Previously in the CSA’s Data Trail “Crashes and interventions” installment: “Blitzkrieg probes coming to trucking”
The largest truck fleets show crash rates well above that of one-truck carriers, yet the megafleet trucks and drivers are inspected at only a fourth of the rate of the single-truck operations, according to Overdrive’s analysis of federal data. Single-truck independent drivers, the safest group on the highway, are 3.5 times more likely to be put out of service than drivers for carriers with 500 or more trucks.
FMCSA official Duane Debruyne declined to comment on any aspect of Overdrive‘s analysis.
For one-truck operators, these enforcement disparities entail not simply the day-to-day hassles of dealing with a well-armed regulatory regime. The bad ratings that come with violations and out-of-service orders make it increasingly difficult to secure freight in a safety-scoring landscape tilted in favor of their larger competitors.
While single-truck operators are the safest, accident rates – measured per million miles traveled – spike when those operators start adding trucks. The highest rates were found in fleets of two to 15 trucks. This isn’t surprising, given that fleets in that range often have no full-time manager outside of a truck – let alone a full-time safety director – and may in many instances tend toward less-restrictive prospective-driver screening.
