The Art of Reconciliation - Part 1

Unregistered Carriers on 6/30/2009 - 3252
Unregistered Carriers on 7/1/2009 - 3204
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 18 / $1,548 (avg $76)

Notice that I titled this post the "art" of reconciliation and not the "science" of reconciliation. Trying to figure out all the ways that carriers get on and off the list is still more of an art for us, but since we're going to attempt a reconciliation today, I'm going to share some of our findings with you.

First, notice that 48 carriers (net) came off our list (see above). We went from 3252 carriers on our unregistered list to 3204.

In actuality, 49 carriers were removed from the list and one carrier came onto the list in "sideways" fashion - through an MCS-150 update - for a net removal of 48 carriers.

Next, we registered 18 carriers in the IL system yesterday (see above). However, only 9 of those carriers were on our unregistered list, so that only accounted for 9 carriers removed from the list. In case you're wondering, 5 carriers had brand-new USDOT numbers and weren't even in SAFER yet. More on that later. That leaves 4 guys who registered, but who weren't on our unregistered list because they didn't fit the filter criteria for the list. Whew!

Next, two more of our previously-unregistered IL carriers registered in the Indiana system.

Things get sticky after this, so I'm going to stop for now and pick up in tomorrow's post. My hat's off to you if you've followed me this far!

OK - We're Baselined! I think!

Unregistered Carriers on 6/29/2009 - 3350
Unregistered Carriers on 6/30/2009 - 3252
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 43 / $3,828 (avg $90)

After all the dust settled, we wound up with another 100 carriers off of our list. We're checking to see who they were and how they got off the list, but, with any luck, we're finished with the baselining. And we're 100 carriers closer to our goal!

We are perfecting our UCR reconciliation process, although we have a long way to go before it's perfect. In other words, we are trying to figure out more specifically how people get on and off our list by reconciling them like we do our bank deposits. Again, while we have a general idea, we have a long way to go before we'll be confident. But the reconciliation process is what pointed us toward the aforementioned glitch a few days ago, which may have saved some people some needless aggravation related to unwarranted UCR tickets at the roadside.

Tomorrow, I'll talk more about the reconciliation process.

I'm A Little Hesitant To Blog Today

Unregistered Carriers on 6/26/2009 - 3363
Unregistered Carriers on 6/29/2009 - 3350
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 14 / $1,084 (avg $77)

In my last post, I mentioned a glitch we found and the baseline that we ran to get things up to date. Well, seems as though our baseline update threw the Feds for a loop - so we still don't know the results of the update. With any luck, we should have some new numbers tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Yesterday's Blog!

Unregistered Carriers on 6/25/2009 - 3370
Unregistered Carriers on 6/26/2009 - 3363
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 20 / $1,932 (avg $96)


As I was analyzing reports in preparation for yesterday's blog, I noticed that we had registered 32 carriers the day before ..... but Iteris only showed an increase of 15 registrations. One thing led to another, and we discovered a glitch in the update process (on our end) between us to Iteris. Had I not done the blog, we may not have discovered the glitch for quite some time, if ever! We ran a new baseline - all the 2009 registrations since 9/1/08 - and sent it to Iteris. We won't know anything until this weekend.

UCR - Comparison of Big States

Unregistered Carriers on 6/24/2009 - 3385
Unregistered Carriers on 6/25/2009 - 3370
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 32 / $2,363 (avg $74)

I did some research this morning on the number of carriers we are registering vis-a-vis other states with a lot of carriers. I'm not talking about percentages here, but rather the total number of registrations we have processed.

