Page 22 - ATR 1 2014 web

The use of CSA percentile rankings
by shippers in their hiring decisions
may be an unintended consequence of
the system’s creation, but it will become
more prevalent, according to Pohlen,
the transportation professor. “The bur-
“‘You doN’t eVeN haVe a perceNtile score. i den is shifting from the FMCSA to the

caN’t use You,’ is aN iNcreasiNglY commoN shippers in terms of selecting carriers
shippers’ respoNse. it is absolutelY costiNg that are safe operators, and so I think
we’re going to see more and more peo-
carriers busiNess, aNd iN particular it’s ple focusing on those scores,” he said.
costiNg the smaller carriers busiNess.” Pohlen said the system can be cum-
bersome and difficult to manipulate
—tom saNdersoN, – even for an analyst like him. Only a
month’s data can be accessed at a time,
ceo, traNsplace
and software is needed to understand a
carrier’s safety record.
“There are so many variables that
are put in there that you really have a
hard time getting a grasp of what CSA
is actually doing,” he said.
professor of marketing and logistics at system to make business decisions, are The Safety Measurement System
the University of North Texas. Pohlen only seeing the percentile ranking, and places a symbol alongside BASICs where
and Sanderson said shippers use that they’ve kind of been conditioned to look a carrier has scored in too low a percen-
percentile ranking as a guide for decid- at that ranking and make a quick judg- tile. Sanderson said some shippers won’t
ing which carriers to hire. A carrier that ment.” do business with carriers who have two
doesn’t have a percentile ranking is an "If that’s the case, CSA isn’t being or more symbols, so brokers like him
unanswered question equivalent to a used properly by those shippers," said must look elsewhere. And that’s unfair,
grocery store item that doesn’t have a Darrell Ruban, FMCSA field adminis- he said, because scores are based on
price tag. The system in theory encour- trator for the Southern Service Center. roadside inspections that can depend on
ages carriers to commit violations in Ruban, whose office covers 11 states, the personal preferences of the inspec-
order to earn a percentile ranking, said CSA’s purpose is to serve as an tor.
Sanderson said. enforcement mechanism for his agency The FMCSA’s Ruban said that
Jason Wing, manager of safety and as a safety management tool for his agency works with the industry’s
compliance and training, ABF Freight individual carriers – not a business tool Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and
System, said shippers ask about CSA for shippers. It’s not designed to rank trains all roadside inspectors to enforce
scores “all the time. It’s on all of their carriers from best to worst; it’s designed the rules as uniformly as possible.
paperwork they send over. It’s usually in to inform FMCSA agents which carri- Moreover, carriers that believe they
the top five questions.” ers require intervention. In the eyes of have been unfairly treated can appeal
Wing said shippers use the CSA FMCSA, a carrier that doesn’t have a through the agency’s DataQ process.
scores as a quick and easy elimination percentile ranking represents a lack of “We all understand and realize the
tool, even though the scores don’t nec- data, and the agency has no intention impact that data has on all of our cus-
essarily give a complete picture of the of investigating that carrier. According tomer base throughout the country, and
carrier’s safety record. to the FMCSA’s October ATA presenta- we want it to be as accurate as possible,”
“If you have good scores, you don’t tion, the 201,000 evaluated carriers are he said.
mind sharing them,” he said. “If you involved in more than 92 percent of Pohlen and Sanderson said the
have some challenges in some areas, reported crashes. system can be unfair to smaller carriers
there may be some very good reasons Ruban said that his agency, because because they are less likely to have been
for those, and if you’re making strides it has the power to intervene in a car- inspected enough times to get a score.
and improving your performance, rier’s business, needs a minimal amount If they have been inspected only a few
sometimes you don’t always get that of data before it can act, and it wouldn’t times, one bad inspection can have an
credit publicly. It’s something that ship- want to give a percentile ranking to a outsized effect on that score. Because
pers really have to dig for, and quite carrier with few encounters with law
honestly, most that are looking at this enforcement.  36

22 arKansas trucKing report | issue 1 2014