This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellet chats with Jeremy Paul and Dustin Barnett, Safety Managers at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, JP and Dustin discuss the importance of safety and compliance in the trucking industry. They delve into the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program, common violations like speeding and tire issues, and the significance of vehicle maintenance and pre-trip inspections. The episode emphasizes the collective responsibility of drivers and the company in maintaining safety standards, the impact of CSA scores on business, proactive measures to ensure compliance and avoid violations, and so much more. Learn how safe driving puts money in your pocket at Oakley in this episode!
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Previewing Today’s Show (1:01)
- Thank you to Our Sponsors LubeZone and Arrow Truck Sales (2:09)
- Explaining CSA (4:01)
- CSA Categories (5:14)
- Roadside Inspections (5:57)
- Calculating CSA Scores (7:10)
- Most Common Violations (13:16)
- Current CSA Status (15:17)
- Importance of Placards (17:28)
- Vehicle Safety and Compliance (20:45)
- Preventing Violations (21:28)
- Driver Awareness of Violations (22:53)
- Pre-Trip Inspections (23:33)
- Impact of Technology on Inspections (25:20)
- Understanding CSA Points (27:10)
- Roadside Inspections and PSP (28:58)
- Importance of Clean Inspections (33:23)
- Incentives for CSA Performance (34:44)
- Understanding CSA Point Calculation (37:00)
- Importance of Safety Emphasis (39:20)
- Brake Safety Week Announcement (40:39)
- Vehicle Maintenance and Inspections (41:20)
- Challenges of Pre-Trip Inspections (42:19)
- Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks (45:09)
Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruce oakley.com.
Transcription
Jeremy Paul 00:12
These are the most common things that we have here at Oakley. I’ll just give you a top three. You know our number one most common CSA violation is speeding to speeding to as a six to 10 mile an hour over the speed limit. The second highest or most common violation is a tire flat and or honorable early and the third one is a tire just leaking. So inflation is less than 50%. So right there I mean those are three violations that can be rented, one but not speeding and two, but you know, checking those tires out. And like I spoke to a lot of drivers before about you know, understand things or you can fix them up on the road, you know, we all can do that. So I try to reach every time you stop, no matter if you’re going inside and get a you know, biscuit or you know getting fuel or whatever. Let’s look over those tires every single time you stop. Welcome to
Jeremy Kellett 01:01
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family.
Hi, I’m Jeremy kellett director of recruiting here at Oakley trucking. And I’m your host for this podcast. Am I a minus Miss making comments on this one, we’re gonna do it ourselves. And on today’s episode, I’m sitting down with JP and Dustin from the safety department and we are going to talk about safety, we’re going to talk about the CSA, we’re going to explain a little bit that I’m fixing to you. So the people know that audience list and probably know a bunch. But I want to explain it a little bit better just so you can get a good feel for what we’re talking about. Because we’re got some, we’re gonna get into a few details that I think basically a lot of owner operators have questions on some uncertainties about some stuff that we’re going to try to explain a little bit about. So I’m going to do that here in a minute. But first, as always, hey, check out our sponsors. I know it kind of gets old because we’ve had the same sponsors forever, which are Arrow Truck Sales and LubeZone. But you know, there’s a reason we have. And it’s because we work well together. They do a good job, they do what they say they’re going to do. So be sure and check out our sponsors. When you get a chance. Keith and Trey appeared at Arrow Truck Sales and Springfield gave those guys a call. If you’re in the US truck market and looking at even becoming an owner operator really good. First time owner operator program, I guess you would say that we have because we provide all the good stuff for you, you know, the liability insurance, the expensive stuff, the trailer at no charge. And if you’re able to get into a good use truck, I mean, a good dependable truck, get it from somebody, please, first of all get a warranty. Get it from somebody who’s gonna take care of you after the sale. And there’s not many that’s gonna do that in the country in the trucking industry. So I know for a fact Arrow Truck Sales does, because we’ve had many conversations with them, and they’ve done it many times. So check them out there, check out LubeZone their locations to give us some feedback on your experiences you had with our sponsors. As always, also, you know, Annabelle always makes me do this a lot too. I want everybody to do it. I mean, we try to get the word out about the podcast, and it’s it. You know, we really don’t advertise that much. It just kind of goes from other people from our listeners. And I just, I mean, I want you to help share it with people, basically. I mean, I thank you for sending the link to somebody else. You know, in your group, it