CSA Severity Weight for Violating the New 30 Minute Break Rule: 7

If your log doesn't show a 30-minute break to meet the requirement of the latest hours-of-service rule and a truck inspector writes you up, the violation will have a severity weight of 7 in the CSA scoring system. Missing the break will not result in an out-of-service order, but you may be required to shut down for 30 minutes before continuing.

 The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) has confirmed that drivers may be placed out of service for 60- or 70-hour violations when the violations are the result of a non-qualifying restart. A non-qualifying restart either doesn't include two nighttime periods from 1 - 5 a.m., or starts before 168 hours have passed since the beginning of the last restart. CVSA advises that drivers will not be placed out-of-service for violating the new 30-minute rest break requirement, but the violation may be noted on the roadside inspection report. In some states, drivers may be required to stop operating and immediately take the 30-minute break before continuing.

However, this will not result in an out-of-service order that would go on your company's record in the CSA safety measurement system. Rob Abbott at the American Trucking Associations says that CVSA's position on rest breaks may change after discussion at the organization's September meeting.

You Are the Leader, But Are You the Right Leader?

This month, our readers get the “professor” part of the author as opposed to the “safety director” side they are more accustomed.  Professor of course being a term used indifferently as the author’s first job is steeped in organizational safety leadership in the trucking industry.  

However, part of that employment is teaching others.  This safety director is also an adjunct professor in business and leadership development at a local university.  The two professions go hand-in-hand as the role of the safety manager, director, or VP is more judicious than ever before. 

Strategy in business and strategy in leadership must be aligned with executive goals in order for your business to succeed.  In preparing lesson plans, I usually run across a curriculum that is well-suited for the trucking industry, particular in the areas of executive leadership.  This month, I’ve decided to write a participatory article that you may find quite useful in leading your organization.  This is the same situation I outline for my students in associates and bachelors programs. 

You've just finished training the newest member of your team. Now that he or she is ready to start working, you provide the information that you want him or her to enter into the company's database, and then you rush off to a meeting.

When you return later that afternoon, you're disappointed to find that this person hasn't done anything. He didn't know what to do, and the person didn't have the confidence to ask for help. As a result, hours have been lost, and now you have to rush to enter the information on time. Although you may want to blame the worker, the truth is that you're as much to blame as the new person is in this situation.

How can we avoid situations like this?  Over the years, I have personally observed this leadership paradigm countless times in the trucking industry.  Our industry is improving however, due to increased education levels in our management, savvy strategic management, and the assumption that connecting to people first is the only way to operational excellence. 

Management experts Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard argue that these things happen because leaders don't match their style of leadership to the maturity of the person or company they're leading. When style and wisdom aren't matched, failure is the result (Hersey, Blanchard, 2012).

The theory states that instead of using just one style, successful leaders should change their leadership styles based on the maturity of the people they're leading and the details of the task. Using this theory, leaders should be able to place more or less emphasis on the task, and more or less emphasis on the relationships with the people they're leading, depending on what's needed to get the job done successfully (Hersey, Blanchard, 2012).

Considering the following leadership styles, look closely at each one.  Can you spot the operational factor within your company; perhaps even attach names to the different styles?  If so, then take a look at how that particular style should be matched to assist employees that person is attempting to influence. 

Leadership Styles in Situational Leadership

According to Hersey and Blanchard, there are four essential leadership styles:

• Telling (also known as Directing) (S1) – Leaders tell their people exactly what to do, and how to do it. [could this possibly be your dispatch personnel?]
• Selling (also known as Coaching) (S2) – Leaders still provide information and direction, but there's more communication with followers. Leaders "sell" their message to get the team on board.  [could this be your terminal manager?]
• Participating (also known as Supporting) (S3) – Leaders focus more on the relationship and less on direction. The leader works with the team, and shares decision-making responsibilities. [could this be your maintenance director?]
• Delegating (S4) – Leaders pass most of the responsibility onto the follower or group. The leaders still monitor progress, but they're less involved in decisions.  [could this be the president or CEO of your company?]

