Prime CSA scores vs. JB hunt.. am I seeing this right?

Yes and no. You're comparing a carrier that is essentially a local/regional dry van operation (JB) to a long-haul temperature controlled carrier that has a good proportion of low-time drivers. Apples and oranges. JB puts all of their long-haul freight on railroads now - meaning that a high proportion of their freight is local. That kind of operation attracts experienced drivers. Prime trains, and suffers the high turnover that comes with new folks who decide that OTR isn't for them. That also means Prime has more problems with newbs making mistakes.

On the face of it, yeah, it does look like JB has Prime beat in a number of categories. Prime gets more tickets (2 idiots for texting vs 1 idiot,) JB has a problem with logbooks. Driver fitness is more about paperwork than anything - can you find your med card in a hurry? In the controlled substances category, its 5 for Prime and 7 for JB - but the higher number for Prime is because some moron got caught under the influence last month - maybe he can get a job at JB. Roughly equal in numbers on equipment maintenance.

And your point is? DOT came in and looked at us. In 2010 Prime asked for a DOT compliance inspection. Compared to the snapshot from a few months ago (except for the idiot that got caught under the influence) the numbers actually look better. You understand that CSA numbers fluctuate monthly, yes? If there were warning triangles in many of those categories AND there was a focused inspection, you could draw a conclusion there. In fact, the warning triangles associated with BASICs in Prime's report have gone away since the focused inspection. I assume that implies an overall improvement.

For comparison you should really be looking at CRE, Marten, FFE, Southern Refrigerated, Central Refrigerated, TransAM, etc. They are our competition and have similar operations.

Before CSA, safety was measured by number of fatality crashes per million miles travelled - about equal here when you do the calculation. 0.3 for Prime vs 0.3 for JB. Hmmm... The safety experts in the industry long argued with the FMCSA that statistic was much more meaningful than the CSA hocus-pocus.

Now that is apples and oranges. When you look at the larger temperature controlled freight carriers the CSA numbers tend to show that Prime and Stevens Transport are the safer carriers.

As far as CSA is concerned, there is a lot of discussion in the industry on exactly what CSA does measure. The focus on BASIC numbers hasn't tended to correlate to improvment in carrier safety across the industry yet. What exactly does whether a driver can find his medical card in a hurry have to do with safety? In the Driver Fatigue BASIC, many of those infractions relate to what we call "form and manner" - which is really, did you dot your "i's" and cross your "t's." Want to explain to me how that relates to whether a driver is "safe" or not?

Additionally, under CSA, there is no appeal to many of the infractions that the FMCSA counts in the numbers. If a court of law rules that your ticket is BS - you have to go back to the same officer who issued it to get it removed. Exactly how many of the inflated-ego gestapo type of officer are going to admit they were wrong, even when a court says they were? Got a warning? Guess what - FMCSA assumes that whether it was justified or not - you did something wrong. It gets counted. There is absolutely no appeal of a warning - right or wrong.

Then... there is the case of Indiana, a probable cause state. For them to initiate a roadside inspection, all it takes is being clocked ONE MPH OVER THE SPEED LIMIT. Bang! They gotcha! Indiana accounts for a higher proportion of roadside inspections than any other state in the lower-48. Illinois can be pretty bad too.

I think you have to take the view that CSA was rolled out long before it was ready, is quite likely an invalid measure of "safety," and in my opinion raises issues with the way it deals with your Constitutional rights.

 

It's funny how our transportation issues are not even mentioned by the media, the republican candidates, or any of our elected officials. The only people who talk about gas in our government is the folks at fmcs. In my opinion instead of cutting the military budget why not get rid of fmcs and save the tax payers some money, and save save a truck drivers lively hood.

 

Well, Rick Perry was about to mention the FMCSA during one of the debates, but he couldn't remember the durn acronym!

 

There's a post in the Western Express folder that complains about them today. Numbers ran their SMS report. If you want to see what a truely bad carrier looks like, follow this link...

http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS/Data/carrier.aspx?enc=uHXbztI7NjyR0aRTro3HLI/nxJU6Ll+pSYNP7DANtt4=

BTW, their fatal crash rate per million miles is 0.54 fatalities per million miles.

 

I just used this link to look up my fathers old trucking company. Found his DOT #. What would you do if you had your own DOT #????

 

...definitely run a mph or so below the limit in a probable cause state!

 

Under CSa and how the "score" a company,the comparitive score is based on scores of similar-like companies

A 1000 truck operation to another 1000 truck operation and so forth,that is why the #'s look skewd

If you compare Say Prime Vs Swift the scores would look similar,but when you look at the amount of inspections Swift would have more in same period due to its size

Or if you took a 10 truck operation,say they had 1 truck put OOS,well then they had 10% of their fleet OOS at one time,the equivelent at Swift would nearly be 2000 trucks

Thats why when you look at CSA scores you have to read them as if your comparing them to a similar in #'s company

 

I'm not sure it's quite that granular on the comparison of company sizes. IIRC, Prime is lumped in with the real big ones. Another of CSAs problems.

 

The focus on BASIC numbers hasn't tended to correlate to improvement in carrier safety across the industry yet.

I disagree. My carrier finally got his head out of the sand and has made many changes from drivers to equipment. He has a long way to go, old habits die had but he is changing.

All because his score is posted on the web and shippers can see it. That affected his sales, hence his bottom line aka. his arse pocket.