If you’ve noticed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently, you may have seen some disturbing developments. As of recently, there has been for the second year in a row a maintained rise of off-site-conducted audits. Hence, the agency moves toward off-site audits before 2020. Yet, the pandemic and the desire to limit person-to-person contact within the trucking company personnel and federal and state investigators. The off-site audits show investigatory activity ballooning in the age of 2020. This continues well into 2021.

The FMCSA Has To Deal With General Investigations

You may have noticed that there is also a forty-nine percent decline in audits that show up in a rating. There is a variety of ratings such as Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, and Conditional. This in turn shows up a decline happening, in the beginning, three years of such a period. Measuring it in from 2017, there are definitely about 6,000 audits resulting in rating changes. It, therefore, shows a 54% drop-off within the safety rating activity from such an agency that refuses to be shy about the safety-first objective. The FMCSA therefore characterizes this as “off-site” audits which are unable to result in a safety rating change.

Earning a “Satisfactory” is rather important for owner-operators as well as small fleets. After all if one does not commit direct business with customers, it can definitely be damaging to a small fleet when ocean-shipping giants are under even more anticipation. Intermodal trucking services tend t come in very high demand. Yet it appears to be counterintuitive with a number of carriers doing business with a shipping line that may be unrated in a federal or state rating program.