goes a long way. If you tell somebody about it, if you comment on it, if you subscribe to it, if you lock it, all these things make a huge difference with our social media presence. And we’re looking to grow that, you know, because we know, there’s a lot of good listeners out there that don’t know what the Oakley podcast is, and we will never know what it is. So please share that and we appreciate it. Alright, let’s talk about CSA. And for listeners out there that just now thought about turning this off when I said CSA let me explain it a minute. You know, so CSA is a compliance safety accountability program and it was made up by the FMCSA. And it is basically an enforcement program to make sure companies are being compliant. I mean it what it boils down to is it’s almost a grading you know it grades companies and drivers for that matter on from roadside inspections, right is the main thing and at the main source But so the CSA is broken into seven basic categories. Correct? All right, those seven basic categories or hours of service, driver fitness, vehicle maintenance, hazmat unsafe crashes, unsafe driving, and drug and alcohol. Yeah, that’s it. So those are your seven categories that we have. And there are amongst all those seven categories, I think I read JP where there were 900 Total violations. Correct. So that’s a lot of violations there, that can be done. But I guess the way you can explain it, if you want to JP, the, the overall picture of the CSA, sure, how we use it, if you want to start there. Yeah, so
Jeremy Paul 05:58
You know, CSA, it stems from your roadside inspection. Going to an officer pulls you over somewhere to do an inspection on you, that’s where CSA comes from. Yeah, I got all kinds of different levels of inspections from level one, where you do a full inspection to all it’s like a level set, and that your most common ones are gonna be level one inspection where they’re looking at basically everything all over the truck trailer, the driver that logs and then you got level three, which is driver only, which would be like a, you know, looking at driver specific things like our servers violations, or where they speed, that kind of thing. And whenever an owner operator driver or driver out there receives a roadside violation from do T, depending on what the violation is, goes into what you were just referring to those basics, you know, and it affects our, our basic scores. So for example, if a driver gets pulled over for speeding, that’s going to affect our unsafe basic, you know, and that basic is determined off of a metric that honestly is out of my scheme to understand how they calculate it. But basically, what they do is they take the amount of violations you’ve received, this is the company,
Jeremy Kellett 07:09
correct? Yes, the complete trucking, they take all the violations, we add as a company correct.
Jeremy Paul 07:16
And they calculate it saying you’ve had this many inspections, you’ve had this many violations and unsafe categories, this is what your percentile is in your unsafe basic. And that’s how they kind of determine your metric.
Jeremy Kellett 07:29
So this explains that you can go on, you can look up the CSA and find out all the details for work. Honestly, I don’t know all the details, but I do know, we’re put in a category because of the number of tropes that run under our D O T numbers that were put in a category. And in that category, there are so many inspections done, then you’re gonna see what they call it. Right mythology they
Dustin Barnett 07:54
do. And it’s, you know, the fleet count regions, depending on how many inspections you receive a year also puts you in a certain tier group. And you explained it. Well, earlier, Jeremy, whenever you have more violations within that tier group, they see you as more at risk. And there’s certain areas so that they let the program and the roadside inspections on the owner operators or the drivers that are receiving them determine the carriers, they need to really put their focus on an audit. So once you start reaching a certain threshold, yeah, percentages where they say, okay, Oakley is very similar to these other carriers. But Oakley is elevated in this area over threshold based on the violation that they’ve received on the roadside. So maybe and what God thinks maybe we need to focus in and check what kind of practices they’re doing and make sure that they’re operating safely and doing proper steps that they need to. So
Jeremy Kellett 08:49
we go over a threshold, let’s say, vehicle maintenance. It’s one of the seven basic and the threshold is what is the threshold 80% 70 Whatever it is, the actual threshold number, our numbers based on the inspections, we receive our owner operators based on the inspections or violations they received over a given month over a given period of time. Usually a month changes every month, I’m assuming or every day, I don’t know. But yeah, it’s once a month, once a month. Yeah, once a month it updates. Then we get all these violations and we creep up over the vehicle maintenance threshold. You’re telling me that puts a that alerts the DOT. Hey, there’s an Oakley guy coming through the waystation. Let’s pull him in and check his vehicle maintenance because I’m showing Oakley is over the threshold so they must be having some problem. Correct.
