Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/129328
SPECIAL REPORT: CSA For many years, any high-profile crash has triggered an FMCSA investigation. The MAP-21 highway bill passed last year also has given the agency more firepower in its efforts to be decisive in shutting carriers down. generally smaller carriers during investigations. Crashes have triggered about 10 percent of the recent interventions in which he's been a party. FMCSA public affairs officers declined to comment on independent analysis without in-depth further analysis. Phil McGuire, president of Temple, Texas-based 100-truck fleet McGuire Transportation, had FMCSA in his office in March for a full compliance review after a roadside inspection initiated by a driver's erratic on-road behavior, a result of overuse of a prescribed medication. "He was put out of service and subsequently terminated," McGuire says. "That was a year ago, and then basically I received a phone call saying you're going to go through a compliance review" – his company's second in as many years. Aegirson Enterprises owner-operator Scott Lawrence also went through a full audit of his operations the day after Christmas last year. Being his first such audit since he obtained motor carrier authority in 2004, it satisfied the new entrant audit requirement, according to a final report he supplied. For motor carriers obtaining carrier authority today, FMCSA says, what's more common is an on-time audit, meaning the review occurs within the first year. Interventions also can occur over actions of a single employed driver, particularly with respect to hours violations, and drivers increasingly are held accountable for their mis- takes. In the worst such case he's seen, a carrier that Wilson declined to name scrambled to put together a plan for their new entrant audit after sitting on six months of logs with no review. To protect itself, the carrier made drivers sign documents saying it had reviewed their logs and warned those drivers in violation. Those who refused to sign left the company or were fired. One driver who stayed ultimately was issued a $4,000 fine after FMCSA's investigation uncovered patterns of violations. The carrier got a Satisfactory safety rating with no penalties. BLITZKRIEG PROBES COMING TO TRUCKING The passenger-carrying world got one heck of a Valentine from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration this year with the Feb. 14 announcement of new efforts to intervene with a group of a couple hundred bus companies it'd deemed "high risk." The agency would be deploying teams on a "national safety sweep." An FMCSA official speaking on background said that those "quick strike" teams' training had concluded in early April and that the sweep was beginning. Truck fleets could be certain, the official noted, that lessons learned from the experience also would be applied to them – and sooner than later. Scan the QR to run through the intervention process and associated issues via Overdrive's video interview with Richard Wilson, regulatory manager for Trans Products Trans Services. Alternately, visit youtube. com/OverdriveMag and search "Richard Wilson." COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL CCJ_0513_EquipFeature.indd 43 | MAY 2013 43 4/24/13 2:07 PM