As if the title didn’t tell you all you needed to know, I’m not a big fan of the new CSA rules that the trucking industry is dealing with. In fact, I’d rather jump in the cage with one of those MMA fighters. Being the wuss that I am, it’d be almost as painful as dealing with the CSA, but at least I’d be unconscious in a matter of seconds instead of enduring the never-ending torture that the CSA promises the truck driver.
Okay, so what is the CSA really? CSA stands for Comprehensive Safety Analysis. Now that’s about as technical as this article is going to get. You see, for a change of pace I actually went and tried to do a little research into the CSA before I started writing this article. I gotta tell you, if someone told me my job for the rest of my life was going to involve researching subjects that I care nothing about, I might just join a terrorist group and sign up to wear a bomb vest. Only once I was suited up, I’d walk up and give the head terrorist a big hug, step back, grin, and hit the trigger.
In a nutshell, here’s what the CSA is designed to do. It’s goal is to identify unsafe drivers and carriers. They mean to accomplish this by assigning a “safety value” to both. Basically, anything that a driver can get ticketed for has a value assigned to it. Speeding tickets, parking tickets, driving without your license, equipment violations, preventable accidents, etc.
The carriers get their scores from the drivers who work for them. Any CSA points that a driver receives goes against the carrier too. Now if a driver had collected points while working for another carrier, they don’t transfer to the new carrier when the driver switches jobs. So that’s at least one thing that the CSA got right. The CSA points do stick with the driver through the job change though. They’re like herpes, meaning you’re just stuck with them.
What this means is that drivers are going to be scrutinized even harder when they’re being considered for a job. As if the DAC report wasn’t enough (it shows the history of the driver), now you’ll also have to maintain a good CSA score to be worthy of hiring.
I really don’t have any issues with “grading” a driver, but they should only be graded on things that are under their control. If a driver is speeding, feel free to nail him or her with some points. That makes sense. Clearly if a trucker is intoxicated while driving, they deserve some points… and perhaps a few kicks in the ribs. But what about things that you have little or no control over?
In my 14 years of driving, I can’t honestly remember one time that I went to bed with all my lights working and woke up with a burned out light. There are three situations when I’ll discover a burned out light. One is during my pre-trip inspection when I’m picking up a different trailer. The second is when I’m driving and another driver tells me over the cursed CB radio that I’m “missing an eyeball” (one headlight is out). The third is at the end of a leg of my journey. Maybe I’ve stopped to take a whiz and noticed a dead tail light. Or maybe it’s at the end of my driving shift when I’m doing my walk around.
The point is, lights burn out. Wiring goes bad. Heck, sometimes they just fall out. When does this happen? When you’re driving. So how am I supposed to know exactly when a light burns out? I could do a pre-trip inspection and have a light burn out as I’m driving out of the truck stop parking lot. A cop pulls me over and says I should have done a pre-trip inspection. I did, but how can I prove it? The light was good 3 minutes ago. Am I expected to pull over every minute and check my lights? Uhhhh… no. And that’s just the lights. I haven’t even mentioned air hose leaks and tires with slow leaks. My company has suggested that I should pull over and do an inspection any time I’m getting ready to drive through a weigh station. Really? That’s getting a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? Still, every point I get goes against my record and my future job prospects.
Now some of you may be saying, “Well, usually a cop will let you go get it fixed.” Okay, I’ll give you that. I have been released to get a light fixed, but I’ve also been told to call a repair vehicle to get it fixed. And this leads to another point. What if the cop is trying to be nice by letting you go with a warning? That’s good, right? Well… maybe. It all depends. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know where this is going.
I was cruising around the I-495 loop east of Washington DC and contemplating how to put my truck grill through Obama’s front door when I got pulled over by a couple of Maryland State Troopers. Seriously though, I had seen the smokey sitting in the median as soon as I topped the hill. I glanced at my speedometer and saw I was doing 60 mph. Unlike some of you idiots out there who feel the need to mash the brakes every time you see a cop (even if you aren’t speeding), I just kept tooling along. I knew the speed limit was 55 mph, but I also knew a cop rarely looked at a truck going 5 mph over the limit. That logic is fine, but it kinda gets tossed out the window when his laser gun says I was going 67 mph.
Okay, first of all, I’ve never claimed to be any smarter than a trained cockatoo, but I am smart enough to avoid going 12 mph over the speed limit around the DC loop. I told the cop as much and he said the laser didn’t make those kind of errors. I implied that maybe the operator did. After all, there were plenty of cars screaming around me at 65 and 70 mph. I was expecting to catch attitude then, but I didn’t. Both officers were surprisingly calm at my insinuation.
