Believe it or not, it’s far easier than you might imagine to get the safety records of trucking companies. You can read some interesting information in the FMCSA regulations in 385.3. The FMCSA collects data in four areas to grade the safety status of motor carriers (trucks/buses) who have DOT numbers. The 4 area’s are:
- Accident
- Driver
- Vehicle
- Safety Management
Anyone can look up this information, and it is the same information that law enforcement uses to watch for carriers with a bad score. The DOT will visit the carriers to grade them for adequate safety management controls or lack thereof. This is done to identify and prioritize carriers for safety improvements.
For instance, if you use the Safestat module, you do a search for the carrier you want to look up. The next page will have a bar chart on the left for the 4 area’s I mentioned earlier. Anything over 75 is not good. The higher the number, the worse its Safety status. This is one place for all the catagories that you do not want 100%. The “drivers” most generally will be in the 60 to 75 range (based on all the carriers I have looked up) with that number going up and down for getting accidents, speeding tickets, log book violations and more. All drivers can help this score go down by not having accidents, speeding tickets, log book violations and more.
How This Effects The Drivers
Law enforcement agencies nationwide monitor these statistics to identify which carriers are having the most problems. With literally millions of trucks on the road nationwide it is simply impossible to inspect and watch them all on a regular basis. So law enforcement agencies identify the most troubled companies and focus greater attention on those. The closer a company’s scores are to 100% (higher scores are bad, lower scores are better), the more the carrier and drivers will be watched and pulled over.
So when you are looking for a job, check the ratings of some of the companies that you are considering to get a general idea of where they stand. Do not choose one carrier over another based solely on this score, but use it as a tool to help identify really poor performing companies in the areas of accident, vehicle, and safety management.
How The Scoring System Works
What the percentages mean is “What percentage of carriers are doing better than the current carrier you are looking up. For instance, if a carrier has a safety rating of 70%, that means that 70% of the companies being monitored have a better safety record than the carrier you are looking up. Yes, it’s a bit backwards – most of the time that something is being rated, the higher the score the better. But this is our government running this program, so as you would expect, everything is done backwards.
The general Safety Ratings are:
- 0-49 SATISFACTORY
- 50-74 CONDITIONAL
- 75-100 UNSATISFACTORY
Who Else Is Effected By This System?
Drivers are definitely effected by this system. If you think you can “hide” your information from your employer, like logbook violations and tickets, you are wrong. Someone in the office of most trucking and bussing companies is likely monitoring this site often. I was one of them. Everything you do wrong gets put on this site.
Also, shippers use this information to determine a carrier’s reliability. If the score gets too high, the shipper will likely look for another carrier.
I learned about this site in 2004. I started using it right away when my employer told me about it. I use it a lot. Go to the FMSCA Status of Motor Carriers Website and take a look at all the info and learn more about it. Some things you can not look up until you have the authority to do so. You will also find that some things are not current or currently being updated. It changes almost as much as drivers change jobs. I mainly use the site to look at the four main scores and to get the monthly rating. This is an excellent way to better understand your company and to help you understand that the drivers and carriers are being monitored.
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Out of curiosity what rating do drivers get when they first start out? I assume it’s not 0 and it wouldn’t be right to give noob a 100 just because they have no record, any more than it would be fair to everyone else to give them a 0.
Rhonda would know that one better than I would – she uses the site a lot because she’s a safety coordinator – but I’d guess you wouldn’t have any score – your record would be blank – like your credit history if you’ve never had any credit – blank.
The DRIVERS rating belongs to every driver of the company. You may do everything right, but if a few of your co-workers like to speed and not have the logbook up to date for two examples, and get caught via violations, these are what shows on SAFESTAT.
This is part of the reason that you get pulled into a scale and/or asked to pull around back and bring in your papers. Sudden roadside checks also catch drivers.
Hope this answers your question.
Ouch, my company is waaay up there. Not good!!
Thanks for the info Rhonda, good stuff!
I worked for Southern Refrigerated Transport (SRT) for 6 months between November 2008 and May 2009. While driving for SRT, they tried to force me to run with an over-axle weight load from Carrollton, TX to Riverside, CA. I tried to explain to the dispatchers there that the worst coop in the U. S. is the westbound Banning scales in California, and I refused to run with the load. By the way, they didn’t want me to take it back to the shipper, so another driver took the load.
The following morning, Darla Tyree called me up and told me “Don, you’re making things difficult for yourself” and “you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.” I tried to explain to her that if I would have been stopped, fined or whatever, it would be on me, not her. I had also sent a Qualcom message the night before asking SRT to accept any and all responsibility for trying to brow beat me into taking a load I knew was overweight.
Shortly thereafter, they fired me because, according to Eric Nelson “I wasn’t happy working there, so we have to let you go.” Since then, I filed a claim with OSHA and found out SRT made up a complete lie about me getting fired.
If any other drivers out there have had a bad experience with SRT, please get in touch with me as I have found an attorney to take my case on a contingency basis, and extra witnesses will not only help me, but it very well may help you as well. Thank you for reading this, be safe and God bless.