Possible Pay, Safety Link Focus of FMCSA Study

This story appears in the Sept. 8 print edition of Transport Topics.

A plan by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to conduct a survey assessing whether pay has a relationship to safe driving faces data and practical challenges, trucking officials said.

It also promises to be controversial because some in the trucking industry, including American Trucking Associations, believe the research is an attempt by the agency to meddle in labor-management relations.

“This is another example of FMCSA’s interest in labor issues under the guise of safety,” said David Osiecki, ATA’s chief of national advocacy. “It’s very difficult to understand how an online questionnaire will be able to divine a causal relationship between pay and safety.”

The study will randomly survey more than 2,000 non-passenger carrier safety managers, operations managers and owner operators. It will be aimed at analyzing the possible “unintended safety consequences of the various methods by which commercial motor vehicle drivers in the sample are compensated,” FMCSA said.

“Should the study show that there is a relationship between the methods drivers are paid and the methods’ effect on safe driving performance, a potential benefit of the study will be to provide commercial motor vehicle carrier companies with information that will help them make more informed decisions about safe operations,” FMCSA said in its Aug. 29 announcement.

FMCSA said data will be used to demonstrate possible relationships of variables and if they contribute to such unintended safety consequences as driver out-of-service rates, vehicle out-of-service rates and crash rates.

The agency said it is seeking public comment on its study plans through Oct. 28. The results of the survey will be released in 2015.

Immediate reaction to the study was varied.

Chris Reynolds, director of safety and security for Southeastern Freight Lines, said many companies offer financial incentives to drivers who are accident-free, but overall he believes there is not a strong correlation between driver compensation and safety performance.

“I’m sure there are companies that have lower pay that have a better safety rating than companies that have higher pay,” Reynolds said. “It’s a marketplace, and companies are going to pay what the market will attract to retain and keep good drivers.”

Reynolds said Southeastern’s local drivers are paid by the hour, while over-the-road drivers are paid by the mile, both common compensation models.

Those drivers who are paid the highest are typically the most experienced, said Reynolds, whose Lexington, South Carolina-based company ranks No. 27 on the Transport Topics list of the 100 largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.

“Think about this: If somebody’s going to get a bonus at the end of the year of, say $500, is it going to change their behavior when they’re driving down the road?” Reynolds asked.

Paul Will, CEO of Celadon Group Inc., agreed that safety and pay are not directly related.

“We pay safety bonuses, but I’m not really sure that’s what motivates drivers,” Will said. “You don’t want to get in an accident because you don’t want it to go on your record, you don’t want the downtime and you don’t want to hurt anybody.”

Indianapolis-based Celadon ranks No. 44 on the TT100 for-hire list.

Steve Niswander, vice president of safety policy and regulatory relations for Groendyke Transport Inc., believes that driver compensation research is not an area in which FMCSA should be involved.

“I would only think that pay would come into play if you don’t have strong management,” Niswander said. “Pay has been an issue forever among drivers. But our crash statistics are going down.”

Based in Enid, Oklahoma, Groendyke ranks No. 91 on the TT100 for-hire list.

However, Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said driver pay is a legitimate line of inquiry.

Paying drivers by the mile is problematic when drivers face bad weather or traffic congestion, which reduces their pay, Spencer said.

“Their driving skills need to be at their absolute highest when production is likely to be at its lowest,” Spencer said. “I think those are the kinds of things that need to be examined.”

From a research standpoint, there are numerous challenges in pairing crash and other data with carrier pay models, said Dan Murray, vice president of research for the American Transportation Research Institute.

He questioned whether surveys that collect data that are cross referenced with carrier-level crash rates will produce meaningful or accurate results.

“It’s an extremely complex and challenging methodology,” Murray said. “It is not going to be a landmark study because the complexity is going to muck up the credibility of the data and analysis, partly because they won’t be able to get all of the data they need.”