I hope you enjoyed my previous post about proposed changes in U.S. transportation laws.

Today, I want to relay some thoughts on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety and Accountability (CSA) proposal, as mentioned in the Supply Chain Consortium’s recent report, Domestic Transportation: Finding the Right Balance of Volume, Capacity and Pricing.

CSA is a well-intentioned proposal with the goal of getting dangerous commercial drivers off U.S. roads. Now you may be wondering, “How could this be controversial?” Well, if these dangerous drivers were the only ones being eliminated from the pool, there wouldn’t be any pushback.

The only problem is that good drivers are getting caught up in the same net. This primarily happens two different ways:

1. As proposed by CSA, the new system views all accidents the same. There is no distinction between a driver who is involved in a fatal accident because he gets rear-ended while stopped in rush-hour traffic and one who falls asleep at the wheel and causes a fatality.
   
2. The system depends on accurate data entry and record keeping by state and local law enforcement officials. In parts of the country where CSA is being piloted, data has been found to be inaccurate a substantial 5% of the time. The idea of one out of every 20 drivers being sidelined – even temporarily – by something as simple as a key-punch error is pretty scary.

Scarier still is the responsibility that CSA puts on shippers. As the rules are currently written, shippers must know that a carrier is in good standing before any loads are tendered – a status that can change from day to day for each carrier.

Furthermore, the shipper’s CSA responsibility extends beyond the carrier of record, to the actual transporter of goods. This substantially complicates the process of brokering loads (allowing carriers to use other service providers) and the entire spot-market process.

All of this means increased administrative burden for shippers, lower capacity for carriers and, ultimately, higher prices for consumers.

Let’s hope this well-intentioned policy gets put on the back burner until a few more of the kinks get worked out.

What do you think about the proposed transportation regulations?

Jim

More Resources:

Domestic Transportation Report

Warren Buffett's Ride on the Rails Is Paying Off, Businessweek article

Transportation Management and Reducing Costs in the Supply Chain

Photo Credit:  lrargerich