While the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMSCA) works to reduce truck crashes and improve safety, the data it collects is a custom road map to a fleet’s problem areas. In a Modern Tire Dealer exclusive article, Kevin Rohlwing, senior vice president of training for the Tire Industry Association, writes that the data presents an opportunity for dealers.
When FMSCA rolled out its Compliance Safety Accountability Program (CSA) in 2010, it ushered in a new way of measuring safety performance. The information from roadside inspections and violations, as well as state-reported crashes, are rolled into a Safety Measurement System (SMS.) Carriers and drivers earn scores, and those scores reflect 24 months of data. One element of those scores is vehicle maintenance.
Rohlwing writes, “Making the jump from tire service to tires and vehicle maintenance will not be easy or cheap. But the future of the commercial truck tire industry is staring us in the face, and fleets are begging for solutions to their maintenance problems. I’m not suggesting that everyone rebrand their company. I am suggesting that every truck tire dealer go to the CSA website and look up the maintenance scores and violation history for all of their customers. If that road map doesn’t point to the need for changes, then keep busting those tires and praying it will be enough to survive.”
To read Rohlwing’s entire article, click here or find it on page 35 of the June edition of MTD.
To find your customers’ safety information, go to http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov. Click on the “SMS Results tab” and find information for any fleet with a US DOT# or MC#. (Searching by name reveals less data.)
“For the tire dealer who decides to broaden the horizon and enter the vehicle maintenance and repair business, the CSA website is a road map to the pain point for every customer,” Rohlwing writes.
