Unregistered Carriers on 9/2/2009 - 2231
Unregistered Carriers on 9/3/2009 - 2218
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we (collectively) aren't doing a very good job at registering new USDOT carriers (40%).
We (IL) are registering 80% of these guys, so it's not a particular issue here, but we are still attempting to improve our percentage along three lines: email, contact tracking and monitoring our daily new USDOT carrier listings.
These "lines" overlap, but here are a few observations:
Every day, we make sure that each new USDOT carrier is contacted, either by email or by physical mailing. The emailing part is actually handled by Iteris, although we used to do it ourselves. Any carrier that doesn't have an email gets a letter along with a pre-printed form and instructions. In Illinois, we generally get about 20 new numbers a day. Approximately 40% of these carriers have email addresses. As I said earlier, we register about 80% of them, so we think these methods work.
As I mentioned yesterday, we are just now experimenting with contact tracking. One of our ongoing questions is how soon to contact the carriers by phone after they have been contacted by these other methods. One approach is to wait a couple days after mailing them something in order to answer questions they have, etc. Another approach would be to wait a couple of weeks to allow the carriers to get registered, which is less proactive but also requires less effort.
One problem we encounter is that entities often get USDOT numbers early in the process and don't actually start operating for quite some time after acquiring these numbers. Some carriers don't even need USDOT numbers at all, but they get them because a friend told them they need one, etc.
I'll finish my observations tomorrow.
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