CSA help understand what I'm looking at

"Driver problems" would be missing log book or log book not anywhere near current or is shown to be grossly falsified, no seat belt, or no valid medical cert., or open alcohol container, etc warranting a "shut down" of the driver/carrier.

IMO these scores are not very useful in trying to personally score companies for their employment prospective worthiness, especially given all the major carriers are not too far part. That said a terrible score might mean regular road-side or weight station inspections for their current/future drivers, but it's unlikely you'll find really bad numbers like this outside of smaller carrier operations that do not regularly hire new drivers.

 

Do as much homework in researching them as you have time and ability to do. First decide if you more interested in dry van, reefer, tanker, or flatbed ... then how important is home-time to you? (do you want to look into options that offer "regional" work or do you want to roam far and wide not concerned with staying out 3-5 weeks at a time) Is oil/gas industry work an option for you (that's an entirely different animal), where are their service terminals? (having one near your home is always a plus but regardless if you live in NC, no sense in looking at companies who only have western US terminals)

Starting mileage pay once solo should not necessarily be high on your priority list. Doesn't do much good to be making 35 cents a mile if you're only realistic potential is 2,000 mile per week. But there are a host of other pay issues that vary from trucking type to trucking type and carrier to carrier, so ask questions when you begin considering one more closely.

 

Yes, those are percentages of the inspections done in which either the vehicle, driver, and/or cargo (hazmat) had violations during an inspection that required to be placed out of service (OOS).

When I look at CSA scores for a carrier, I do not look just at the percentages, I mainly see what were the violations and how serious they were and if the carrier would have played a role in the violation. In terms of vehicle maintenance, a violation for a light burned out is not as much of a big deal as say the truck had bad brakes. The CSA scores for each of the BASICS is comparing similar size carriers. For example, a carrier with more than 500 trucks that has a Hours of Service Violations score of 52.3% means that 52.3% of carriers greater than 500 trucks have less violations. To me, the 2 CSA BASICS categories that I review the most carefully are Hours of Service Violations and Vehicle Maintenance. These 2 often tell me if a carrier is serious after compliance. The lower the score, the better. The other categories are more violations caused directly by the driver. While I do not use CSA scores alone to pick a carrier, I do factor it pretty heavy as I do not want to have the DOT constantly inspecting me more frequently, and it raises suspicion on how serious the carrier's safety department is addressing compliance issues.