New system has truckers worried about job security
Commercial truck drivers, already under pressure from declining consumer demand and rising fuel prices, beginning today must contend with a federal program that measures a driver’s safety record and offers it to potential employers.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration today launches its Comprehensive Safety Analysis, or CSA 2010, to track drivers’ crash data and inspection violations. Even infractions such as failing to wear a seat belt or driving without a mud flap would be used to score drivers’ and commercial carriers’ records.
CSA 2010 brings long overdue scrutiny to an industry that has largely escaped regulation, say proponents, who point out that only 2 to 4 percent of the trucking industry is audited by federal inspectors each year.
"There’s been an underreporting of data," said Larry Simon, a Ridgewood-based lawyer who represents people injured in trucking accidents. The system, he said, will weed out an entity even more deadly than a drunken driver — a distracted one.
"You can imagine the danger of a driver who is texting and using a laptop while they are driving an 80,000-pound vehicle at a fast speed," he said.
Smaller hiring pool
But trucking executives and drivers alike fear the new system will make it tougher for drivers to find work and for companies to find drivers.
Lee Robledo, vice president of safety and loss for National Freight of Vineland — a company that employs about 3,000 drivers and has 19 regional hubs in the eastern U.S. — said the government information will help the company find safe drivers.
"But, there’s a flip side to that. It’s going to shrink our hiring pool," he said.
Under the agency’s program, moving violations, equipment infractions and accidents become part of the driver’s record. The history also becomes part of a carrier’s record, though companies are not liable for driver violations that occurred before the drivers were employed. Citations issued while the driver operated a personal vehicle are not counted.
The agency’s Safety Measurement System analyzes a carrier company’s safety record based on violations and crashes, and can be applied to review an individual driver’s career-long safety performance, according to the agency web site. Truck drivers and carriers, with a driver’s OK, can screen candidates for hiring by viewing three years of inspection data and five years of crash data through a separate online program.
On its website, the motor carrier safety agency says it has no rules as of now to limit eligibility to drive a commercial motor vehicle based on body mass index — the measure of whether a person is overweight or obese — even though research shows that a high index suggests a risk of sleep apnea and thus a safety problem.
Difficult job
Gail Toth, executive director of the New Jersey Motor Trucker Association said, some of the new monitors in CSA 2010 are excessive and that the public needs to be reminded of the difficulties drivers’ face in performing their jobs.
"When people are sleeping in the comfort of their own homes on Christmas morning, these guys are on the highway, in snowstorms, risking their lives," Toth said.
The added scrutiny of drivers’ performance comes during a tough economy that has affected drivers profoundly.
Diesel was at $2.96 per gallon in August, 35 cents more than a year ago. A drop-off in consumer orders has led to fewer driving jobs and put pressure on employed truckers to off-load cargos and reload their trucks as quickly as possible or lose pay.
Trucker Vasiolios Yianakis frantically paced the Vince Lombardi service area on the New Jersey Turnpike one morning in late August, deciding how to unload frozen dinners that were damaged when they shifted en route from Texas. The New Jersey customer refused to pay for them and now Vasiolios faced losing thousands of dollars if he didn’t empty his truck for a new load at 3 p.m. He even tried giving them away to passers-by.
Yianakis said new scrutiny and poor pay were chasing many drivers away from the industry.
"There’s a double standard here. If big trucks stop carrying freight, the consumer is going to say, ‘Where’s my milk? Where’s my bread? Where’s my this? Where’s my that!’ "
Employment down
Trucking industry employment fell about 13 percent between August 2007 and last August — from about 1.43 million to about 1.24 million — and work for self-employed truckers declined by 30 percent during that period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Dockarthy Davis, 50, of Paterson, who has logged more than 5 million miles in 25 years on the road, says he’s had to take local U.S. Postal Service jobs because he can’t get a job hauling freight long distance even though he says his driving record is not bad, other than getting two points for a moving violation last year.
He said the revamped CSA is going to put more pressure on the drivers.
"How are you going to make the driver responsible for something the company owns?" he said. "The driver has no defense now."
He also said drivers’ careers are more vulnerable to the whims of aggressive state troopers, recalling how he once got two points on his license in Ohio for traveling 59 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone.
"Ohio is a communist state," he groused. "In these hard times, the state wants money. This is the way they are getting rid of drivers."
Lt. Gary Lewis of the Ohio Highway Patrol said his agency issues tickets to enforce traffic laws and reduce accident potential, but not to bring in money. "Issuing citations is not a revenue-builder for the Ohio State Patrol," he said, noting that revenue mostly comes from licensing, registration and the state’s gas tax.
