CSA: FATIGUED DRIVING BASIC
Fatigued driving consists of hours of service violations. These include driving more than eleven hours a day, being on duty more than fourteen hours a day, being on duty more than seventy hours in eight days, providing an officer with false logs, providing the officer with no logs, providing the officer with a log that is not current to the last change of duty status, having incomplete log entries, and/or a driver appearing ill or fatigued to the officer. Some violations result in the driver being placed out of service, generally for ten hours. Others merely require a correction to the log book. All of these burn both Mercer and the driver pretty significantly on CSA. Mercer’s BASIC threshold is 60. When we are over it, everyone gets their log book looked at closely by law enforcement. Under CSA, the actions of a very few drivers can really screw up the monthly score. It is easy to raise it but hard to get it back down.
Mercer is serious about hours of service violations. Drivers with log violations are assessed significant points above the CSA levels and are required to come to Louisville for reorientation. If you have Mercer signs on your truck, you are expected to uphold Mercer standards. Log legal. Period. That’s what CSA is about and that is what is required.
After trucking in the new CSA environment for the past year, it is good to see that most of our folks have figured that out. A few still don’t get it and still think “just a warning” or “he didn’t put me out of service” is OK. It’s not. Life at Mercer is about to get even more difficult for those drivers. Their actions are burning everybody else. That’s not fair to those who try their best to do things right.
We have expanded our log auditing staff and beginning in February, drivers with log violations, as well as Category 3 and 4 drivers will find themselves assigned to a dedicated log audit team. Their logs will be manually audited instead of scanned. Every mileage will be verified, receipts will be reviewed and they will be required to run 10 mph under the posted speed limits. If they don’t get it right, they will be gone. The requirement is to log legal, log current. No excuses, no exceptions.
We believe that Electronic On Board Recorders (EBORs) are coming, either through regulation or customer requirements. We believe that the time to prepare for that reality is now. It is imperative that everyone, not just for CSA, but for every driver’s long-term future, make logging legal become second nature. We have found that drivers who have gone to computerized logs have taken a significant step in that direction. We want to encourage all Mercer drivers to do that. And we want to reward drivers that do. They help everyone. We appreciate their initiative. While not actually an EBOR, the compliance result is the same.
Effective immediately, any Mercer driver who is running either Eclipse Logs or Drivers Daily Log on a computer will receive a 20 point credit on their score. Don’t call Michelle or me and tell us; your log person must advise us in writing for the credit to be applied. Be sure they do that. If you have a log violation when running computerized logs, shame on you. You’ll lose the credit plus get the violation points. And yes, you’ll also become a member of the dedicated log audit group.
Hours of service compliance is huge under CSA. It is everyone’s responsibility to get it right. Mercer is about getting it right and doing things right. We appreciate all of you who are dedicated to that. Be safe.
