Intermodal Fleets Say Safety Ratings Hurt by CSA Violations of Discharged Drivers

This story appears in the Feb. 28 print edition of Transport Topics.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — The U.S. Transportation Department’s new safety program is putting pressure on intermodal fleets, which say their safety records are being hurt in part by violations that were supposed to be rectified by new federal chassis safety rules.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program is causing headaches, for example, for Kevin Lhotak, president of intermodal and regional trucker Reliable Transportation Specialists, Chesterton, Ind.

“It’s been hell; I won’t lie to you,” he told Transport Topics, citing the loss of four customers because the company’s CSA scores were hurt by violations from owner-operators who are no longer with the company.

Customers turned elsewhere because of liability concerns over fleets whose safety scores include alerts under FMCSA’s BASICs, or Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, which assign points for violations such as speeding.

“We’re trying to work with customers,” Lhotak said to explain that the company should be judged by the safety record of its current 320 drivers. About 30 drivers who were dismissed last year accounted for almost half of Reliable’s BASICs points, but some points will remain on the carrier’s record until late 2012.

“I’m getting punished for doing things right” and dumping unsafe drivers, Lhotak said. Under CSA, drivers’ infractions stay on a company’s record for 24 months from the date of occurrence.

To make matters worse, Lhotak said, some law enforcement officers still assign chassis violations to his company instead of to the chassis provider because they haven’t been properly trained about the new regulations.

Those regulations, which fully took effect last year, made the equipment provider, rather than the trucker, responsible for equipment safety violations.

The concern among drayage fleets about violations, which trigger more FMCSA intervention, is an industrywide problem, said Curtis Whalen, executive director of the Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference of American Trucking Associations.

“My members are very concerned,” Whalen said. “If you did things before the kickoff [of CSA in December], you can’t erase them. Scores are artificially high — and wrong — because the agency hasn’t fully vetted the issues” related to chassis safety rules.

“We are very concerned about that,” said Mark Yeager, president of Hub Group Inc., an intermodal operator that owns its own drayage company. “We want to make sure the owners get the citations, not the drivers.”

An FMCSA spokesman said the agency has no statistics to show whether intermodal fleets have worse CSA scores than other carriers.

Hub, Downers Grove, Ill., is trying to address concerns about CSA and improve profits by hiring 400 drivers to complement its current corps of 1,629 owner-operators.

Speaking at the BB&T Capital Markets conference here, Yeager said the goal is to have Hub bring 60% of its drayage in-house, compared with 48% last year.

“I hope that drayage becomes more attractive,” Yeager said. “We are very aggressively recruiting drivers. CSA is going to be a challenge, but the fact is [drivers] will be able to enjoy a little better lifestyle with drayage.”

That will happen, Yeager said, because drivers will have more home time.

Schneider National Inc., another major intermodal operator, also is focused on the effects of CSA on drayage, said Bill Matheson, president of its intermodal unit.

The potential for an improved lifestyle doing drayage, he said at the meeting, will make it “far easier to recruit drivers.”

Matheson said he believes that drayage driver ranks could reduce dramatically over the next 12 to 18 months at ports because local trucking firms with one or two drivers often have maintenance problems.

On the other hand, he said, CSA is going to increase costs for many over-the-road fleets, and that could prompt shippers to switch their freight to domestic intermodal.

While intermodal is facing new issues with drayage, speakers at the BB&T conference underlined a commitment to address the growth constraint from last year, a shortage of 53-foot domestic containers, by adding thousands of new units.

Swift Transportation Inc. is adding about 1,000 containers a year to its fleet, President Richard Stocking said.

Hub Group plans to add 3,000 new units this year, through either lease or purchase.

John Roberts III, CEO of J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., said his firm plans to add 3,000 to 4,000 new domestic containers.

Schneider is putting 1,000 new units in service, Matheson said.

At Pacer International Inc., plans call for supplementing its fleet by 2,000 units, CEO Daniel Avramovich said. Like Hub, it’s trying to increase in-house drayage by adding drivers.

Still another emphasis this year will be adding intermodal services in the Eastern United States, said Matheson, Avramovich and Yeager.

Matheson estimated that just 20% of potential intermodal traffic in the region has been converted from over-the-road shipping.