Safety & Compliance

You'd better be getting ready for new hours of service rules that go into effect July 1, to be followed by proposed rules for electronic logs. That, along with an emphasis on enforcement, was the message from Jack Van Steenburg, chief safety officer for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, in his keynote speech for Zonar Systems' inaugural users’ conference.

The American Trucking Associations used the National Transportation Safety Board's stricter impaired-driving regulations as an opportunity to again push for the DOT to move forward on a process to allow motor carriers to collect hair samples for DOT-required drug testing in lieu of the currently mandated urine testing process.

If you haven't taken a look at your driver hiring and screening procedures in a while, it's time for a thorough review to avoid running afoul of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

John Lamonica knows pizza. He can tell you why Brooklyn water makes great pizza dough, and how he has worked to get the same level of great flavor in his California operations using high-quality ingredients and filtered water. The president and CEO of Lamonica's Pizza Dough Co. is also proud of his three bright-red Kenworth trucks that deliver pizza dough to Costco and other customers in southern California.

With the advent of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s flagship Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, a new premium was put on safety. This required a number of fleets to focus on the issue like never before.

You don't need a PhD to recognize that bright flashing lights and changing images will grab drivers' attention. They are supposed to. But since drivers ought to be paying attention to things that are more pressing, why are these signs sprouting up everywhere?

The demand for truck drivers seems to be leading some unscrupulous companies to hire drivers who don't have a commercial driver's license

The Compliance, Safety, Accountability enforcement model has been fine-tuned on multiple occasions since the program's inception by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

Anyone who has ever thumped his or her steering wheel in frustration at a green light turning red for no apparent reason just as you approach an intersection will appreciate this recent achievement from Carnegie Mellon University

Americans, it seems, are chronically sleep deprived. Perhaps not dramatically so, but we're sleepy enough to make the radar screen at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Research shows that over 30% of workers aged 30-64 are short of sleep

You're not a Jedi / This is not Tatooine, Luke / Pull over now, man.

As the House and Senate try to come to agreement on a highway bill that could include a requirement to mandate electronic onboard recorders, I want to say, I believe we're being taken for a ride on this push to mandate EOBRs.

The after-effects of a serious crash can last years, or even a lifetime. The impact is entirely disproportionate to the time it takes for a crash scenario to develop. One instant you're cruising down the road, the next you're smashed to smithereens.

A set of visual brake stroke indicators costs no more than a few bucks per wheel-end, and can save hundreds by preventing just one out-of-service situation. So why aren't more fleets and owner-operators using them

A key strategy that has emerged for fleets to help improve their scores under FMCSA's new Compliance, Safety, Accountability enforcement regime - more commonly known as CSA - is a proper pre-trip inspection