Saturday morning, in order to reset your clock to zero, it will have to last until 5:00 am Monday. Presently, you could start your week at noon Sunday, with a fresh 70 hours, in this example.
Also, you are only allowed to use the 34 hour reset provision once every 168 hours, ie once every 7 days. So, if you work 14 hours a day, for 5 days, then take your 34 hour reset on the weekend, you can start back at zero when the 34 hour break is over, but you cannot start another 34 hour reset until 168 hours have passed. Basically, this serves the purpose of limiting a driver to no more than 70 hours in any 7 days, whereas under the current rule, I could get over 80 hours, if I have reset included in the 7 days. I haven’t worked at all the details of exactly how that works, but it will definitely limit the hours a driver can work.
So now what? Well, hopefully, the ATA or OOIDA will sue the agency. The “safety” groups have already indicated they intend to sue based on the fact that the 11 hour driving rule was retained. They are suing to make the rules even more restrictive. So, there is a chance that relief from this idiocy will be granted in the courts since FMCSA has no scientific or statistical basis for these changes. However, I wouldn’t count on that. The other, more effective way, of ridding ourselves of these new rules is to rid ourselves of Barack Obama and Ray LaHood on November 6, 2012. There’s no guarantee a new President will halt this rulemaking, although I would say it is more likely than not. One thing is certain: 4 more years of Barack Obama guarantees these rules will go into effect in 2013.
NTSB Wants to Ban All Cellphones
The other big news on the cellphone front was the National Transportation Safety Board has declared that all cellphones, regardless of whether it has hands-free technology or not, should be illegal while driving, in any type of vehicle, not just commercial vehicles.
Just to clarify, that means, if you are in your car, and you want to make a phone call, even with your Bluetooth, it would be illegal. The NTSB wants it to be illegal to talk on the phone, no exceptions.
What does this mean? Initially, nothing. The NTSB has no regulatory power. However, when it makes recommendations, the safety nannies now have cover to implement their draconian bans, rules, and laws, if they want. Naturally, under the Obama Department of Transportation, they most certainly do want. All you need do is listen to the language they use, as they breathlessly describe the NTSB’s declaration as a “game-changer”.
The way the Obama DOT would take your cellphone is by blackmailing the States to adopt their cellphone ban by withholding highway funding. The Federal government successfully used this tactic when it forced all States to adopt a 0.08 BAC level for drunk driving.
Naturally, the NTSB has no data to support their ban, none. In fact, it was just announced highway fatalities fell again, to the lowest levels since 1949. Furthermore, there has been no reduction in crashes in those States, which have banned hand-held cellphones. But hey, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, right NTSB?
According to the NTSB, talking on a cellphone in a car is a public-health epidemic, like drunk driving, or smoking. Nonsense! What is the difference if I am talking on my Bluetooth to a customer in Detroit, or to talking to my wife sitting in the passenger seat? There is no difference! I guess that will be next, the safety nazis will ban passengers, or perhaps conversation.
Every time these fools break out their “no life is worth, blah, blah, blah” crap, they ignore certain realities. If we wanted to eliminate highway deaths, we could do so tomorrow. We would just eliminate cars. Of course, no would be able to get to work, the economy would stop, and we’d all starve to death, but you wouldn’t be killed in a highway crash. Just a slower, more likely death due to starvation.
This type of a ban would be crippling to the economy. Nearly every type of working person communicates with a cellphone while driving. Utility workers. Lawyers. Accountants. Teachers. Salesmen. Contractors. All doing work, and creating economy activity while driving. Gone. Poof. The amount of people thrown into the unemployment line, would be staggering. By all means, that’s what we need right now are more unemployed people.
Then again, forget the economy, this ban would be crippling to my freedom. You cannot legislate away risk! Not in a free society. The more you try, the less free we become. The statistics say the amount of highway deaths are at their lowest levels since 1949. I’m ok with that! LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!
President Obama’s regulatory Commandant, Ray LaHood, recently said, “Keeping Americans safe is without question the Federal government’s highest priority”. Let’s compare that with Thomas Jefferson:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Jefferson should have added, “but they don’t have the Right to talk on the Cellphone, if some government bureaucrat declares they Cannot”.