I went on to explain that my truck was speed-limited at 62 mph at the moment. He said I was going slightly down hill. That’s when I told him that after 14 years of driving, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t dumb enough to let myself go 12 mph over the speed limit. I told him he could tell me I was going 67 mph all he wanted, but I would never believe him. I admitted I had my cruise control set on 60 mph and if he wanted to give me a ticket for that, then I’d accept it without a word.
Maybe he thought I’d fight the ticket, or maybe he just wanted to be nice. Who knows? But after a Level I inspection (that’s just a walk-around and driver credentials inspection), he handed me a clean inspection report and a written warning for the “speeding.” I thanked him and went on my way. Maybe I shouldn’t have thanked him. Here’s why.
I later found out that the CSA gives the same amount of points for a warning as they do a violation. As if that weren’t bad enough, here’s where it gets screwier than a screw-driving contest. The thing is, you can fight a ticket. If you win, you can petition the CSA to remove the points from your record. Great! But how exactly can you fight a warning? You can’t. So in essence, getting a written warning is worse than getting a violation. Will there come a day when we drivers are begging the officer to give us a ticket instead of a warning? Lord, I hope not.
Other than the CSA points themselves, what bugs me most about this is that it goes against the officer’s intention. They wanted to be nice by giving you a warning. They’re saying, “Hey, I could’ve nailed you, but I’m going to give you a pass this time. Be sure to watch yourself in the future.” So what has to happen to fix this? Do you think cops will someday realize that they’re screwing us worse by giving us a written warning? Will they eventually learn that they need to give us a VERBAL warning to be nice to us? I doubt it. Most of the cops wouldn’t know a log book violation if it reached up out of the log book and socked them in the kisser. How are they supposed to follow all the regulations of the CSA?
There is possibly some hope for the CSA. They have already shown to retract things that weren’t working or didn’t make sense. So they’ve scrapped the whole system and started over. Kidding. Wish I wasn’t. For example, earlier this year they retracted all points having to do with overweight tickets. I’m not sure what they didn’t like about the criteria, but whatever it was, it was enough to make them give it a second look.
The way it was explained to me was that the entire incident came off the CSA record, but @MightyDenoproved me wrong when he told me that his points had been removed, but the violation was still listed on his record. As another Twitter friend (whom I can’t remember) pointed out, that left it wide open to add the points back in later when they worked out the bugs in the system. Looks like they could eventually get you either way.
So what does this mean for the truck driver as we go forward with the CSA program? Well, for one, I’d say we’ll lose some experienced drivers over this. Whether it’s by their own choice or by bogus CSA points from things out of their control is left to be seen. For those who remain, we can plan on being in the dark for quite some time. Very little is explained to us and not many of us want to dive into research and figure it out. Heck, most drivers I talk to still don’t understand the 14-hour rule correctly. And that rule was issued in 2003. The CSA rules are just as confusing, possibly more so. And you can bet they’ll be changing them on and off to confuse everyone even more.
Recently, another driver and I were looking at the latest statistics issued by the CSA and realized that neither of us knew what the criteria for the results were. We asked dispatch and they didn’t know either. The safety department might have known, but they were gone for the day.
One thing is for sure, my safety director will be getting yet another call from me soon. The latest CSA stats showed that we’ve been surpassed by some companies in the HOS (Hours of Service) category. That category just so happens to be the one that has to do with the cursed e-logs. I’ll be asking him to explain why our company, which doesn’t let their drivers edit their e-logs, has been passed by some companies that I know for a fact have editable e-logs. This is going to be fun.
*Please give this post a rating and share it with your weirdo friends. Also, leave a comment with your thoughts about the CSA. May as well make up your own name for them too.*
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Interesting perception on The CSA (Crappy Sucky Administration)
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment, Hank.
Hi Todd:
I’ve been reading your blog, very well written thought out. I, like yourself, am an OTR trucker. I’ve been driving since 2002, and have to say that I too love it sometimes, and hate it sometimes.
I’m writing in response to your CSA article. Back when CSA 2010 was being discussed and planned within the government echelons, CSA was an acronym for “Comprehensive Safety Analysis”. Sounds practically harmless doesn’t it. Almost like it’s just another government study conducted by Georgetown Univ. Now that CSA 2010, is the law of the land for the transportation industry, it’s an acronym that stands for “Compliance, Safety, and Accountability”. So, in other words, when it was being introduced, it had a light hearted name that didn’t seem too alarming to drivers-companies. Now, it has a name that would imply that all truck drivers, companies, and their equipment, need this government oversight, to protect the general public.Otherwise we’d all be out there driving 36 hours at a time, without proper rest breaks, with 16 out of 18 tires, bald and falling off the equipment, etc. And, you’re not kidding about the effect the CSA law has on a driver seeking employment. I’ll give you my story as a perfect example of what can happen to a driver, when he-she works for a small fleet, who’s owners are known for waiting until the last minute, to make proper maintenance choices and repairs.