In order, the top 5 states in terms of 2009 registrations to date (with # of unregistered carriers in parenthesis) are:

California - 17,666 (10,416)
Illinois - 15,536 (3,370)
Texas - 14,148 (6,485)
New York - 12,249 (4,041)
Pennsylvania - 11,886 (6,161)

I then looked at the number of 2009 registrations each of us has done since June 1. Lacking any better hypothesis, I figured that if there was nothing exceptional about what we're doing here, the registrations in June would be roughly proportional to the number of unregistered carriers each of us has left. Here are the actual registrations in June:

Illinois - 684
Texas - 450
California - 432
New York - 236
Pennsylvania - 131

So much for my hypothesis! What do these numbers mean? Beats me! But here's what I think it means:

We registered 50% more carriers than the next nearest state because we are actively soliciting our carriers using UCR-Link, our spreadsheet comparer and email. It's no extra work - just different work at less expense! Now that's a fine example of "Dave-math"!!!

Farmers and UCR

Unregistered Carriers on 6/23/2009 - 3394
Unregistered Carriers on 6/24/2009 - 3385
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 18 / $1,202 (avg $67)
Deactivations Requested - 2

Last week, our police conducted a several-day detail in a remote part of the state near the state line. We wondered how our farmers - who have not been subject to SSRS and have apparently never been challenged to have USDOT numbers - would fare in this kind of situation.

To our surprise and pleasure, the police wrote only one UCR warning to one farmer - even though they checked the status of several hundred of them.

What does this tell us? Apparently, the UCR message is getting across.

We have worked very hard through our state and county farm bureaus to get the word out to farmers about USDOT numbers and UCR. We have registered literally thousands of farmers under UCR.

These results make us wonder what other groups we should be focusing on. Interstate towers got a lot of citations. Maybe it's time to put our attention there.

The New Carriers Just Keep Coming!

Unregistered Carriers on 6/22/2009 - 3427
Unregistered Carriers on 6/23/2009 - 3394
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 56 / $5,758 (avg $102)
Deactivations Requested - 5

Notice that we registered 56 carriers yesterday and we requested 5 deactivations - but we only reduced our unregistered list by 33! The difference is attributable to new additions - at least 28 of them. Of that amount, about half were new USDOT numbers and about half were "sideways" additions. And they all represent "hot leads" for UCR registration.

As I've said before, I'm becoming a believer in the reality of the UCR "universe" - although I believe there are less carriers in the higher brackets and more carriers in the lower brackets.

One other item: we are now officially past the one-third mark in our "quest for zero". It has taken us about 100 calendar days to remove the first 1700 carriers from our unregistered list. At that rate, we are going to get very close to reaching zero by the end of the calendar year.

UCR - June Is Busting Out All Over!

Unregistered Carriers on 6/19/2009 - 3460
Unregistered Carriers on 6/22/2009 - 3427
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 35 / $3,017 (avg $86)

I was checking our numbers for June and noticed that we have done 583 registrations and collected $66,795 for an average registration amount of $115 and an average of 36 UCR registrations per work day - not bad for nine months into a registration year. I don't think we were ever this diligent under SSRS - and we didn't even have a cap then! Unfortunately, we're paying for that now, because our cap is not as high as it could have been had we worked a little harder under SSRS.

We are still getting some Unregistered List additions due to recent inspections. I suspect that these are from Roadcheck 2009 and that we will continue to see these carriers arriving on the list for some time to come. Some states are still reporting their inspections on paper, which can cause a significant lag in the flow of information.

New UCR Unregistered List Developments!

Unregistered Carriers on 6/12/2009 - 3698
Unregistered Carriers on 6/19/2009 - 3460
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 154 / $14,112 (avg $90)

As you can see, we actually exceeded our target for the week, but, in all honesty, I think we had a little help.

This week, Iteris - the people who produce the unregistered lists for us - implemented a new filter that took out carriers who were exempt from the UCR program all along, but who have been showing up on the Unregistered List. That's OK - we'll take all the help we can get! I suspect that bought us 75-100 removals, although I haven't yet received the actual list of removals.

Email continues to be a great source for contacting carriers. According to Kathy, we have now emailed everybody on our unregistered list and are starting on Round 2 with a slightly different message.