In the News
Well, I vowed I would keep this blog current, but I guess I haven’t been doing a very good job. Well, I did run a marathon two weeks ago, so that sort of thing, along with doing your normal 60 – 70 hours a week job keeps you busy. So what has been happening? Well, Anne Ferro, head of FMCSA, said they will not miss a beat in pursuing their EOBR dictum. Or miss a step. Or something like that. Anyway, they are pressing forward as if nothing happened. No surprise there. It will take them a good amount of time to bulletproof their next rulemaking, so it will be next year before anything new is issued on the EOBR front. They might not even get it out then, but I am certain they want it published before the 2012 elections.
On the hours of service front, FMCSA is probably within a month of announcing what the new hours of service rules will be. The ATA has pulled out all the stops to stop the new rules, but presently, it looks like the Obama Administration will dance with who brung them, that being the Teamsters. The FMCSA has signaled it IS going to issue these new rules, and they will be more restrictive. Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee John Mica has threatened to “aggressively oversee” any attempted changes to the hours of service rules. I hold out no hope he’s going to do anything. The only thing Congress does aggressively is spend taxpayers money. The fact that Mica is a Republican is irrelevant. In fact, before becoming Obama’s regulatory point-man, Ray LaHood was a Congressman. Do you know which party he belonged to? Wait for it………… the Republican party. Mica will do nothing.
The ATA has promised an immediate lawsuit when FMCSA finally makes its move. I think there is a better than even chance ATA will achieve some kind of standoff in court which will force FMCSA to keep using the old rules, at least for awhile. The bottomline is, no one knows what rules will be in effect 6 months from now.
One other thought: I have been watching these Republican debates. I’m deciding who to support in the GOP primary. I did hear one candidate say something which I’ve been waiting to hear. This candidate said he would halt all of Obama’s rulemakings, which I think would be absolutely fantastic, and help get the economy moving again. Unfortunately, the candidate who said it was Mitt Romney, who takes both sides of every issue. Romney is no way, shape or form will stop the government takoever of the private sector now underway. In fact, I have decided if Romney is the nominee I will vote for myself. While I don’t like my chances on winning, at least I won’t be a Big Government socialist like Obama or Romney.
FMCSA Makes The “Most Expensive List”
Here’s more bad news for the FMCSA. Recently, House Speaker Boehner asked the Obama Administration to identify pending rules which will cost business more than $1 billion each. Each executive agency when it develops a regulatory rule is required to estimate how much the rule will cost in dollars and cents. So, the Obama Administration took count of all its rules, and identified 7 rules which it estimates will cost more than $1 billion each. These are the Obama Administration’s estimates, so you know in reality these rules will actually cost much more than that.
Here is an article from Bloomberg which talks about this issue. Of the seven, four of the most expensive where EPA rules. No surprise there. Another was a rule by NHTSA, potentially requiring back-up cameras on cars. The final two rules were the FMCSA re-write of the hours of service rules, and the FMCSA mandate of EOBRs.
This means FMCSA is now being mentioned in the same breath as EPA! Way to go FMCSA! Seriously, this is no small accomplishment. FMCSA is, by the size of their agency and their budget, pretty small in terms of governmental agencies. To have not just one, but two of the most expensive rules in all the government, is really saying something. FMCSA may finally be getting the recognition it deserves. In fact, it’s possible this is the first time the Speaker of House has ever even heard of “FMCSA”. Hopefully he, and the rest of the GOP caucus will keep these uber-expensive regulations in mind when it comes time to pass the over-due Highway Reauthorization bill.
Obama Administration Plans to Tax Miles Driven
Apparently, in the new highway reauthorization bill slowly being crafted in Congress, Ray LaHood and Obama have inserted language requiring the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive. More information is found in this blog by “The Hill”.
This is no surprise at all, and will certainly happen if we do nothing and let it happen. It will certainly happen quicker for commercial vehicles, as all will have EOBRs in them within the next 5 years if the Obama Administration and the American Trucking Association get their way. Not a problem to track and tax a truck if it has an EOBR in it.
And now, one of my favorite Beatles tunes, Taxman:
Let me tell you
How it will be.
There’s one for you,
Nineteen for me,
‘Cause I’m the taxman.
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Should five percent
Appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t
Take it all.
‘Cause I’m the taxman.
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
If you drive a car,
I’ll tax the street.
If you drive to city,
I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold,
I’ll tax the heat.
If you take a walk,
I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman!
‘Cause I’m the taxman.
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for,
(Uh-uh, Mr. Wilson.)
If you don’t want to pay some more.