Dustin Barnett 09:44
Okay, yep. And, you know, that’s the D O T specific focus, but you also have to think that our basic scores are public. We have to have a certain login to actually pinpoint which violation it was Driver Information. roadside inspection number. But as far as just an overall overview of Oakley, that’s public information. So, besides just D O T, and they use the program to determine who they’re going to come in and maybe do a soft audit or, you know, see if they need to make any intervention. Also, customers have access to that data. So if you’re putting in for a certain lane, they may look at different carriers in comparison, they want to make sure that their freight that we’re hauling for them, gets there timely and safely. And if we’re over certain areas, it may, you know, interfere with the contract. And then also, we go through a pretty intensive audit every year for our liability insurance. And that’s one metric that they use. So whenever they come on site, and we go through all of our, you know, safety material and our best practices, CSA is something that they bring up, and monitor on a regular basis. So the main purpose of the program, originally, I believe, was just D O T specific. What do roadside inspections look like? What are the violations, what carriers are having problems, it intervenes, but it sends a kind of broadening to a lot of other, you know, people that are involved in the trucking industry, looking at the data and utilizing it. It’s got
Jeremy Kellett 11:11
to where you’re exactly right is broadened. And just like you said, with the customers looking at it, when that became available, that really got the attention of a lot of carriers. Because the carrier the customers use it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we hear about it all the time, right? I mean, yeah,
Jeremy Paul 11:30
no, you know, I hate to say it, but this only happens once, if it works, is it and does bad, but there was several years ago, when we actually did have a customer reject us, due to our unsafe being Hmm. You know, and now we’re nowhere near the threshold or unsafe, it’s great. But yeah, it’s that just goes to show you a customer wouldn’t let us all their loads, because it was gotten so hot at one
Jeremy Kellett 11:49
point. And it’s hard enough to get these loads anyway. Oh, yeah. You know, you’re trying to be competitive in a competitive market to try to book as much freight as you can goodbye in freight. And then you throw this, you know, from out of left field, oh, but your CSA you’re over the bases, you know, in your unsafe driving or whatever it is, might be at that time. And that affects the fact that a lot of times overrides the great customer service we provide, you know, but you might not be a quality carrier, you might have some issues where I am. It’s that I think what our owner operators specifically need to hear out of is what happens? Yes, that’s not a myth. That’s not a mystery that actually happens. And in. So how do we? How is the Oakley owner operator out there today or any owner or any truck driver out there tonight? How can they help their company? Well,
Jeremy Paul 12:46
I think it starts with just, you know, doing your pre-trip. Yeah, that’s a big start to it all, you know, getting out of the truck, looking over your equipment and actually doing your pre-trip inspection. Because when we look at you know, now pulling this data, obviously for more specific violations, but things that are most common violations or things that you know,
Jeremy Kellett 13:11
we’ll talk about our specific, Oakley specific you got some numbers there,
Dustin Barnett 13:15
you’re stuck. Yeah,
Jeremy Paul 13:17
I guess the numbers here in front of me. So, these are common things. These are the most common things that we have here at Oakley. I’ll just give you the top three. You know our number one most common CSA violation is speeding to speeding to as much as six to 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. The second highest or most common violation is a tire flat and or audible early and then the third one is a tire just leaking so the inflation is less than 50%. So right there I mean those are three violations that can be rented, one law not speeding and two but you know, checking those tires out. And like I spoke to a lot of drivers before about you know, I understand things or you can pick something up on the road you know, we all can do that. So I try to reach well that’s every time you stop no matter if you’re going inside and get a you know biscuit or you know getting fuel or whatever. Let’s look over those tires every single time you stop because you know we can pick something up along the way from obviously time or pre-trip stars. It’s time we stop checking those out there. Yeah. And so those are our most common violations but we also have what I consider the most harmful violations. What I mean by harmful is they hold the most point values and so they’re going to hurt the owner operator as far as their CSA score and ours and the ones that hold the most points is number one, the tire flat and inaudible air leak, which kind of matches up the most common speeding to and then also tires leaking. So you look at our three most common are also our three most harmful as far as holding the highest point hurts. Yep. So that’s kind of a good start just slowing down and also looking over the tires thoroughly every time you get chant
Jeremy Kellett 15:00
well it’s on my notes boasted we hadn’t but well no you get to things are gonna happen you get caught? What is ours? I guess we need to put that out there as we know it right now what our basics right now are we over the threshold?
Jeremy Paul 15:17
We we are in one which is hazmat that’s where what we’re over we’re Dolma
Jeremy Kellett 15:24
to your stay a little bit.
Dustin Barnett 15:26
We were Yeah, I think we’re at 8% right now and our hazmat and then the second highest one, it’s not over threshold, but our vehicle maintenance is very close. I think we’re about 2% off before the threshold on the vehicle maintenance. That’s really our focus at the malls
Jeremy Kellett 15:40
and stuff you’re talking about right?
Jeremy Paul 15:43
As well as tires, lights, you know, anything to do with the truck or trailer is gonna go to bigger vehicle maintenance, and I think Bernanke corrected me for wrong thinking when we were actually talking about doing this podcast and drafting up the notes. I think we were over the vehicle threshold. And then it fortunately has dropped down below it now that we’re on this podcast, so it updated. But yeah, it’s your anything to the breaker that, you know, the truck or the trailer is going to get her vehicle minder.
Dustin Barnett 16:12
And, Jeremy, you and I spoke a little bit about this yesterday, but the hazmat one is a tricky one. Because we don’t really have a lot of inspections where we’re hauling hazmat on our record. So when we are stopped and we are written a violation. Luckily, it’s nothing too major, it’s usually just like, you know, placard related or maybe not having your Emergency Response Guidebook, you know, accessible when the officer approaches you, but year to date. On record, we have three roadside inspections of violations involving hazmat. And we just received our fourth one this week. So really, if you think of four violations, and it puts you over the threshold, well for this year, I think the total is 14. So last year is really the year that hurt us the worst. But this year, there’s only four that we’ve had and that and we’re kind of talking about this yesterday. That shows the importance when you’re under a hazmat load, making sure everything is proper, you check all the boxes. And you might not think just one violation could really cause that much problems in the grand scheme of things. But really, it does not take much in the hazmat class to elevate. So it’s very essential to make sure that we’re paying for it and I’d say if there’s one category out of those seven basics that you don’t want to deal with a threshold on it probably has probably got the attention of some people. Yeah, that’s why it only takes a few violations to get up there real fast.
