CAB prepares as FMCSA proposes changes to safety measurements.

This week, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) opened comments on proposed changes to its important Safety Measurement System (SMS) for commercial trucks and fleets. The SMS uses data from roadside inspections, crash reports, and investigations to identify and prioritize for intervention the motor carriers that pose the greatest risk to safety. The proposed changes would continue to use the same SMS data, adding enhancements to the methodology to better identify companies and fleets requiring intervention.

We at Central Analysis Bureau (CAB) are watching the proposed changes closely. We believe the proposed changes are evolutionary, not revolutionary, and fully support the FMCSA in its efforts to build a safer highway system. For those people familiar with the BASIC scores, the new methodology will feel familiar and may help simplify some of the more confusing aspects of the existing scores. We are actively evaluating the changes and their impact, and are assessing how they can be used to our clients’ advantage should they eventually be finalized and rolled out.

The 90-day comment period has just begun, and of course no one knows exactly what the final roll-out will be later this year. We are convinced that changes will be positive, and we will be able to quickly integrate the changes in the CAB Report®, CAB Express™ report, CAB BASICs Calculator™ and other data products as necessary.

And finally, we highly recommend you take a few minutes to read this article on CCJ explaining the proposed changes. You can also review the formal proposed change document and comment on proposed changes.

Chameleon Carriers – An ongoing threat to business operations.

Earlier this month in Bits & Pieces, we shared commentary and articles on chameleon carriers – the freight companies that lose their rights to operate, close their company, then reopen under a different name, often with the same management and same trucks.

Now, CAB Senior VP Chad Krueger and COO Shuie Yankelewitz talk to FreightWaves about the issue.

“It’s not something that only happens every once in a while, it’s out there,” Yankelewitz tells FreightWaves writer Noi Mahoney. “It’s a huge risk,” he says. “The shipment may disappear. They may go out of business.”

Mahoney writes that FMCSA and trucking industry experts say chameleon carriers have been a part of the trucking industry for decades, creating safety hazards on the roadways.

In the article, Mahoney also talks to Krueger about CAB Advantage and how CAB tracks possible chameleon carriers for clients.

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ICYMI, here are the two articles to stories on Chameleon Carriers in our earlier newsletter:
Landline:  Long list of infractions gets Houston carrier barred.
Truckinginfo: Reincarnated Carrier Put out of Service as Imminent Hazard

Learn more about chameleon carriers, and how to spot them.

For more information on chameleon carriers and interrelated entities, please click here to review our 30-minute recorded webinar that took place on June 14, 2022. This webinar covers the concept of a chameleon carrier, interrelated entities and the features CAB provides to identify and understand the relationships that may exist between motor carriers.

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