#160. Boosting Your CSA Scores: Navigating DOT Inspections and Safety Ratings

What do peaches and the FMCSA Safety program have in common. You'll have to listen to find out, but I will tell you, understanding the low hanging fruit principle can help you stay out of hot water with the FMCSA. We cover a lot in this first episode of a two part series on the FMCSA Safety program. It can be tempting to neglect safety, especially when you are struggling to survive in a tough market. However, failing to manage your safety and your FMCSA scores can sink your company faster than low freight rates. Listen to the episode as Craig and I share some great tips when it comes to safety.

What To Expect From Episode 160

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front), If you want to have good CSA scores, be safe, maintain your vehicles, obey traffic laws, and don't break the hours of service rules. With that being said, we give a lot of tips about what the CSA scores are, how they are calculated, and some of the best practices to keep them low. Lower is better. Here is an outline of what we cover.

What Are CSA Scores

Most Motor Carriers receive scores in 7 Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, which wrapped up in a nice little acronym called BASICs. The categories are:

• Unsafe Driving 65%
• Crash Indicator 65%
• Hours-of-Service Compliance 65%
• Vehicle Maintenance 80%
• Controlled Substance 80%
• Hazardous Materials Compliance 80%
• Driver Fitness 80%
• Insurance and Other (This one isn't really scored, it's more like pass or fail)

The percentages are the thresholds, we explain those during the episode.

How You Get Your CSA Score

The simple answer to this question is they come from interventions with the FMCSA/DOT Officers. Those can be anything from roadside inspections to an audit. Most inspections occur at Ports of Entry or because of an inspection that happens when a driver is pulled over for a moving violation or obvious vehicle maintenance issue. One of the biggest contributors to the number of inspections you get is your ISS Score (Inspection Selection System). You can check your score and a lot of other important things regarding your company's history with the FMCSA by logging into their system here.

Understanding The Scoring System

The scoring process is a bit complicated. I am going to over simplify it, but here is the general idea. Every time you are inspected your company receives a score. If there is a violation, you get bad points. If the inspection report is clean, you get good points. The formula the FMCSA uses basically divides the bad points by the good points. If you have more good points than bad, your resulting "measure" will be less than one. If you have more bad points than good points, your "measure" will be higher than one. Good inspections will give you more good points and lower your "measure". Your "measure" is then compared to all the other fleets that are roughly your same size. If you are right in the middle, meaning half the companies have a "measure" lower than yours and half the companies have a "measure" higher than yours, your BASIC score will be 50%. If you are in the top 10%, your score will be 10%, etc. Every BASIC has a threshold, if you are above the threshold you are going to be on the FMCSA's radar. You just became low hanging fruit, if you don't know what that means, listen to the episode.

If you really want to nerd out and dive deep into the methodology and calculations, you can learn a lot by clicking on this link and reading the document.

Understanding The Consequences Of Your CSA Scores

There are several things that happen if your CSA Score exceeds the threshold.

• You are going to get a letter from the FMCSA saying you need to behave and do better
• Your ISS Score is going to increase and your are going to get inspected more, when that happens, most scores get even worse
• If your score stays elevated for a while or if you exceed the threshold in multiple categories, you are way more likely to be audited, that's when the fun really begins

Most audits result in a Safety Rating, either Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory. In part two of the series we will talk about what happens if you get a bad safety rating or if the FMCSA tells you that you need to complete Corrective Action Plan.