Jeremy Paul 17:43
Yeah, and we need those loads to you know, admission, or if a customer is looking at those scores, you know, it a lot of ammonium nitrate, we haul, you know, we eat a lot of more nitrate loads and spring, you know, it rolls around, he gets busy, and you really don’t want the customer to look at that score and see that so we need to work on getting that down. And going to Barnett, it’s what he mentioned, you know, placarding is 60%. Exactly other things like 68% of those violations. So even just focus on our placarding. And doing that right is going to help reduce that CSI score placard flew off, we will not placard in a load for whatever reason, you know, having not necessarily it could be a violation of the wrong placard on there, but more so it’s what you just said it’s black or flannel.
Dustin Barnett 18:29
And nothing draws the attention of a DOD officer more than when they’re going across the scale and everything looks good. And there’s a placard missing off the rear of the trailer so that whenever they see placards, they tend to pay attention a little bit more. And that’s just another reason for them to pull you around. And we kind of discussed this a year ago, because we also had a placard as our number one. And I think just often with the customer, whenever you’re getting that bill of lading information, you know it’s a hazmat load, maybe ask for a few extra placards, because the worst thing that can happen is you stop to get fuel, you notice the placards missing, you don’t have any extra, you can’t just go into the truck stop and ask for the kind of placards that we need. They’re pretty like a niche market. So it’s not near and just fine, really over the road. It’s something that needs to be, you know, maybe here or at a customer where that’s really the only place you’re going to be able to get them. So there were times where that happened where a driver noticed he he’s missing a placard. And then we had to look in the area and figure out who was near. Oh, maybe they had a spare placard or who’s looking out at that same location. You might have to wait six hours, but he’s gonna bring you an extra one. It causes a lot of problems just to try to prevent a future violation. Yeah. So it’s a good practice to keep a stockpile even if you don’t use it at that time. Keep a little stack. You never know when your next load is going to be that you’re going to need a placard. Do we have them here?
Jeremy Kellett 19:59
We do have them here in the drivers lounge, you know, putting them out there.
Jeremy Paul 20:04
I don’t think we got them stored here in the office. Okay, plenty. Yeah, they need us to get them. And that’s honestly what we’ve had to really do. Because like Barnett just said, I don’t, I can’t think of a time where we found a placard that we needed over the road, I really literally can’t think of a single times we’ve had that usually, when that happens, shut the driver down or missing a placard and then usually find someone on that same load and meet up with some more placards and give to
Jeremy Kellett 20:30
the driver and not to defend anybody. But we don’t do a whole lot of hands. Right. And then that, then when you start doing it, you know, you have a week where you got a bunch of hazmat loads. Yeah. You just know, sitting over there and safety cheer going. On a bunch of because you hear the guys, we are all out there together. Weird. They’re telling y’all Hey, we’re doing a bunch of high as my load from here to there. And you’re like man, Mike Drew, they do things right, make sure they placard make sure your customer gives it. We’ve had instances where that customer didn’t give them the placard. Right? Yeah, we’ve had that. Yeah, that’s definitely happened. I mean, so it, unfortunately, boils down to the man in the gap, drawing, the man or woman sitting in the cab, getting the paperwork, knowing that what they gotta do, they’re the professional driver, that’s got to take care of their business. Sure, I take care of bars. And
Jeremy Paul 21:28
adding to what Barnett said, just to kind of help put some ideas in the guys heads to how we can prevent this is by Barnett, say, Keep extra placards, if you’ve finished a load where you get some placards that are in good shape, go ahead and store those in a binder and a folder, put them in your cab somewhere secure. And that way you get some extras if you need them. And all I suggest guys buy, you know, clear tape clear, like packaging type, you know, and type of ball with four corners, that placard to kind of help secure it. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 21:55
That’s just my suggestion. This motor vehicle maintenance. Since we’re 2%, almost, you know, we’re just under the threshold. And that’s been at ECU in the past. What do you guys see? And I know, you told us the top three things. But I mean, what do we need to do? I mean, what does the owner operator need to do? What do we need to do in the office to make that work? It’s not an issue?
Jeremy Paul 22:20
Well, my first thing I would say is we need to know if you got an issue with, you know, anything on the trailer or the tractor, and we don’t need to wait and get that fixed. You know, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve, you know, drivers received a violation. And I’ve talked to him about it. And they said, Well, you know, I knew I had that going on, but I was trying to wait until I got home or I was trying to wait till I got unloaded or I got loaded and all that stuff does not need to be put off at all, it needs to be fixed right then and rock there. You know, because that’s affecting, you know, they pay their CSA and our CSA. So nice be on time where you think
Jeremy Kellett 22:53
most of them don’t know they got a violation when they get it or you thought you’re saying they knew there was a problem. And I got caught?
