DON JERRELL
Associate Vice President, HNI

CSA promised to provide an unprecedented dose of transparency and accountability to the transportation industry.  But this isn’t possible if CSA scores aren’t accurately reported.

Timeliness of reporting has been a concern for many carriers, so much so that many states (such as Wisconsin) have implemented standard reporting procedures that require an inspector to upload their activity at the time an inspection occurs or when he or she ends a shift.  This ensures activity is processed promptly, enabling carriers to monitor the changes in their score when they know an incident has occurred.

Mississippi could learn from these states.  At a recent American Trucking Association committee meeting, someone brought up that the state of Mississippi is currently in the process of uploading roughly 42,000 inspections dating back to September 2010.  The inspection records prior to September 2010 will not be counted against a carrier’s CSA score. [Come on guys - 42,000? My first thought was "you've got to be kidding!"]

Due to the state of Mississippi’s failure to meet any reasonable reporting timeline, many carriers who do business in the state have been mislead by their CSA score up until now.  As an industry, we have supported the concept of Safer, Safestat, and now CSA, but inspectors and regulators have an obligation to do their part to make this work. 

I would advise all carriers to carefully watch their CSA scores as this data starts being incorporated.  Additionally, we as an industry should back any measures to mandate minimum standards for timely reporting.