The Pollock piece is informative, as many of the CSA articles are. It also lacks what many of the CSA articles lack; namely, reporting on how CSA 2010 has been delayed, amended, delayed more and amended more, with no sign of that cycle abating anytime soon.
The industry power brokers have been punching and counter-punching each other for years over this program which was first to have been fully in effect at the beginning of 2010. One result of that bickering is that only a tiny percentage of carriers have even bothered to look at the CSA scores that are now available to them. And why should they? This is the FMCSA we are talking about. You know, the agency that has been kicking HOS around for ten years and still does not have it resolved.
There has been a lot of talk about the changes CSA will cause in our industry but other than already-conscientious drivers tidying up their ships a bit I see no meaningful changes on the ground.
A stream of messages coming over the Qualcomm about BASICs is not a meaningful change. It is noise. A ton of ink in trucking magazines is not a meaningful change. It is writers piling onto the fashion topic of the day. A government web site presenting the facts about CSA 2010 is not a meaningful change, it is bureaucratic drivel about something that was supposed to happen months ago and has not happened yet. Webinars, conferences and training companies rising to sell their CSA services to carriers and drivers is not meaningful change, it is entrepreneurial profiteers rising to make a buck off the fear the noise and confusion produces.
Meaningful change might look something like being able to view the highway for 30 minutes of night driving and seeing all truck lights working. It might look like seeing truck drivers wake up at truck stops and actually do pre-trip inspections before driving off. It might look like peeking into a recruiter-filled driver orientation classroom and seeing people who are at least making an effort to look and act professional. It might look like carrier-offered driver training lasting more than three weeks and including serious time with trainees behind the wheel. It might look like shippers changing their practices such that drivers see that the shippers really get it about respecting a driver's time. It might look like a driver shortage so severe that most carriers would offer bonuses not for signing on but for driving safe for a year and staying with the company that long.
There has been a lot of noise about CSA 2010. If readers know of MEANINGFUL changes that CSA has produced, I'd love to hear of them and see specific examples pointed out.