Jeremy Paul 23:01
There’s a lot. Now, you know, there’s times where obviously the guy didn’t know he got a violation. But there’s been just as many times where I’ve talked to a driver that he’s admitted he knew there was an issue and just was delaying getting it fixed.
Jeremy Kellett 23:14
Do you have many get a violation and didn’t even know that was a violation? Yeah,
Jeremy Paul 23:18
usually, you hear that a lot with tires, you know, because like we discussed earlier, picking something up on the road, you know, driving down, you didn’t really realize you had some that got inside wall or you know, your tire easily here, that’s usually when you really don’t know about.
Dustin Barnett 23:33
And I think that’s a good point is just a proper, thorough pre trip inspection. And, you know, over the years, you see, I’m not necessarily talking about Oakley, owner operators, but you go to a truck stop in the mornings, and you just watch over the parking lot, you’ll see the lights come on, and you’ll see him take off. And that just shows in the pennant and like weather conditions to bits, you know, snowing outside and it’s cold, I don’t want to get down there and inspect my brakes or just my brakes. And I think that has a big part in actually just doing a thorough pre-trip every single morning like you log it, I think will help a lot on the cutting down and a lot of these violations that DOD buys because that’s what they’re doing when they’re inspecting the equipment. They’re getting down on the ground, they’re crawling underneath the trailer, doing T’s on all of it. I think there needs to be some more You got to want to
Jeremy Kellett 24:21
find it as bad as I do. You do. If you want to find it as bad as I do every morning, then you probably were having problems.
Jeremy Paul 24:30
And we did as you know, we got a lot of right violations, right meaning of adjustment. And also Jeremy I don’t think we should be really getting any of those because we certify the owner ops to adjust the brakes. And so they’re able to do that and we need to make sure we are checking those breaks and adjust them as they need be like they don’t know how long. I think so. I really do because I mean we show them an orientation but man, you get so much information and orientation. You can’t. It’s hard to grow Ask everything honestly. So let me know if there’s any, if you’re listening, and you’re not sure how to adjust those breaks, next time you’re here in the office, or even if you’re down at reserving see Wade, or any of the mechanics down there, if you’re the office, come see us. And we’ll be happy to refresh, you are just in those because we want you to know what to look for and how to do it, if you don’t know how, but it’s easy fix
Dustin Barnett 25:19
is with technology so there’s some scales where they have heat sensors. So it’s not necessarily like a luck of the draw where an officer is just inspecting all of your brakes, and he finds one that’s out of adjustment, you’re actually driving through heat sensors. And if there’s no heat registering from the drum, well, then there’s no friction, the shoes not applying to the drum really have the brakes. So whenever hopefully, no one’s been targeted this way. But if you ever had that happen, they’ll pull you around, they’ll go directly to the source, they won’t even look at the other brakes, because they know by what the sensors told them that there’s not any heat being wearing, find
Jeremy Kellett 25:59
that information out. And it’s pretty good detective work. Well, it’s not all states.
Dustin Barnett 26:03
I think there’s just one out there that has that technology. We need to know which one. Yeah. I think I am just guessing if I tossed out okay, I have one in mind. But I’d have to confirm that there is one state out there that has it. And my thought though, if one has it, and it’s successful, yeah. It’s just a matter of time until a lot more states start installing those on the scales to try to target technology. Yeah,
Jeremy Paul 26:28
no, no, no, I want to spend too much time embracing it. We’ve got a lot to talk about. But I want to add this, I think this is important to know, typically what I see you when you do receive a breakup adjustment violation, you actually end up getting a second violation. Because what they’ll do is they’ll say, Okay, your brakes have adjusted, but also your slack adjuster is not working. So it’s just that break. And so the right she actually for breakout adjustment in, you know, malfunctioning slacker gesture to that’s very common to see when you get a break violation that you kind of get in double whammy there.
