Unregistered Carriers on 9/10/2009 - 2122
Unregistered Carriers on 9/11/2009 - 2097
New Adds To Our Unregistered List - 32
New Registrations - 27
Today's post is probably going to sound more like an OpEd piece than most of my other posts.
I've been reading some of the articles in the trade mags, and I don't care what anybody says, I'm willing to look them right in the eye and tell them I feel perfectly good about the UCR program, about the way the program has come together, about the way the program is working, about the way we're upholding our commitment to the UCR program, and about the contribution we're making to Motor Carrier regulation and safety. And, since we are a regulatory agency, we understand a little bit about where motor carrier regulation has been, where it is now ... and maybe even a little bit about where it's headed. No apologies will be forthcoming from this corner of the room about UCR.
Just for the record, I think the UCR program is working exactly the way the people who wrote the proposed legislation said it should work --- except for that pesky intrastate vehicle exemption - which, to my recollection, was never contemplated by any of the aforementioned folks - and the inclusion of trailers - who the heck knows where that came from??? And, back when the legislation was being crafted, EVERYBODY around the table - including industry representatives - agreed (or at least paid significant lip service to the idea) that the States should receive every penny they received under SSRS and the intrastate fees levied upon interstate carriers. Nobody at that time seemed to think that $100 MM generated under those programs was excessive. The goal was to get rid of that "awful" SSRS program - which, by the way, I thought we also did a TERRIFIC job on - and get to the Promised Land --- Unified Carrier Registration! And I don't remember a single voice saying that the States weren't "working hard enough" to earn their $100MM.
My concern is that "we" have either forgotten - or are attempting to rewrite - the very context out of which UCR was born ... just because the program is working!! When it comes to the UCR program, we got what we asked for - with a couple of Congressional "tweaks" - and I, for one, like what we've got!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Directed UCR Enforcement
Unregistered Carriers on 9/9/2009 - 2146
Unregistered Carriers on 9/10/2009 - 2122
New Adds To Our Unregistered List - 26
New Registrations - 35
This may not be a new concept everywhere, but it's a new concept for us. We are soon going to be publishing lists of unregistered UCR carriers in particular geographic areas (city, county) where we know police officers are going to be working on a given day. while I don't believe it has to be OUR (Illinois Commerce Commission) officers who get the lists, that's where we are going to start. In some cases, we've noticed that we have two carriers within a couple of blocks of one another. We plan to make sure that the carriers have been notified at least a few days in advance and have had a chance to comply. Then, if they don't register, they have a much narrower range of explanations that will help them avoid penalties.
Unregistered Carriers on 9/10/2009 - 2122
New Adds To Our Unregistered List - 26
New Registrations - 35
This may not be a new concept everywhere, but it's a new concept for us. We are soon going to be publishing lists of unregistered UCR carriers in particular geographic areas (city, county) where we know police officers are going to be working on a given day. while I don't believe it has to be OUR (Illinois Commerce Commission) officers who get the lists, that's where we are going to start. In some cases, we've noticed that we have two carriers within a couple of blocks of one another. We plan to make sure that the carriers have been notified at least a few days in advance and have had a chance to comply. Then, if they don't register, they have a much narrower range of explanations that will help them avoid penalties.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Endless Fount of New USDOT Carriers
Unregistered Carriers on 9/8/2009 - 2168
Unregistered Carriers on 9/9/2009 - 2146
New Adds To Our Unregistered List - 25
New Registrations - 53
I thought I'd put the number of new adds into the post today just to show you that we get an incredible number of carriers ADDED to our unregistered list every day. This is pretty typical. Of the 25 new adds, 19 of them were new USDOT numbers and the other six were what I've been referring to as "sideways" additions. This squares pretty well with the fact that so far in 2009, we have added 2121 new USDOT numbers that met the UCR Universe criteria, an average of around 15 per work day. Throw in somewhere between 5 and 15 sideways adds a day, a you get a pretty typical day around here. Before we start reducing our unregistered list, we have a 20-25 carrier "hill" to climb. It's all good!
On another note, September-to-date looks like this:
199 registrations, $17,408 collected for an average of about $87 per registration.
As Bill Leonard pointed out on the UCR Board call the other day, the average is very consistent at $80-100.
Unregistered Carriers on 9/9/2009 - 2146
New Adds To Our Unregistered List - 25
New Registrations - 53
I thought I'd put the number of new adds into the post today just to show you that we get an incredible number of carriers ADDED to our unregistered list every day. This is pretty typical. Of the 25 new adds, 19 of them were new USDOT numbers and the other six were what I've been referring to as "sideways" additions. This squares pretty well with the fact that so far in 2009, we have added 2121 new USDOT numbers that met the UCR Universe criteria, an average of around 15 per work day. Throw in somewhere between 5 and 15 sideways adds a day, a you get a pretty typical day around here. Before we start reducing our unregistered list, we have a 20-25 carrier "hill" to climb. It's all good!
On another note, September-to-date looks like this:
199 registrations, $17,408 collected for an average of about $87 per registration.
As Bill Leonard pointed out on the UCR Board call the other day, the average is very consistent at $80-100.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
It's Good To Have Goals!
Unregistered Carriers on 9/4/2009 - 2186
Unregistered Carriers on 9/8/2009 - 2168
You may recall that I have this "fantasy goal" of catching California for the most UCR registrations in 2009. I doubt that they even know about it ... or that they even care! But it's great fun for me!