They shall remain nameless. But, here we go. In December of 2007, I joined this fleet, located in Wisconsin. They assigned me a decent truck. I hooked to a trailer, and away I went. During the first year or so, I really didn’t have many problems with the various DOT weigh stations, and their inspectors. They’d find minor things here and there, but nothing that ever resulted in an OOS violation. Then, in about the end of 2008, through all of 2009, I’d roll through a weigh station, and 50% of the time, I’d be stopped and inspected. The inspections would cite things like brakes that were out of adjustment. Well, I know how to adjust brakes, on the slack adjusters. But, as a solo driver, how can you really tell if they’re 100%, when you’re in the cab applying pressure to the pedal? Unless you hire a monkey, you can’t. I always kept my log book current, and never got a log violation. However, it just seemed like anytime I’d roll up on a weigh station, it would be an hour long encouter. So, I started driving mainly between 10PM and 8AM to avoid weigh station operations hours. That seemed to work well for a while. But, then one day I’m sitting on a dock, getting unloaded in suburban Chicago, and in comes this mobile diesel bear. He was there to do inspections on whatever trucks were waiting on door assignments, and-or leaving empty. Of course as soon as I was empty, and was told to pull out, I got selected. It was then, that I learned that my employer’s DOT number would instantly put up a red number, for hours of service violations. Apparently, there was so many drivers with this company, who never kept a current log page, that it finally became a burden for ALL drivers, including me. Well, after a million inspections of all our trucks, over a 1 year period, brake issues became a red flag on DOT computers. Finally, I decided the hell with this. I need to leave this job and go find a better place to work. Well, it was a difficulty that I had never anticipated. Every inspection I had ever endured was documented. I was once on the Ohio Turnpike, and was stopped by a diesel bear, and was given a warning for speeding. The speed limit was 65, and I was going 70. *Now the speed limit on the Ohio Tpk is 70 for all traffic*. So, I thanked the trooper up and down for not writing me a ticket. Unfortunately, in May of 2009, I was stopped in the Lafayette Indiana area, for an inspection. And, because I had done a proper pre-trip, including brake adjustments, the Indiana diesel bear couldn’t write me up on any equipment violation. So what happened instead was a speeding citation, for get this! 61 in a 60MPH zone. At first, I thought. “This cannot be forreal!” I asked him “Are you seriously giving me a speeding ticket for going 1MPH over?” His answer was “The speed limit is 60. Anything above that is speeding, is it not?” I just wanted to scream! Here again, the trooper told me he stopped me “because of the red flags our DOT number revealed”. If I had any sense, I’d have gone to traffic court in Indiana, and stood before the judge and told him-her, that I wasn’t stopped for speeding, that I was stopped by our DOT number being flagged. But, I didn’t figure a speeding ticket for 1MPH would hurt my ability to seek other employment. Again, I was wrong! That, in addition to the “warning” I received from the Ohio trooper, was enough to disqualify me from employment with most every place I applied. I’m currently working for a temp agency called “Pro Drivers” and I hate it! I am half tempted to go back to the crew in Wisconsin. But, I haven’t, because I know how much more stuff for the CSA reports would be compiled on top of what’s already there. This government is the most buisness killing government I’ve ever witnessed in my 45 years on this planet. Big banks get billions upon billions, in an attempt to put some cash back into the economy. Instead they buy up hundreds of other suffering banks. The economy remains stagnant. And, Obama’s on TV pushing for another $1/2 a trillion as a “Jobs bill”. Meanwhile, the real movers of the economy, are suffering like never before, from increased insurance premiums, downtime, and all kinds of government oversight. It’s enough to make you want to move to Canada!!
September 15,2011 i was Involed in a rear end wreck.Of which i was sited for.after 5 years an a good dac report .less than 82.000 miles to go to reach a million miles acciddent free.Know i feel i will never find a company that will hire me.They look at the present state an not at all before that awfull day.Im sure my csa looks awfull.Thanks again Tim Douglas
You aren’t the only one that’s scared spitless of the reprocussions of the CSA. With such an awesome safety record as yours (prior to the slip-up), I’d really be interested to see how much trouble you’ll have if you decide to switch companies. Please keep me informed. Thanks for the comment and good luck.
Will do.The company I work for they havent let me go yet,But ive been on workers comp since the acciddent.But i have a feeling its going to be see ya .Stinks you got a good record before the wreck but they dont look at that.Man it just aint right,Belive me im strong on safety.They dont know ya after you mess up.Hey you take care my friend,its back to looking for a driveing job!!!