Jeremy Kellett 26:58
Yeah. The, um, Anna’s? Yep. For sure. We want to go into that. Is that part of the deal of, you know, points and what it calls to? Yeah, that kind of stuff. You want to go that way? Yeah, there
Jeremy Paul 27:10
There are two things that I really want to talk about today on CSA to kind of help the owner operators. First of all, I want to start with, you know, where CSA points come from, you know, talk to you about this other day, Jeremy. And this is, like an everyday thing. It’s a very common occurrence that I see an owner operator, or even drivers out there in general get confused on where their CSA points come from. The majority think that CSA points come from a citation. And they don’t, you know, no citation is gonna assess points to your license, obviously. And if you accrue enough, you can get a remote but, you know, citations, you get them, you can either fight them or pay them and then you own your license. So if someone who runs your motor vehicle board sees that, but it doesn’t affect your CSA, it does not they does not. The only time you get CSA points is if you are written a roadside violation on a roadside inspection. And what’s happening is the DLT officer typically says, Well, I’m not giving you a citation, I’m just giving you a warning. But they’ll hand the driver that roadside inspection and it’s got violations listed on there. And that’s not a Magus in a way it is a warning because now it’s a citation but it’s a roadside violation. And you’re recruiting CSA points because they wrote that violation on a roadside inspection. Alright, so
Jeremy Kellett 28:29
Let me backup a second. So he’s going down the road, he gets pulled over for speeding and he gets a speeding ticket by fake trooper and he gives him a ticket. He calls us I got a speeding ticket. He pays it bills I record that does not show up on his PSP. On his
Jeremy Paul 28:54
The only way would be if he also wrote a written inspection with it. Because that can happen. They can give you a ticket citation. And they can also do a roadside inspection and record it on there at the same time at the same time. So he
Jeremy Kellett 29:07
would have to either do an actual roadside inspection or say that he
Jeremy Paul 29:11
That’s correct. Yes, correct. Yeah, actually,
Dustin Barnett 29:14
there’s instances where you see that it’s not necessarily like the state trooper because they’re all certified to issue roadside inspections. So whenever you see a state trooper pull you over. If they are citing you for it, they’re also writing it up on an inspection form. To JPS point, sometimes you’ll go through some of these smaller towns, maybe it’s a city officer, maybe he’s not certified to do inspections. So he just writes you a citation. It’s a little municipal citation going into that courthouse in that city, where he doesn’t really write up in a roadside inspection and doesn’t have an infection. Look at the driver’s logs, it goes through all those steps. Those are the times where we see where yeah, there’s a fine if there’s no CSA points.
Jeremy Kellett 29:56
It doesn’t show up anywhere, ever. Yeah,
Jeremy Paul 29:59
That’s the And the roadside inspections get to what you mentioned earlier, Jeremy that the PSP or PSP is where you’re going to see all the all the drivers roadside inspection for the previous three years and any violations that they accrued on that. And as you also mentioned earlier that not only affects the driver CSA score, but it also affects Oakley, and our thresholds,
Jeremy Kellett 30:22
yes and the PSP for people. You all have one, you’re driving a truck, you’ve got one, and you hope there’s nothing on it. But you can actually go see what that is. If you go to the website, I can’t remember now the name of the website, we use it every day out here, green program anyway. You can you can, you can search for it search for PSP on the internet, pre
Jeremy Paul 30:47
employment screening
Jeremy Kellett 30:48
program, maybe something like that. I can’t remember, I think it’s Monday, and you can pull up your own PSP and you can see all your roadside inspections and violations in the last three years. The truck shows for free. I have been doing it for years and always shocking people. Hey, let me run your PSP for you to call steamboats. And we do it for them for free. But it tells their history of roadside inspections. I can’t tell you how many times that we’ve shown a guy he is and he gave it to him. And I said, Well, man, it looks like you got a violation right here. And he said no, that was just a warning. Right? Yeah, we hear that all the time. I was just a warning. I didn’t get a violation. Yeah. Everybody is, it was a roadside inspection. And he wrote you up whether he and I don’t know, are the D O T officers confused on that? It’s
Jeremy Paul 31:38
a good chance. I
Dustin Barnett 31:40
think it’s the way that they’re informing them whenever they go up and issue them the verb side violation, I think by saying it’s a warning that kind of, you know, tempers might be a little high, you don’t want to get a ticket, you don’t want to get a citation. You don’t want to affect your driving career. So of course it matters. So I think it’s just how it’s worded, they may come up and say, Hey, don’t worry, I’m not writing you a citation, I’m just giving you a warning, kind of playing it down. In reality, it actually has just as much impact as if he were to write you a citation because it is tied to your PSP and your CSA. And then it’s also you know, the carrier that you’re running to operate for affecting them as well, so that I know just how they word it.
Jeremy Kellett 32:25
I know this, our listeners out there, I know this can be all confusing, you know, the antibody was confused over there. Yes, the CSA takes a lot of notes. It can be confusing, but you know, just to clarify, I mean, we’re talking about it here with Dustin Barnett, Jeremy Paul, the safety department at Oakley, we’re trying to help you. We’re trying to help you understand from a company’s perspective of how it affects not only you on your roadside inspection, but how to fix the company out of fakes as getting freight as a company because the public can look at it and see it. You know what a company looks like. But more than anything, the actions that you take every day out there driving a truck makes a difference. Yeah, it matters. It matters, it matters so much. And the majority of Oakley owner operators are great. And have zero violation dry.
Dustin Barnett 33:22
They do. And that’s a good point I wanted to bring up where we kind of jumped right in on all the violations. Yeah, which is, you know, the purpose of the podcast. But on record, we have 1141 roadside inspections total, currently, this year, or over the two year period. So you take that, then you filter it out on how many of those vials or there’s roadside inspections we received violations for, and there’s 368 of those. So really, all of this discussion is surrounded by 32%, roughly, of the roadside inspections we have received. So, you know, that is a good, you know, shout out to the owner operators that have received all those clean inspections, that needs to be, you know, talked about, because it’s just as important as what we kind of geared our focus on today. But yeah, because it’s a percent , it’s awesome, it’s great. And a
Jeremy Kellett 34:13
good inspection offsets, some what don’t we need good inspections.