Sometimes You Get The Data - Sometimes The Data Gets You!

Unregistered Carriers on 6/11/2009 - 3692
Unregistered Carriers on 6/12/2009 - 3698
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 38 / $3,404 (avg $87)
Deactivations Requested - 7

Such is the nature of the Unregistered List. Yesterday morning, we didn't get any new USDOT# additions because (I heard that) MCMIS was down. Today, we got both sets - yesterday's and today's. In the big picture, it doesn't matter, but it just looks funny - we registered 38 carriers and still wound up a little bit in the hole for the day!

I'm going to be away from the Blog for a few days. When I return, I will post a summary of our results. My hope is that we will remove another 150 carriers from our Unregistered List by next Friday. That will take us to 3548. Let's see how we do!

Until then ...

Help Farmers Get USDOT #'s ?!?! Why???

Unregistered Carriers on 6/10/2009 - 3725
Unregistered Carriers on 6/11/2009 - 3692
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 24 / $2,396 (avg $100)
Deactivations Requested - 7

In our part of the country, we have a lot of farmers - good, decent, hard-working, law-abiding people. Farmers - at least the farmers who haul for-hire interstate - are folks who would have registered with us as "Exempt" carriers prior to UCRA, meaning that they were hauling interstate but they were exempt from the requirement to get a federal authority to do their interstate hauling.

The IL Farm Bureau readily admits that most farmers, under the old (but current) definitions and laws, need to get a USDOT number. In fact, they drafted the document that sits on our Web site telling farmers why they have to do it. Up until now, however, nobody has even asked many of the farmers to get a USDOT number or challenged them at the road. We (the IL Commerce Commission), on the other hand, have registered literally THOUSANDS of farmers with brand-spanking-new USDOT #'s as part of our UCR registration effort.

I could do a whole sideshow on the issue of "Where the heck have the Feds and MCSAP been with regard to the farmers who needed USDOT #'s but didn't have them?"

My point today, however, is that we actually help the farmers get their USDOT#'s. They call in or come in, we get them to the FMCSA Web site and walk them through the registration process. "But that's so time-consuming!", you cry out in utter disbelief. Why do we do it? Three reasons: 1) they need it to be legal, 2) it only takes about 5-10 minutes, and 3) we get at least $39 for our effort - 100% of the time. Is that a good investment of our time? It is using "Dave-math"!

A Slow - But "Educational" - Day In UCR Paradise

Unregistered Carriers on 6/9/2009 - 3723
Unregistered Carriers on 6/10/2009 - 3725
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 11 / $1,313 (avg $119)
Deactivations Requested - 4

As you can see, we received slightly more carrier "additions" yesterday than the number of carriers we were able to remove from our list, so the two sets of carriers kind of offset each other.

On a slightly different note, I must admit that I'm a little baffled as to how some carriers "arrive" on my unregistered list. I suspect that SAFESTAT and MCMIS are not in synch regarding inspections and crashes, because I can't find a correlation - at least not so far - between the information in the two systems, both of which are reflected on the SAFER web site. For instance, SAFER might show that a carrier has had an inspection - which places him on my unregistered list - but SAFESTAT (the inspection detail site) doesn't show any inspections for that period - or any other period. Admittedly, my education in this area is extremely limited, so a thousand pardons if I'm off base.

This brings me to another sort-of-related observation: yesterday, we had 15 additions to our unregistered list - and all but two were $39 carriers. Additions get on the list because the information is current - new USDOT Number, MCS-150 update, change of address, recent inspection, etc. - unlike a lot of already existing MCMIS records. My point: as we rotate carriers on and off the unregistered list, I suspect the real carrier list is going to be made up of a lot more small carriers than is currently reflected on the Retreat Factor Matrix (available upon request), which still includes a lot of old, yet-to-be-confirmed records.

