DC Velocity - May 2011

newsworthy

Shippers, brokers dodge bullet with CSA settlement

SHIPPERS AND FREIGHT BROKERS HAVE DODGED A BULLET, escaping a burden that could have wreaked havoc with their operations and threatened the livelihood of some small and mid-sized truckers.

In early March, three trucking-related trade associations reached a mediated
settlement with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA),
the agency that oversees the newly minted CSA 2010 truck safety program,
over the methodology used to measure truckers’ performance. Under the set-
tlement, which went into effect March 25, FMCSA agreed to state on its web-
site that carrier data displayed in the agency’s Safety Measurement System—
the mechanism used to rate carrier performance—should not be used to “draw
conclusions about a carrier’s overall safety condition.”
The agency added that unless a motor carrier in the system has received
an “unsatisfactory” rating or has been ordered by FMCSA to discontinue
operations, the carrier is “authorized to operate on the nation’s roadways.”
Data collected as part of the CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) pro-
gram are made public on a monthly basis.

The regulatory legalese has real-world impact, according to attorneys representing shippers, brokers, and truckers. They claim that by virtue of the wording of those statements, the FMCSA has clarified that it is the only entity authorized to rule on whether a trucker is safe to operate on U.S. roads. And by extension, they argue, the agency has acknowledged that shippers or freight brokers should not have to interpret safety data to determine a carrier’s fitness, and that a shipper’s or broker’s responsibility extends only as far as hiring an FMCSA-authorized carrier to move its goods.

MURKY LANGUAGE

Prior to the settlement, CSA had left unclear which party was actually responsible for weighing a carrier’s safety record, attorneys say. Henry E. Seaton, a Vienna, Va.-based attorney representing truckers and brokers, contends that by its murky language, the FMCSA had effectively “created a new duty for shippers and brokers to credential carriers” regarding safety.

That scenario was bound to create a nasty ripple effect for the industry, Seaton and other attorneys said at the Transportation and Logistics Council’s annual meeting in early April in St. Louis.

Worried about opening themselves up to liability and litigation if a carrier they have chosen is involved in an accident, shippers and brokers would shy away from truckers that might have been cited for a single safety infraction, even if they never received an “ unsatisfactory” rating under CSA. In turn, small to mid-sized truckers that depend on a handful of shippers or brokers for their livelihoods would find themselves effectively “blackballed” and forced out of business.

The only winners, Seaton said, would be plain- p. 18

James Oberstar speaks with both authority and passion on the need for the United States to dramatically increase its investment in transportation infrastructure. But the former chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee doubts that Congress will agree on a new highway bill anytime soon.

Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who was defeated in his re-election bid last year, keynoted NASSTRAC’s annual logistics conference April 18 in Orlando, Fla. He told the group he believes that failure to substantially improve the nation’s transportation networks will inevitably reduce American competitiveness.

“Our population is going to grow
over 40 percent in the next 30 years,
freight volumes will grow 70 percent
in 10 years, and that growth is going
to put additional demands on our
intermodal system,” he said. Failure
to make the necessary investments,
he warned, will mean that “goods
will move more slowly, congestion
will worsen, air quality will deterio-
rate, fatalities will [rise], and our
quality of life will be diminished.”
The problem, Oberstar said, is the
extreme partisanship that pervades
Capitol Hill. He contrasted the current
environment with what he described
as a more cooperative atmosphere
among party leaders in the past.
Oberstar told of how he and
Pennsylvanian Bud Shuster, the one-
time GOP chair of the committee,
would travel together to argue for
greater spending on infrastructure.
“We had our differences, but we
worked them out,” he said.

Citing declines in fuel tax collections, Oberstar called for an increase in the levies to fund investment in roads. “We cannot do more with less,” he said. “We can only do less with less.”