Can Your State Achieve "Top State" Status?

Unregistered Carriers on 01/18/2009 - 1094
Unregistered Carriers on 01/19/2010 - 1091

Illinois - 94.93%
Maine - 93.34%

In order to answer the question I posed in the title of this post, we have to first define what "Top State" means - which takes us directly to the issue of UCR "performance".

As I mentioned at the last Board meeting, there are rumblings about punishing states that aren't performing. In my Board comments, I maintained that we needed to be careful with that idea, because we have never defined performance. The closest definition we seem to tacetly agree on is State Registration Percentage. To be clear, this is the percentage of the carriers domiciled in your own state that have registered. Everybody's on equal footing with that definition.

So, the question becomes: could your state achieve the highest registration percentage? The answer for your state - in theory, at least - is "Yes".

Personally, I like this definition, because it means that all of the elements of performance are in our hands. We have a registration mechanism, we have a list of unregistered carriers in our state (if we choose to avail ourselves of that list) and we have at least a few resources to get the job done. Some of us have other "advantages" like IRP and IFTA.

So, I'll ask the question again. "Could your state achieve the highest registration percentage of any state?"

If your answer is "Yes", good for you. Call me if you need help.

If your answer is "No", ask yourself "why?" If the answer to that question is "because I'm not really into UCR registration", maybe you're a candidate for penalties.