Dustin Barnett 34:17
We do whenever you get inspections, you’re still within that same tier group, but there’s a lot of metrics and jpy in and it
Jeremy Paul 34:25
just definitely helps. Yeah, that’s the ASM is when we get we talked about our Yeah, it definitely helps. And that’s what we need. And I want to give our owner operators a little incentive here to really focus on the CSA stuff and focus on their equipment and talk about how it can affect the CSA pay that we give our owner operator.
Jeremy Kellett 34:44
Because that’s something well, you can go ahead and explain. Sure. So
Jeremy Paul 34:47
You know, when you hire Oakley, you’re starting out at zero CSA points with us, no matter what you got previously, so we’re gonna pay you 25 cents a mile for having that clean CSA score. Almost almost. Yes. Good point all miles. So let’s say you run 100,000 miles a year, you know, at 25 cents a mile for 100,000 miles, you’re gonna make over a three year period $75,000, just in CSAP. And the reason why I’m saying three years is because when you get a violation that stays on your record for three years. So if you look at it, we talked about one of the most common and most harmful violations, you’re looking at tires, that’s one of the most common ones will you receive a flat tire, for example, you’re getting 30 points on your CSA. With us, if you get 115 points, you get paid 21 cents a mile. If you get 15 to 30 points, you’re getting paid 20 or 19 cents a mile. And so and so that’s going to push that down. Is it now correct? Yeah. So a tire valuation would be in that 30 points, and is going to put you at 19 cents. So now you did 20% 25 for three worker years. So now if you do the math on that, if you run 100,000 miles, that three years, you’re only making $59,000. So you’re actually losing $16,000 over a three year period. That’s how drastic it can affect you.
Dustin Barnett 36:13
So it kind of puts it in perspective, when you do find the defect. And you might think, Well, I’m gonna be home this evening, or tomorrow, I’m gonna go ahead and get the load off. Now, when I get home, it’s more convenient. There’s no shops open in the area so I wanted to get on the road early. Now, we put so much incentive in the program to ask yourself, Is this worth $12,000 total? Over the if you’re within the one to 15 Pay bracket, and it’s an incentive. Now you have to think well, you know, maybe I’ll wait an extra hour, let the shop open up. Let’s get this defect repaired and then get back on the road. And I think that’s why we put so much emphasis on CSA, because it is important. And now it kind of gives you some incentive and helps you make that decision a little bit easier. Well, yeah, I
Jeremy Kellett 37:00
I mean, it’s a lot of money that can come out of the owner operator. And, you know, I think nobody, we can’t put a monetary value on what it costs us. Sure. You know, when it comes to a customer looking at our basics and going, well, let’s not get a bid from them, we must go home, somebody else, you know, there are berish owed or something. But it costs us all.
Jeremy Paul 37:23
Absolutely, it does. And I want to find one more thing on this and how CSA works. You know, I mentioned a tire violation gives you 30 points, well, how that’s actually calculated the tire violation itself doesn’t hold but a 10 point CSA value. By the way CSA is set up and this isn’t Oakley, this is you know, when CSA was established how it’s set up. When your validation is less than a year old, starting the day you receive it until day 365 is multiplied by three. So that 10 points is three times more. So that’s why it’s 30 points. After a year, it’s multiplied by two. So now it’s 20 points. And then after two years, I almost bought one. So now it’s 10 points. After three years now it’s back to zero. So that’s kind of how I was pointed out.
Jeremy Kellett 38:11
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good explanation of it going into the hand one time and then it takes three years to Yeah, to go away that’s costing you a little bit of money. And it’s frustrating. And we’re an hour apart. And I’m sure y’all run into situations all the time where you hate to do it, but we’re getting it too. I think that’s where people don’t want Dan if you get the violation. We do. That’s why we start you out with zero no matter if you have some violations, when we recruited you and we leased you on and say you had some violate a few violations with the other carrier which you’re only gonna have a few or we won’t really see on but you had a few with your previous carrier when you come to Oakley, you start you have zero violations under our company Oakley trucking, you know those violations you have previous or be associated with that company. You know, so and that’s another part of it. If somebody leaves here, we continue to carry those violations. You know, until the time runs out. I don’t know, you know, the overall picture. CSA. I remember it just changing things in us back in 2010. And going oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? This is gonna write about the skill of Chinese, a whole landscape and it has, it really has, but you just have to, we have to put so much emphasis on safety. And we have to continue to do it constantly. And we have to promote safety at this company. And we do. I think we do a great job. I mean, we’ve got a fantastic safety department that is on top of things. I mean, you guys, Roger Ashley Frazier, Joey I mean everybody is the only owner of the game and it takes a group to make it run right and of course, we can only do so much here. You’re struggling to see owner operators going down a road anymore. Yes, sir.
Dustin Barnett 40:03
Yeah. And their actions you know we’re responsible for as well. So that’s why, you know, it’s a collective. Yep, we all have a job to do. We want to make sure we do it safely and, you know, their actions reflect on us as well. It’s a team effort.