UCR in June

Unregistered Carriers on 6/8/2009 - 3767
Unregistered Carriers on 6/9/2009 - 3723
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 52 / $10,553 (avg $203)
Deactivations Requested - 11


In the first week of June, we registered 171 UCR carriers and collected $20,648. That's an average of $127 per registration. We don't have the research to prove it yet, but we're pretty confident that many of these registrations (along with quite a few requests for deactivation) came about directly as a result of emailing the "new additions" to our list and responding to their responses. Last week, we sent 577 emails - approximately one-seventh of our total unregistered list.

At $127 per registration, nobody can convince me that solicitation of these carriers is "not worth the effort". In a previous post, I outlined the revenue/cost math as I saw it. If we were keeping the money (which we're not because we have already reached our 2009 cap), I'd say we got a strong return in that area for our efforts because the total solicitation and processing costs are easily under $1,000. That's at least a 20-1 revenue-to-cost ratio! Who says capitalism is dead?!?


And the best part - we've kept a whole lot of carriers in compliance and out of trouble!

UCR and Deactivation - Part 3

Unregistered Carriers on 6/5/2009 - 3816
Unregistered Carriers on 6/8/2009 - 3767
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 37 / $4246 (avg $114)
Deactivations Requested - 5

It seems to us in IL that most of the formal procedures we've seen (or heard about) regarding deactivation of a USDOT number center around a written request for deactivation from the carrier. As I've indicated in earlier posts, we get lots of those types of requests from carriers.

As we start to look closer at our UCR Unregistered List, however, we also note a lot of MCMIS carrier records that we believe are not operating in any capacity. But ..... we can't reach anybody to get a written request for deactivation from the carrier. So what's a reasonable person to do? We don't have access to tax records, so that's out. We don't have access to reporting services like D&B, so that's out.

So, here's what we do (but I'm not saying this is what you should do).

We call the carrier. If we get a disconnected message, that's one strike.

We send a new registration. If we get it back undeliverable with no forwarding address, that's another strike.

We check corporate records. If it's an IL corporation that's dissolved, that corporation is no longer a legal business entity in IL. Another strike.

We check L&I if it's a for-hire name, like ABC Express or DEF Cartage, or GHI Transport. If they no longer have authority - and haven't had for quite some time - another strike.

We look at the SAFER record. If it looks old and stale, another strike.

You get the idea. Again, most of our deactivations have been by request, but as we get deeper into the list, I'm certain we're going to run into more situations where we have to "back into" deactivation.

Deactivations and UCR - Part 2

Unregistered Carriers on 6/4/2009 - 3823
Unregistered Carriers on 6/5/2009 - 3816
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 28 / $2092 (avg $74)
Deactivations Requested - 5

Yesterday, I promised to tell you the "rest of the story" concerning deactivations, particularly those deactivations for which we do not receive a request from the carrier being deactivated. After thinking about it, I've decided to tell you "more of the story" - and we'll get to the end of the story whenever we get there.

Deactivations are important, because when it comes to the Unregistered list, a deactivation is as effective as a registration for reducing the list by one.

Remember that the Unregistered list is a set of MCMIS records attached to USDOT numbers, some of which represent carriers who are no longer in business. Deactivate the USDOT number, reduce the list. It's that simple.

Deactivations that involve a request from a carrier are a proverbial "chip shot". The carrier requests deactivation - usually via a letter - and that gives you all the justification you need for getting the carrier deactivated.

The problem occurs when you try to contact a carrier, you discover that can't find the carrier and you suspect the carrier is out of business. Now you enter that murky netherworld of "due diligence" - the amount of legwork you need to perform before you decide that the carrier is, indeed, out of business. With sufficient due diligence, you can deactivate the carrier without a declaration or a request from the carrier. But .... how much due diligence is enough?

Apparently, the answer is somewhat flexible. And that's what we'll talk about next time.