(Uh-uh, Mr. Heath.)
‘Cause I’m the taxman.
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
And my advice to
Those who die.
(Taxman!)
Declare the pennies
On your eyes.
(Taxman!)
‘Cause I’m the taxman.
Yeah, I’m the taxman,
And you’re working for no one but me.
(Taxman!)
I just learned something recently about this song…. it’s actually accurate. I just assumed the part about “One for you, nineteen for me” was George Harrison exaggerating. In truth, he was not exaggerating. Apparently, in the 1960′s the British government taxed high wage earners, like the Beatles, at a 95% tax rate. Therefore, one for you, nineteen for me. Well, coming soon to an IRS office near you.
Dan the Trucker Thinks EOBRs Stink
A man named “Dan the Trucker” stopped by the blog the other day, and posted a rather lengthy comment after one of my EOBR posts. I decided to re-post it in its entirety, because 1) I mostly agree with Dan the Trucker, and 2) it’s an easy way to generate content on the blog. I will briefly summarize Dan’s comments. EOBRs are an infringement on truck drivers’ rights, specifically the right against unreasonable search and seizure. EOBR boxes are nothing more than “spy” boxes, used to monitor truck drivers, for which there is no justification in the Constitution. There is no link between EOBRs and safety. EOBRs should be put on government workers and politicians. My summary does not do Dan’s post justice, I urge you to read it for yourself.
—————————————————————————-
I am alarmed and deeply angered at the recent proposal and remarks of Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation. In defending his proposal to require approximately 500,000 carriers install Electronic On-Board Recorders (EOBRs) on nearly all trucks, he said, “We cannot protect our roadways when commercial truck and bus companies exceed hours-of-service rules. This proposal would make our roads safer by ensuring that carriers traveling across state lines are using EOBRs to track the hours their drivers spend behind the wheel.”
Here’s a proposal for Mr. LaHood. Let’s put Internet-trackable GPS Electronic Tethers (IGETs) on him and each of the 55,000 people under his command at Transportation. We citizens cannot protect our freedoms when commercial politicians like him exceed the constitution’s rules. This proposal would make our nation safer by ensuring that politicians who rule across state lines are using IGETs so we can track the hours they and their staffs are spending.
After Mr. LaHood has developed this IGET system with a very small part of his $70 billion taxpayer-paid-for annual budget, prototyped it on himself and his 55,000 employees for, say, three years, he can expand his program to include all elected politicians and their staff members in the federal government. After that, he should come back to us lowly truck drivers and we’ll discuss together the installation of his EOBR spy boxes in our trucks. Then we can all spy on each other and be one big happy community together. It’ll be great! It’ll make our roads safer, right?
The EOBR spy box defenders say these are not spy boxes, but only monitoring devices that record a limited number of functions (e.g., when the truck is running, the duty status of the driver, etc.). This is the third biggest lie ever told by a politician, right after “the income tax we are creating will never exceed three per cent” and “the social security number will never be used for purposes of identification.” Today’s EOBR spy boxes are a Model T; tomorrow’s will be a 2025 government BMW with metallic paint and the ability to cruise at 35,000 feet. Today, the government will require carriers run the spy boxes and dictate to those carriers how and when they show government their every record, but tomorrow the government will control or own the carriers and their boxes, just as they now control or own car companies, student loans, mortgages, and health care. Remember how employer-provided health care was designed to eventually become government-run health care? Same song, another verse. Government-run trucking. Enjoy.
As Mr. LaHood voluntarily took office on Jan. 23, 2009, he accepted the responsibility to defend the constitution. Its 4th Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” He has not only failed in this task, but he is abusing the legitimate power of his good office to illegitimately attack the rights he is sworn to uphold. Understand what Mr. LaHood is doing: he is not simply failing to protect our 4th Amendment right with Carter-level incompetance or malfeasance, he has joined (and is leading!) the attack against it!
Mr. LaHood’s stated reason for his perpetration of the EOBR spy boxes on us is to “make our roads safer.” He is not telling the truth. Where’s his proof? Where are the longitudinal studies that support his claim? Who comprised the control group? Where is the statisticians’ report showing a proper interpretation of the raw data? How much “safer” will our roads be if we give up our right to be free from this type of government’s search of us and our things? Where is the ratified constitutional amendment by which we citizens gave up our 4th Amendment right to be free from government searches without a specific, limited warrant?