As you can see, styles S1 and S2 are focused on getting the job done. Styles S3 and S4 are more concerned with developing team members' abilities to work independently.

Maturity Levels

According to Hersey and Blanchard, knowing when to use each style is largely dependent on the maturity of the person or group you're leading. They break maturity down into four different levels:

• M1 – People at this level of maturity are at the bottom level of the scale. They lack the knowledge, skills, or confidence to work on their own, and they often need to be pushed to take the task on.
• M2 – At this level, followers might be willing to work on the task, but they still don't have the skills to do it successfully.
• M3 – Here, followers are ready and willing to help with the task. They have more skills than the M2 group, but they're still not confident in their abilities.
• M4 – These followers are able to work on their own. They have high confidence and strong skills, and they're committed to the task.

The Hersey-Blanchard model maps each leadership style to each maturity level, as shown below.

Maturity Level	Most Appropriate Leadership Style
M1: Low maturity	S1: Telling/directing
M2: Medium maturity, limited skills	S2: Selling/coaching
M3: Medium maturity, higher skills but lacking confidence	S3: Participating/supporting
M4: High maturity	S4: Delegating

To use this model, one would reflect on the maturity of individuals within your team. The table above then shows which leadership style Hersey and Blanchard find the most useful for people with that level of maturity.
 

For this leadership discussion describe one situation from your work place where you or someone else in a leadership role was trying to initiate change, but failed to correctly identify the "M" maturity level (as defined by Blanchard).   And as a result, incorrectly applied the wrong leadership style (S1, S2, S3, or S4) to the leadership situation which eventually resulted in the change initiative failing. 

Be sure you first understand the change initiative, and what maturity level should have correctly been selected along with what leadership style should have been utilized.  Perhaps it was training a new dispatcher, a new driver, someone new to your management.

This months’ article might be one worth printing and using during your next training session or within your company’s human resource development program.  My belief will be that if taken seriously and used properly, you may consider one or two contrasting leadership roles within your company. 

David W. Guess, MS, CDS
Director of Safety, Usher Transport, Inc.
NATMI Academic Advisory Board Chairman
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-guess-cds/39/722/b9a

Trusting but verifying: Adopt procedures to protect you and your fleet from fraud - by Avery Vise at CCJ

One day last month I found myself staring at a cash register screen at a Walgreens checkout counter, carefully auditing the prices of items as they rang up to ensure that I got the advertised deep discount on pistachios. I was about to complain when the register applied the discount only after all items had been totaled.

I didn’t give this experience a second thought — at least not until the next day, when news broke that the FBI was investigating allegations that Pilot Flying J had over several years withheld millions of dollars in monthly diesel fuel rebates that customers had been promised. It occurred to me that those customers apparently failed to pay as much attention to transactions of thousands of dollars as I had in ensuring that I had saved $3 on a bag of pistachios.

According to an FBI special agent’s affidavit that was used to obtain a search warrant for Pilot Flying J headquarters, the truckstop chain had targeted customers – typically smaller fleets – that were “deemed to be too unsophisticated” to discover that they were being shortchanged.

Regardless of how small your business is, there’s no excuse for inadequate internal controls or for failing to understand the contracts you sign. But working against this seemingly obvious advice is the notion that trucking literally is built on trust. Consider, for example, that many trucking companies routinely provide services without any expectation of payment for 30, 45 or maybe even 60 days. Ever try to book a flight by telling the airline that you will pay for the fare a month after you return home?

Trucking may not be unique in the degree to which it operates on the basis of trust, but it’s certainly unusual. Perhaps this culture of trust sets carriers up for abuse. For example, a California broker last year was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $440,000 in restitution for brokering loads to carriers but refusing to pay them.

