I know it has only been two short weeks since you received our annual report and so we will keep this month’s report short.  I don’t want you to get tired of hearing from us! We appreciate all of the feedback that we get on these reports and invite any and all comments that can better help us focus this to be a timely and pertinent report for you.

CAB LABS:

We are excited to introduce this month our new Workspace, Carrier ‘Sneak Peek’ and Shared Email Alert features.

The Workspace tool will assist you in comparing multiple entities that are interrelated by different characteristics, allowing you to do a variety of searches by phone, address, email address, etc. and provides quick access to useful tools that will help you analyze your Workspace contents. Carriers you add to the Workspace will stay there until you remove them, even if you log out or sign in to your account on a different computer.

To help sort through search results returned by our Carrier Search page, we’ve offered a ‘Sneak Peek’ feature allowing you to get a high level overview of the safety and operation information of a returned entity by hovering over the magnifying glass adjacent to the DOT number. This month we’ve added the ability to ‘pin’ this information onto the page to make it easier to compare and identify trends across multiple entities.

Similar to the alerts that identify other entities using the same address or phone number which were designed to alert you to possibly related entities, the Shared Email Alert identifies whether or not the email address used to register this carrier was used to register any other carriers.  If there is a match, clicking on the new email icon will load up all the other entities that used that email address.

To learn more about these exciting new features, you can download the most current version of the User Guide or contact us to set up a training session.

This month we report:

DOT SECRETARY – Although a few weeks ago it looked like Secretary LaHood would be staying around for a bit longer he has now announced that he will be leaving his post.  President Obama has not yet announced his replacement.

TRUCKING BANKRUPTCIES – Avondale Partners states that 150 carriers left the industry in the 4th quarter, bringing the yearly total to 495.  This resulted in 7,370 trucks coming off the road.  Avondale indicates that these numbers were fueled by weakening used-truck prices, lower freight demand and higher costs.

HOURS OF SERVICE – The ATA has requested a further extension on the implementation of the most recent proposed hours of service rules.  Oral argument is scheduled for March with a decision from the court expected in early summer.  Rather than implement changes which may be impacted by a court decision, a delay is probably the best action.

2013 AGENDA FOR CONGRESS – The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee announced its oversight plan for the 113th Congress. Highway funding, the CSA program and hours of service are listed as top priorities for the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit.  Last year they requested an audit of CSA, which is expected to be completed this year.

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I am not sure if anyone is out there this week as I hope that most of the industry is off celebrating the holidays.  This is the Bits ‘n Pieces that gets the most “out of office” responses each year! It has been an interesting year and I hear from more than one of you (myself included) that most of us will be happy to see 2012 slide in to the history books, especially as reports of the losses from Hurricane Sandy start to be released by insurers.  I hope that you took some time to enjoy the end of the year lull (although personally I don’t think there is a lull anymore).

This month we report:

CAB’s LAB – We’ve got a number of exciting new features that will be rolled out at the beginning of the new year. Stay tuned for more details and always remember to pick up the latest copy of our User Guide to learn about the latest enhancements.

CSA – The FMCSA announced 11 changes to CSA this month.  CAB has, of course, updated its reports to reflect the new changes.  The changes include replacing the Cargo-Related BASIC with the Hazardous Materials (HM) Compliance BASIC, strengthening the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC by including cargo and load securement violations that were previously in the Cargo-Related BASIC, counting intermodal equipment violations found during drivers’ pre-trip inspections, aligning speeding violations to be consistent with current speedometer regulations that require speedometers to be accurate within 5 mph, changing the name of the Fatigued Driving BASIC to the Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance BASIC to more accurately reflect violations contained within the BASIC, and aligning the severity weight of paper and electronic logbook violations equally on the SMS for consistency purposes. The change applies to the prior 24 months of data used by the SMS and all SMS data moving forward.

CARRIER SERVICE ACTIONS – The FMCSA commenced a proceeding to revoke Peace of Mind Relocation, Inc.’s operating authority registration following a determination that Peace of Mind Relocation, Inc. held hostage household goods of individual shippers in violation of federal statutes.  The FMCSA has also ordered Trusted Moving and Storage d.b.a. Nationwide Top Movers (Trusted Moving and Storage) of Santa Clara, Calif., to return household goods to the original shippers. The order is the first time FMCSA has used new enforcement powers granted to the agency under the federal surface transportation reauthorization program known as MAP-21. FMCSA has also initiated a proceeding to suspend Trusted Moving and Storage’s authority to operate in interstate commerce as a household goods motor carrier.

In the general commodity arena, the FMCSA ordered Two Dayes Trucking and Two Dayes Transport, based in Murfreesboro, NC, and Ben Gordon Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Gordon’s Tree Service of Sidell, LA to immediately cease all transportation services due to a pattern of serious safety violations that pose an imminent hazard to public safety.

In a surprising move, the FMCSA also issued an “out of service” on a driver, Georgia-licensed truck driver Johnny Felton Jr., who was working for DOT Transportation, Inc. out of Mount Sterling, IL, declaring him an imminent hazard and ordering him to immediately cease all commercial vehicle driver operations because of his failure to exercise an appropriate duty of care to the motoring public regarding his medical conditions.  It was the first time in at least eight years the agency had released information about an individual driver put out-of-service.
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