If a judge were to demonstrate a bias against an innocent defendant as Mr. LaHood’s above remark demonstrates against truck drivers, the outraged defense lawyer would rightly demand the judge’s removal from the case (perhaps from the bench!), but Mr. LaHood continues to sit in judgmental judgment of us. The government’s subjection of certain convicted criminals to its surveillance is appropriate; subjecting law-abiding citizens to this treatment is itself criminal. We are individual citizens who are not only unconvicted, but unaccused, and against whom the only evidence is Mr. LaHood’s prejudice. Mr. LaHood’s remark shows he has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be a public servant. He needs to be removed from office.
Companies have every right to know (therefore, to track) the whereabouts and use of any equipments which belong to them (consistent with employees’ rights), but government has no such right. The government has no right to track innocent citizens where the only evidence of wrongdoing is the prejudice of government leaders. Use of EOBRs is an issue between a carrier and its insurance company, and between a carrier and its employees, and it’s none of the federal government’s stinking business. Butt out, Mr. LaHood: find your new home in the unemployment line.
I favor increasing traffic safety and preserving our constitutional rights. Mr. LaHood favors using traffic safety as an excuse to violate those same rights. We do not need government-required tracking devices around us. As Mr. LaHood is unfit for public office at any level, he needs to find a new job, preferably one in the private sector where his remuneration is based on productivity instead of political connections.
The misdeeds of some is never justification for violating the rights of all. Our constitution and Bill of Rights must stand, and Mr. LaHood must stand down.
Dan the Trucker
truckdrivingdan@yahoo.com
Updates, updates, updates
So, what’s new? I apologize for not posting sooner. I guess I’ve been pretty busy. First, for those of you who have sent me questions: thank you for your interest in Arnold Safety. If I haven’t responded yet, like I said, I’m pretty busy. Use of the word, “please” also makes it more likely I will respond. Offering to pay makes it much more likely I will respond…. or at least respond more thoroughly.
In the news: there was a giant bus crash in the Bronx, NY where 15 people were killed. In the all the articles I saw, they still haven’t pinned down what happened. The driver may or may not have fallen asleep, or he may or may not have been run off the road by another truck. Then apparently there was another bus crash in New Jersey a few days later, killing a few more people, so right now the DOT has the heat on all the bus companies.
DOT’s hours of service proposal marches merrily along. The comment period is closed; now we wait for the final verdict from DOT. Remember, DOT means FMCSA…. I use the two interchangeably. I will be shocked if it’s anything other than what’s already been announced. Yes, we have a GOP house, but as The Who said, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.
DOT moved back the deadline for commenting on the EOBR mandate to May 23. I thought about commenting, but what’s the point? My comment was going to center around the crash rates for the last 30 years. I poked around the Internet, and found NHTSA’s fatalities for both car and truck accidents littered here, there, and everywhere on the Internet. After some effort, I pieced the number of crashes together. What I found was the number of fatalities caused by truck crashes since 1980 has dropped very slowly until about 2007, then it has dropped much more quickly.
So, I then compared it to the number of fatalities caused by car crashes since 1980. Those fatalities have dropped very slowly until about 2007, then they dropped much more quickly. In fact, the rate of decline in both fataility rates were virtually identical.
So, what conclusion did I draw from this? As we all know, commercial motor vehicles and their drivers are highly regulated, and becoming more so every day. Therefore, the number of deaths from truck crashes should have dropped at a much more dramatic rate than deaths from car accidents, as car drivers are for the most part, unregulated. After all, in car drivers, we have teenagers, 90 year olds, drug addicts, drunks, drag racers, road ragers, and people who don’t speak English. In short, it’s an unregulated free-for-all.
This is not the case, however. The number of deaths in car crashes and truck crashes have moved in tandem. I conclude the extensive efforts of the DOT over the past 30 years to regulate commercial vehicles for safety have largely been for naught. Otherwise, you would see a greater improvement in the number of truck deaths.
I considered creating charts, graphs, writing up my conclusions, and commenting on DOT’s new laws, but then I thought, “why?” There’s a 90% chance they would not even bother to address the comment, and if they did, they would either invent some new statistics showing me how much safer I am because of their rules. I thought about sending it to my GOP Congressman and Senator, but considering these guys can only find $61 billion to cut in a $3.8 trillion budget….. I might as well talk to the wall. Republicans, Democrats: two sides of the same coin. Big government and Much Bigger government.