More common than fraud committed by business partners may be theft and embezzlement by employees. Consider these fairly recent examples:

• A Florida man was arrested last June for stealing $160,000 from a trucking company by issuing fake purchase orders and writing checks to friends and family members.
•  
• A South Carolina woman was charged last July with stealing nearly $300,000 from a large trucking company over more than four years by forging invoices and submitting them for expense reimbursement.
•  
• A New Jersey man pled guilty in 2010 to stealing about $630,000 from a trucking company by issuing company checks that were deposited into the bank accounts of various towing and repair companies, which, through co-conspirators at those companies, had invoiced the carrier fraudulently for services never performed.

While technology helps, often adequate controls simply come down to taking the time to review important transactions and setting up policies and procedures that make fraud more difficult.

Simple steps to thwart employee fraud:

The following tips for ensuring adequate internal controls are from CCJ’s Commercial Carrier University:

• Conduct full background checks on anyone who has access to bank accounts, corporate credit cards or cash.
•  
• Require employees to take vacations and have other employees perform the duties of those employees in their absence.
•  
• Ensure that any incoming funds are logged first by someone other than the person responsible for accounting for and depositing them.
•  
• Don’t let the same person authorize new employees and payroll expenditures or authorize new vendors and payments to vendors.
•  
• Don’t give any employee sole discretion over all transactions.
•  
• Randomly verify drivers’ fuel consumption, and audit their use of fuel cards.

- See more at: http://www.ccjdigital.com/trusting-but-verifying-adopt-procedures-to-protect-you-and-your-fleet-from-fraud/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=07-19-2013&utm_campaign=CCJ&ust_id=33f08c0458&#sthash.IChpFBgR.dpuf

FMCSA Issues New Guidance on Driver Breaks

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is publishing Friday, July 12, a fresh version of regulatory guidance regarding driver breaks for meals and "other routine stops," as the previously issued guidance - which came in 1997 - can in effect discourage breaks, FMCSA said, or discourage drivers from recording them in their logs.

The guidance comes on the heels of the effective date of changes to the hours-of-service rules for truck drivers, which, among much else, require that drivers take at least a 30-minute break every eight hours.

The new regulatory guidance rescinds previous guidance that hints that carriers have a say in specifics of when and where drivers stop. This guidance is not in line with FMCSA rules, the agency says.

The two new conditions that FMCSA says must be met to record meal and other routine stops made during on-duty hours as off-duty break time:

(1)"The driver is relieved of all duty and responsibility for the care and custody of the vehicle, its accessories, and any cargo or passengers it may be carrying."

(2) "During the stop, and for the duration of the stop, the driver must be at liberty to pursue activities of his/her own choosing.

The new guidance, says the agency's notice, attempts to make clear to carriers that they do not need to provide guidance to drivers - written or verbal - regarding the location or time drivers break.

"While FMCSA has not received any requests for clarification of the guidance, the agency believes it is out-of-date and no longer provides practical assistance to motor carriers attempting to achieve compliance with HOS rules," says FMCSA's notice.

FMCSA Changes Instructions for Off-Duty Time - News - TruckingInfo.com

FMCSA Changes Instructions for Off-Duty Time - News - TruckingInfo.com

CVSA Issues Guidance on Out of Service Criteria for HOS Changes

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance issued a memo to its members clarifying how the out-of-service criteria would be impacted by the changes to the hours of service rules that take effect on July 1. 

The memo confirms that drivers may be placed out-of-service for 60 or 70 hour violations when such violations result from a non-qualifying restart (e.g., did not include two nighttime periods from 1 – 5 a.m. or began within 168 hours of the beginning of the prior restart). 

However, drivers will not be placed out-of-service when discovered to have violated the new 30-minute rest break requirement. Such violations may be noted on the roadside inspection report, but will not result in the driver being placed out-of-service.  Although not a uniform approach, CVSA has indicated that drivers found in violation may be required by some States to cease operating and immediately take a 30 minute break.  However, this scenario will not result in an official out-of-service order affecting the carrier’s safety records.

Also, CVSA’s position on rest break violations is subject to change as the organization is due to revisit the issue at its upcoming Annual Conference in September.