How useful are company FMCSA scores?

After a long time on this forum you will see the MAJORITY of inquiries here about companies takes the form "I see a lot of complaints about CR England, but I was wondering are they a good place to start?" Certain truckign companies could torture new-hires with hot pokers in the eyes and pay with counterfeit money and it wouldn't reduce their volume of "fresh meat" volunteers. Your results are proportional to your research, yet most newbies just sign a contract and then say 'you gotta start somewhere' and then blame the industry for not FORCING them to work at quality companies with great conditions. You cannot care more about someone's future than they care about it.

 

That's still what they are called are ups. We would use them during peak to haul loads we didn't have trucks for.

 

Get with a company with a bad score . you get pulled in & inspected every time.
Had a driver for last company get a two logbook violation.
Oos so they sent me & another driver to scalehouse.
Before I could get his trailer to deliver rest of the way they done a level one on me. Checked driver with me before letting him get other truck to take back.

 

I'm going to agree in principle but disagree in practice here. These numbers are good as a starting point. However, it is critical to look at other factors as well. For example, if a carrier has a million miles logged running Virginia and say another with a million miles run in Texas. Which carrier is likely to have more encounters with state DOT enforcement officers? Virginia will because while Texas has a MCSAP program Virginia is many times more aggressive with theirs. Someone computer savvy enough to get the carrier scores should also be enough to look for context. As with everything else in this life look for context when looking at numbers. Numbers do not lie, however overlooking the context of those numbers can cause great confusion and harm good people.

 

That I was talking about happened in the PNW. Oregon is one of the worst.

 

Good points. I never thought of that. When I drove up north every little #### town had a dot cop stopping everyone because that's how they made their money yet here in Florida you can realistically drive for 20 years without a single inspection, they don't do a whole lot around here.

 

I think I need to further explain my last post. As I stated numbers do not lie. If a carrier has a lot of OOS hits they need to address this problem. The overriding issue though is context. How many carriers that have limited contact with places that vigorously enforce the rules have good scores? You can't compare them with a carrier that runs a lot of those routes where the state DOT works hard. A false positive is as worse as a false negative in regard to these scores. That great company with all those good scores might not be so great to work for once you get behind the wheel of their trucks. I have seen this first hand, and it is very frustrating for a driver.

 

There are some good companies where the dot works hard & they keep a good score by #1 by keeping equipment up.
#2 by keeping good drivers

 

A company had 10 incidents in a 2 year period where trucks were stuck in the snow. Those went on csa score like an accident.

 

I have a hard time believing that as there is no requirement to report for just a tow. Now if they also got a citation for, say, impeding traffic then maybe, depending on how the citation is written.

Of course one still has to ask "Why are they so often out in those conditions?" Very few loads are so important they can't wait until the road is cleared....