Back to DOT having nothing to do with safety: what about the Bronx bus crash? 15 people are dead, how can I say DOT is not safety related? Well, from what I have read, they have not found a violation of the safety regulations which led to the crash. That may change. Nevertheless, many crashes… in fact the vast majority of truck crashes do not involve a violation of the safety regulations. They are accidents. Most are the fault of the car who cut off, or otherwise ran into the truck. Many of the rest can be attributed to carelessness, such as a driver dozing off, even though he is well within his duty hours. Sometimes a driver runs off the road, or into another vehicle simply because he’s not paying attention.
If I were King, I’d leave the current rules alone. Just leave it alone. But, since there’s no danger of my becoming King, the regulatory onslaught will continue. You know what’s really funny? Once the economy picks up, maybe in 5 or 6 years, the number of highway fatalities will go up, despite all these draconian safety measures they are now enacting. How do I know this? The number of people killed on the roads is much more a function of how many people are on the roads, rather than the safety regulations. There was a dramatic drop in deaths over the past 2-3 years, not because of anything DOT did, but because we suffered the worst economic downturn since the Depression.
Initial Thought on EOBR Mandate
I read this rulemaking more carefully, and my first thought is, “It’s a ridiculous, unwarranted intrusion into private business, which has nothing to do with safety”. That was my first thought. Here is the money quote from the rulemaking itself, on page 40:
“The Agency is currently unable to evaluate the extent to which the proposed changes to the supporting documents requirements will lead to reductions in crashes”.
In other words, they have no idea if this will reduce crashes or not. Furthermore, they have no idea if this will increase crashes. Nor do they care. More on this later.
FMCSA Official Accused of Taking Bribes
FYI my original blog post somehow disappeared. If you left a comment before, please leave it again. Thanks! EA
Well, my underground fan club at FMCSA has been anxiously waiting for me to comment on this one, so here it is. The original article from the Buffalo News can be found here.
In summary, James H. Wood, Field Office Supervisor of the FMCSA Buffalo, New York office, is accused of taking bribes from Canadian safety consultants. In exchange, Wood would delay audits of Canadian motor carriers, or schedule audits on competing motor carriers. Apparently, one of the Canadian safety consultants who had been funnelling Wood cash contacted the FBI, and turned Mr. Wood in. He alleged he paid Wood $60,000 – 70,000 over the past two years for information and assistance.
Whoooooo! $60,000 – 70,000! No wonder I don’t have any Canadian customers right now! I mean, hell, if you’re taking bribes, shouldn’t you open that up to all consultants? Really, give us all a chance to bid on it! The article says Wood pushed back an audit for $1,000. $1,000? Hey, my guys can come up with that! Really! I’ve got that sitting in my bank account right now. What do you want, money order, Comcheck, or good ol’ cash? If I knew that was the going rate, maybe we could have avoided some of these darned audits.
Ok, I’m joking. Seriously, I would not try to bribe any FMCSA officials. One, it’s illegal. Two, it’s illegal. Three, if you get caught you go to jail, because it’s illegal. Furthermore, in the 13 years I worked at FMCSA I did not take any bribes. For that matter, I did not know of anyone taking bribes. I never even heard of anyone taking bribes. I just assumed that sort of thing could never happen. For one thing, these FMCSA guys make outrageous sums of money in salaries and benefits. To risk that, you’d have to be an idiot, crazy, or both.
There was a story once, which happened probably around 1992 or 1993. FMCSA had a guy named Pete Argen who was an auditor, working out of this very same Buffalo office. A Canadian motor carrier offered to hook him up with something in the neighborhood of $10,000 to make his audit go away. Argen reported the attempted bribe to his bosses, who then set him up with the FBI. The FBI wired Argen up, and when the Canadian trucking company official attempted to make the payoff, the FBI took him down, and arrested him. That’s the only story I ever heard about bribes.
I don’t know this guy, James H. Wood. Never met him, not sure if he was working at FMCSA when I worked there. I quit in 2003. Once upon a time, I knew everyone in that New York office. I guess I feel bad for the ones I know who still work there, because this is as bad as it gets. A good number of my customers already think the system is corrupt. If I had a nickel for every customer who asked why isn’t DOT going after my competitor, or it’s just a shakedown, or DOT just wants money…. I could retire.