Jeremy Kellett 40:16
Always say your tractor pulls in our trailer drive. And we’re both responsible in both gotta make a living off of it
Jeremy Paul 40:23
dry narrows out there since I got an issue we need to know because we don’t know unless they tell us.
Jeremy Kellett 40:30
What else do you want to cover? That bag I
Jeremy Paul 40:32
I think that covers everything that I really wanted to hone in on. Then he nailed everything.
Dustin Barnett 40:39
I just wanted to give an update. I think the brake Safety Week, happens once a year. And this year, it’s going to be the last week of August. So August 25. Though I think it’s the 31st. Nationwide that’s going to be the whole target that week is going to be focused strictly on birth. So the
Jeremy Kellett 40:59
LT comes out of everywhere I set up inspection places both sides of the interstate, they look they
Dustin Barnett 41:06
will they set up and go skills and you know, stop on beyond just their normal gales that you’re familiar with. So yeah, it’s a joint operation nation mod. So just be aware that it is coming up at the end of August.
Jeremy Kellett 41:19
And that’s brake, brakes up adjustment. Brake Pad. Yep. All that. Brake cracked, cracked. Yeah, drum cracked nails like that.
Jeremy Paul 41:30
We’ll seal leaking. All its associated with Yes, yeah, basically the wheel assembly gonna be associated with that. And, you know, another positive note to leave on is, you know, we’ve got the company party coming up. But what I wanted to say is we got $8 million. We’re going to be awarded this year. So that’s, that will save you from being back on here. Come party time. So Warren to say that, you know, that’s, that’s awesome. $8 million. Appreciate you guys and everything that you do, and it’s a big recognition to her. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 42:00
it is. I mean, can you imagine driving a million miles in this with cell phones?
Jeremy Paul 42:07
I guess I should have said a million safe miles. I forgot to say that. So that’s impressive.
Jeremy Kellett 42:10
Yeah. Good. Even a Drudge Report in my house. My wife don’t get tired going
Jeremy Paul 42:15
600 To the beep
Jeremy Kellett 42:19
Yeah. Oh, no. And it is, I mean, safe. I said before, I mean, it’s something that we promote here and there are a lot of you know, I wouldn’t say negative to it, but it’s just a lot of policing. It’s a lot of laws. It’s just a constant. We got it you got to be on you get dry, you know, all the time. And I mean, just think about an owner operator out there that gets up every morning in a different place. And whether it’s safe or not, and he’s got to he’s got to before he hits the road, he got to make sure you stuff right you know, and whatever the weather is, it don’t matter dry he’s got to make sure his truck and trailer and everything’s right and there’s that’s not an easy task sounds easy to do a pre trip but it ain’t just it can be it can depending on the day and try it can be challenging, but it’s well worth it. And I think that’s the root of it all where it starts is the pre trip draft this tough
Jeremy Paul 43:20
job and I just can’t thank our guys enough for everything they do and all of our drivers out there in general getting to couldn’t have our clothes on our back without them so we know
Jeremy Kellett 43:28
good owner operators we just got it sure we got a bunch of them so you know y’all out there keep doing what you do and mind you doing a fantastic job we appreciate everything that you do is is a truck driver in general just you know, you got a lot of rules you got to go by, you know, you are laying the government is watching things they make laws a based on, you know, professional truck drivers, and we got to abide by our best we can. We’re trying to do the best we know how, and still have your interest in mind. You know, after doing your job every day, I never want you to thank you that Oakley Trucking is against the truck driver MCO and we are for the truck driver because you make our living and we need you and we’re here to try to help you with safety. We’re here to help you with anything we possibly can to Miami, we need feedback from you. We don’t have it all figured out. And try to learn every day you know and we need feedback from our owner operators to help us keep the seven basics under the threshold. Keep our score down, keep violations down and man thing just goes a lot smoother and trying saves them money saves them money
Dustin Barnett 44:40
every week in orientation that’s what I tell them to do is we’re here to help you succeed we don’t have any questions or you know we’re all in this together we want you to succeed because that means we’re gonna Yeah
Jeremy Kellett 44:50
and I think people will look at it. You know some of them look at as oh god safety Portman but call me again. Or and yes me and we’re not that’s not the
Jeremy Paul 44:59
case. You know? just trying to help them out and protect them ultimately.
Jeremy Kellett 45:02
Yeah, some of them are hard headed.
Jeremy Paul 45:06
Just kid we are sometimes we are doing
Jeremy Kellett 45:09
Well, I appreciate you guys sitting down with me and having a safety episode. It really goes a long way. They do it more often because you know, I think our owner operators appreciate it too. And they can see we’re here to help them tighten safety. So thank you once again, appreciate ya. Thank you very much for having thanks for listening to the Oakley podcast. I appreciate everybody out there. checking us out every week bringing new episodes every Wednesday. We appreciate it. Talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Oakley podcast: trucking, business, and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show on the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience, so if you’ve got a question, comment, or just want to say hello, head over to our website, theoakleypodcast.com, and click the “leave a comment” button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.