Here are the new numbers as of 8/24:
CA --- 18,551 registrations with 9,921 carriers unregistered
IL --- 16,943 registrations with 2,387 carriers unregistered
The differential on 8/24 was 1,608 registrations.
As of this morning, the numbers are:
CA --- 18,736 registrations with 9,899 carriers unregistered
IL --- 17,299 registrations with 2,167 carriers unregistered
The differential is now 1,437. We've made up 10% in 17 days!
Obviously, we're not going to be able to catch them, but we're going to keep plugging away.
Notice one odd thing, however. Even though they've registered 185 carriers since then, their unregistered list total has only shrunk by 22 carriers. Another testament to the ever-replenishing nature of the UCR universe.
Unregistered Carriers on 9/8/2009 - 2168
You may recall that I have this "fantasy goal" of catching California for the most UCR registrations in 2009. I doubt that they even know about it ... or that they even care! But it's great fun for me!
Here are the new numbers as of 8/24:
CA --- 18,551 registrations with 9,921 carriers unregistered
IL --- 16,943 registrations with 2,387 carriers unregistered
The differential on 8/24 was 1,608 registrations.
As of this morning, the numbers are:
CA --- 18,736 registrations with 9,899 carriers unregistered
IL --- 17,299 registrations with 2,167 carriers unregistered
The differential is now 1,437. We've made up 10% in 17 days!
Obviously, we're not going to be able to catch them, but we're going to keep plugging away.
Notice one odd thing, however. Even though they've registered 185 carriers since then, their unregistered list total has only shrunk by 22 carriers. Another testament to the ever-replenishing nature of the UCR universe.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
New USDOT Carriers - Update
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Contact Tracking - Part 2
Unregistered Carriers on 8/31/2009 - 2273
Unregistered Carriers on 9/01/2009 - 2231
An interesting aspect of follow-up calls and tracking is that you get a little bit of insight into the way different businesses operate.
Today, I heard the following:
1) After mailing the form three times, over the past couple of months, one guy said, "Unified Carrier Registration --- never heard of it. Could you send me the form? You've sent it three times??? Could you send it again?".
2) Another said, "Is that the form I keep passing off to my bookkeeper?"
3) Another said, "I'm only the bookkeeper - you have to talk to the boss about that."
4) My personal favorite of the day - "You want to talk to the fleet manager??? Ha-ha-ha! That's a good one!"
Unregistered Carriers on 9/01/2009 - 2231
An interesting aspect of follow-up calls and tracking is that you get a little bit of insight into the way different businesses operate.
Today, I heard the following:
1) After mailing the form three times, over the past couple of months, one guy said, "Unified Carrier Registration --- never heard of it. Could you send me the form? You've sent it three times??? Could you send it again?".
2) Another said, "Is that the form I keep passing off to my bookkeeper?"
3) Another said, "I'm only the bookkeeper - you have to talk to the boss about that."
4) My personal favorite of the day - "You want to talk to the fleet manager??? Ha-ha-ha! That's a good one!"
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
New UCR Tool - Contact Tracking
Unregistered Carriers on 8/31/2009 - 2287
Unregistered Carriers on 9/01/2009 - 2273
We are experimenting with contact tracking in conjunction with our UCR Unregistered List. For those of you unfamiliar with contact tracking, it's a method of keeping track of who you called, when you called them, making notes about the calls, scheduling follow-up calls, etc. What I find interesting about contact tracking is that you can say to the person, "Now the last time we talked, Jane, you said you were mailing the form" or "Jane, I've left you three messages and you haven't returned any of them. Would you rather hear from the cops?" It can be used to refute the excuse, "I've never heard of UCR before today". It can also guide staff and focus them on a set of contacts that need to be made on a given day. In case you've never used contact tracking before, we use Sharepoint because it's already in place, but contact tracking software can be had for free at various places on the internet - or you can just use Excel. I'll keep you posted as we figure out what works.
I feel pretty good about our August numbers - 628 carriers registered and $61,566 collected for an average of $98 per registration. Those numbers included only one $3840 registration and nine $806 registrations. 398 of them were for $39. It pays to keep on playing --- and it averages right around $100 per!
Later!
Unregistered Carriers on 9/01/2009 - 2273
We are experimenting with contact tracking in conjunction with our UCR Unregistered List. For those of you unfamiliar with contact tracking, it's a method of keeping track of who you called, when you called them, making notes about the calls, scheduling follow-up calls, etc. What I find interesting about contact tracking is that you can say to the person, "Now the last time we talked, Jane, you said you were mailing the form" or "Jane, I've left you three messages and you haven't returned any of them. Would you rather hear from the cops?" It can be used to refute the excuse, "I've never heard of UCR before today". It can also guide staff and focus them on a set of contacts that need to be made on a given day. In case you've never used contact tracking before, we use Sharepoint because it's already in place, but contact tracking software can be had for free at various places on the internet - or you can just use Excel. I'll keep you posted as we figure out what works.
I feel pretty good about our August numbers - 628 carriers registered and $61,566 collected for an average of $98 per registration. Those numbers included only one $3840 registration and nine $806 registrations. 398 of them were for $39. It pays to keep on playing --- and it averages right around $100 per!
Later!
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