I already had a customer who saw this talk to me. The conversation was along the lines of:
TRUCKER: So that’s how these guys roll? Why don’t we just pay these guys off next time they want to audit me?
ME: Well, they don’t all take bribes. This is an isolated instance.
TRUCKER: Isolated instance? I told them my screwed-up logs were an isolated instance last time, and they fined me $15,000. They’re all in it together, just tell me how much I need to come up with.
ME: I don’t think that’s going to work, especially since I know the guy you’d have to bribe, and he’d never go for it.
TRUCKER: Yeah, ok. What about his boss?
Ok, that conversation did not take place, it’s a joke, but it’s just a matter of time before it does. So thank you, James H. Wood, whoever the hell you are. Thanks for making my job tougher. Now I have to explain to my already suspicious, untrusting customer base the system really is not corrupt, and that payoffs are not a way of life at FMCSA.
To my friends at FMCSA, I do have season tickets to one of the best teams in baseball, the Philadelphia Phillies. I’m just sayin’……..
Again, that is a joke. While it is true I do have tickets to the Phillies, I would never offer said tickets in any sort of bribe attempt, nor would I offer anything else in any type of bribe attempt, because I really don’t want to go to jail. I’m just having a good time poking fun at FMCSA, so all you FBI agents reading this, please don’t bother wiretapping my phones.
CSA 2010 Says Mexican Carriers Unsafe?
So, I was playing around with DOT’s new CSA 2010 rankings, looking for potential customers. I noticed something interesting. The DOT’s new CSA 2010 website is barely functional. You can search one carrier at a time, but you really cannot pull up entire lists of carriers at the moment. For example, I can’t pull up all carriers from Pennsylvania. You can, however, download the CSA 2010 rankings. However, in the downloaded data, it only identifies the carriers by DOT #. So, you have to look up each DOT #, one by one, to find out who is who. So who’s at the top of the Driver Fitness and Vehicle Maintenance categories? The Mexican carriers.
I don’t mean just one or two, either. I mean dozens upon dozens of them. Here, you try it yourself. Go to their “Carrier Search” page. Click on the “Advanced Search” tab. Select Outside U.S., and then pick “U.S.” from the drop down menu. Then search for “Driver Fitness” = 100. What you are doing is searching for American carriers whose Driver Fitness score equals 100, which means the American carriers who have the most unfit drivers. The query returns you 6 American companies.
Do it again, except this time, instead of picking “United States” on the drop down menu, pick “Mexico”. The query returns you 100 Mexican carriers. Now a few things to keep in mind. For whatever reason, the CSA 2010 caps these searches at 100 carriers. So, who knows how many Mexican carriers have a Driver Fitness score of 100? All we know is it’s at least 100. Also, in the total census of motor carriers, American carriers probably outnumber the Mexican carriers 100 – 1. So, statistically speaking, all things being equal, there should be 100 American carriers at the top of the list, instead of 100 Mexican carriers. That’s not the case though. Also, under this CSA 2010 system, all carriers with a DOT number are compared against each other, including U.S., Canadian, and Mexican carriers. 100 means you are the worst, 1 means you are the best.
We can do this again with Vehicle Maintenance. There are 5 American carriers with a Vehicle Maintenance score of 100. Search by “Mexico”, and you find there are 74 Mexican carriers with a Vehicle Maintenance score of 100. The figures for the other categories are reversed. Unsafe Driving: 13 American carriers with a 100 score, 1 Mexican carrier with a 100 score. Fatigued Driving: 5 American carriers with a 100 score, 0 Mexican carriers with 100 score. Drug/Alcohol: 4 American carriers with a 100 score, 0 Mexican carriers.
Conclusion? What does this tell us about the Mexican carriers and CSA 2010? Well, either the Mexican carriers are unsafe, or CSA 2010 is a completely flawed methodology. I don’t see it any other way. The Mexican carriers dominate the high ranges of Driver Fitness and Vehicle Maintenance. This means their drivers are either unlicensed, physically unqualified or don’t speak English. As for maintenence, compared to American equipment, their trucks are junk. Again, that’s what CSA 2010 says. Is that the truth? I guess it must be, as DOT has sworn up and down that CSA 2010 is the most accurate system to identify underperforming motor carriers ever devised.
I would love to hear DOT’s answer on this one. The President and Ray LaHood are telling me Mexican trucks are safe. Yet their vaunted CSA 2010 methodolgy tells me they are not safe. Well, which is it?
