CSA 2010 Information - How Much Will This Cost??

CSA 2010 will be one of the most pronounced changes in the trucking industry since the 1980’s and trucking de-regulation. There’s still a lot of questions going around – most companies don’t understand what CSA 2010 is and how it will affect them. On the surface, this program has very honorable intentions - but at what price??

Let’s start out be figuring out what CSA 2010 is all about. The DOT (Department of Transportation) is introducing a new process for determining a carrier’s safety rating. It’s called CSA 2010. The ultimate goal of CSA 2010 is to reduce the large truck and bus fatalities.
















According to the Federal Highway Administration, 1979 realized 6 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled. In 1984 the Roadside Inspection program began and fatalities dropped to just under 5 per 100 million miles. In 1986 the Carrier Safety Rating program was launched and the fatalities gradually decreased to slightly over 2 per 100 million miles. It’s been a pretty remarkable improvement since 1984. CSA 2010 is trying to continue the improvement.

The key differences between the current “Safestat” system and the CSA 2010 system are listed as below:
If you will notice, there are more areas to do inspections on, all roadside violations will count against the driver, results of an inspection may lead to intervention for the carrier, violations are "weighted" as to the riskiness, and this now means that a single driver can severely damage the carrier's rating.

When a single driver can have serious consequences for an ENTIRE carrier, this means that carriers are going to be weeding out non-performing drivers. On the surface this sounds great!

Think about that for a moment, however. If you are a transportation manager, and you have less drivers in the marketplace, does this mean your job is easier or harder to find enough capacity to get your goods moved?? When you do find the carriers and trucks, will this mean a lower or higher rate to get everything moved???? How much will it cost each carrier to keep a more watchfull eye on their drivers?? How much more will it costs carriers to keep up with compliance?? Who is going to pay for all the added administrative costs???

Now you know why CSA 2010 is so important to not just carriers, but everyone who uses transportation to get goods to the market. This doesn't leave too many people out!