UCR and Carrier Deactivations

Unregistered Carriers on 6/3/2009 - 3824
Unregistered Carriers on 6/4/2009 - 3823
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 25 / $2435 (avg $97)
Deactivations Requested - 8

Starting today, we will report the number of daily carrier deactivations we requested the previous day. Deactivations are important, because they represent carriers who appear to be operating according to MCMIS, but who have really gone out of business - or, at least, gone out of the interstate business. We suspect that a certain number of our unregistered carriers are not really in business, but until we either register them, deactivate them or re-classify them, they will continue to "haunt" us by hanging around on our unregistered list.

Deactivation can happen two ways: 1) a carrier requests deactivation or 2) we determine, through a certain amount of due diligence, that the carrier is no longer in business.

Most of our deactivations come about as a result of carrier requests. We contact a carrier to register them, they tell us they are out of business, and they send us a request to deactivate their DOT Number so we'll leave them alone in the future. The important point there is that an actual "deactivation conversation" takes place. Nice and clean.

I'll talk more about the other method of deactivation in my next post.

The New MCMIS Buffer System

Unregistered Carriers on 6/2/2009 - 3837
Unregistered Carriers on 6/3/2009 - 3824
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 22 / $1550 (avg $70)

About two months ago, I announced at a UCR Board Meeting that Chris Campbell of Iteris and I were talking about putting a MCMIS "Buffer System" in place that would be hosted by Iteris. The purpose of this system would be to make "shadow" adjustments (including the ability to virtually deactivate a MCMIS record) to MCMIS motor carrier information without actually changing MCMIS. Several states are now testing this system and we hope to have it in production and connected to the unregistered list by the June NCSTS/UCR meeting.

Under what circumstances would you make these adjustments? Here are several situations:

When, for whatever reasons, you can't get a UCR Registration update to "take" and you want to move the carrier off your Unregistered list

When you can't reach a carrier by phone but you don't want to declare a carrier out of business just because of that.

When you want to declare a carrier out of business, but have no way to get that info to MCMIS

When you get back a mailing marked "bad address" with no forwarding address

When emails bounce back

Remember, you are not changing MCMIS, you are updating "shadow" information about the carrier in the MCMIS buffer system.

If all of this sounds like so much mush, don't be concerned. Chris is going to be in PA and will demo the product for those who are there. For anyone else who's interested, we can schedule another type of demo.

Another Beautiful Day In the UCR Neighborhood!

Unregistered Carriers on 6/1/2009 - 3900
Unregistered Carriers on 6/2/2009 - 3837
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 58 / $10286 (avg $178)

On the heels of taking 60 carrier records off the list yesterday, we took off 63 today. And ... we registered 58 carriers yesterday! That's what I'm talking about!!! Actually, we had no additions to our list today, which means we'll probably get blasted tomorrow.

Here's another thought: this is Roadcheck week - lots of inspections happening around the country. We may see our unregistered lists grow over the next few weeks as a result of these inspections.

Tomorrow, I'm going to talk about another way to manage - and reduce - your unregistered carrier list --- the new MCMIS Buffer System being developed by Iteris.

Big Day! Coincidence? You Decide!

Unregistered Carriers on 5/29/2009 - 3960
Unregistered Carriers on 6/01/2009 - 3900
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 19 / $1471 (avg $78)

For those of you who have the gift of math, you'll notice that we took 60 carriers off our unregistered list since Friday. The actual math, according to our spreadsheet analyzer, was that we deleted 85 carrier records and added back 20. We were stunned, since we had only done 19 registrations on Friday. At any rate, we are chalking it up to working smarter - i.e. using the spreadsheet analyzer - even if we have no idea why it really happened! On an related note, I have also asked Iteris if they can add the number of crashes in the last 15 months and the number of inspections in the last 15 months to our Unregistered report so that we can get a better idea of why some carriers are on the list. We have a sneaking suspicion that some carriers are on the list because they have a stray inspection or crash that was incorrectly attributed to them. I'm sure the Feds would appreciate help in correcting that kind of stuff as well.