Unregistered Carriers on 02/10/2009 - 934
Unregistered Carriers on 02/10/2010 - 921
Illinois - 95.73%
Maine - 93.66%
Today, I'd like to talk about State Corroboration of FMCSA data. I'm not talking about FMCSA state offices - I'm talking about actual state agencies who interact with FMCSA data.
Let me give you a couple of examples:
1) A motor carrier incorporates in Illinois. The corporation subsequently acquires a USDOT number. Later, that corporation is dissolved - voluntarily or involuntarily. According to everything we here in Illinois know, that corporation is no longer a viable legal entity and is no longer able to conduct business under the auspices of the corporation. Period! What should happen to the MCMIS record?
2) A motor carrier operates commercial vehicles interstate under a federal authority. The motor carrier doesn't register for a given year under the state's IRP program. What should happen to the MCMIS record?
3) A motor carrier with an "Active USDOT number" can be proven - via cancellation of policies and insurance filings - to be without insurance. What should happen to the USDOT number?
In conjunction with "cleaning up the data", we need to initiate an extensive dialogue about expanding and coordinating the collective database of knowledge we have about motor carriers. "Cleaning up the data" shouldn't just be about making sure that FMCSA has the correct name and address for a carrier. Cleaning up the data should also be about making sure that we - the FMCSA and the states - share and coordinate all the information we have about a carrier and making sure that carriers should even be on the highway. This is easier said than done ... but well worth the effort.
I'll be on R&R next week. The next post will be on or about 2/23.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
MCMIS, UCR & MORE - Part 4
Unregistered Carriers on 02/09/2009 - 941
Unregistered Carriers on 02/10/2010 - 934
Illinois - 95.67%
Maine - 93.50%
Sooner or later, the State UCR agencies and the FMCSA - and maybe a few more entities - need to have the following discussion:
What does FMCSA mean when they classify a motor carrier as "Active"?
Here, in a nutshell, is what I think they mean. I think they mean that when a MCMIS record is created, a carrier's status is set to "Active". From there, it takes an "Act of God" to make that carrier "Inactive". (Just kidding!)
Here's what we can pretty much say that it doesn't mean:
It doesn't mean that the carrier has had any "activity" lately. The FMCSA hasn't seen or heard from some of these carriers in years.
It doesn't mean that the carrier is "legal". An active carrier whose operation is listed as for-hire can have his authority revoked in L&I for years and still be "active".
It doesn't mean the carrier should be operating. The carrier can be classified as "Out-Of-Service" and still also be classified as "Active".
It doesn't mean the carrier is "safe". Plenty of unsafe carriers are classified as "active".
So, if "Active" doesn't mean any of those things, what does it mean? And how do we get it changed???
Unregistered Carriers on 02/10/2010 - 934
Illinois - 95.67%
Maine - 93.50%
Sooner or later, the State UCR agencies and the FMCSA - and maybe a few more entities - need to have the following discussion:
What does FMCSA mean when they classify a motor carrier as "Active"?
Here, in a nutshell, is what I think they mean. I think they mean that when a MCMIS record is created, a carrier's status is set to "Active". From there, it takes an "Act of God" to make that carrier "Inactive". (Just kidding!)
Here's what we can pretty much say that it doesn't mean:
It doesn't mean that the carrier has had any "activity" lately. The FMCSA hasn't seen or heard from some of these carriers in years.
It doesn't mean that the carrier is "legal". An active carrier whose operation is listed as for-hire can have his authority revoked in L&I for years and still be "active".
It doesn't mean the carrier should be operating. The carrier can be classified as "Out-Of-Service" and still also be classified as "Active".
It doesn't mean the carrier is "safe". Plenty of unsafe carriers are classified as "active".
So, if "Active" doesn't mean any of those things, what does it mean? And how do we get it changed???
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
MCMIS, UCR & More - Part 3
Unregistered Carriers on 02/08/2009 - 953
Unregistered Carriers on 02/09/2010 - 941
Illinois - 95.64%
Maine - 93.43%
Let's review about those MCMIS carrier records that look like UCR Universe Carriers but which actually do not represent carriers in the "UCR Universe". There are thousands of them. Who are these carriers, exactly?
They are carriers which MCMIS shows as "Active, Interstate Carriers" - just as UCR Universe carriers are shown as "Active, Interstate Carriers - but, unlike UCR Universe Carriers, these records do not show any associated inspections, crashes, MCS-150 updates or previous-year UCR registrations in the past 12 months.
The assumption is that since these carrier records had no "activity" attached to them, they are less likely to actually still be in business.
The States have had some experience contacting these carriers, but the outcomes have been less than stellar. My own personal guess is that at least half of them - maybe more - are out of business, so there is very little incentive for UCR states to contact these carriers. No sense wasting time, paper, postage, phone calls, etc. when 1) they're not part of the UCR Universe and 2) the chances are good they are not there anyway.
These records are a major problem for FMCSA, but UCR is unlikely to fix this problem for the reasons I just described.
Unregistered Carriers on 02/09/2010 - 941
Illinois - 95.64%
Maine - 93.43%
Let's review about those MCMIS carrier records that look like UCR Universe Carriers but which actually do not represent carriers in the "UCR Universe". There are thousands of them. Who are these carriers, exactly?
They are carriers which MCMIS shows as "Active, Interstate Carriers" - just as UCR Universe carriers are shown as "Active, Interstate Carriers - but, unlike UCR Universe Carriers, these records do not show any associated inspections, crashes, MCS-150 updates or previous-year UCR registrations in the past 12 months.
The assumption is that since these carrier records had no "activity" attached to them, they are less likely to actually still be in business.
The States have had some experience contacting these carriers, but the outcomes have been less than stellar. My own personal guess is that at least half of them - maybe more - are out of business, so there is very little incentive for UCR states to contact these carriers. No sense wasting time, paper, postage, phone calls, etc. when 1) they're not part of the UCR Universe and 2) the chances are good they are not there anyway.
These records are a major problem for FMCSA, but UCR is unlikely to fix this problem for the reasons I just described.
Monday, February 8, 2010
MCMIS, UCR & More - Part 2
Unregistered Carriers on 02/06/2009 - 950
Unregistered Carriers on 02/08/2010 - 953
Illinois - 95.58%
Maine - 93.43%
In the last post, I discussed the connection between MCMIS and UCR. I also explained the "UCR Universe" and how that came about.
Now, I want to make a very important point about the connection between UCR and MCMIS:
The performance of the states under UCR is being "judged" by the percentage of the carriers in the UCR Universe they register.
This means that the states are actually helping to clean up Fed MCMIS data for many of the carriers in the UCR Universe --- but not for the tens of thousands of carriers who are NOT in the UCR Universe.
Here's an example: according to MCMIS, Illinois has about 32,000 carriers that are flagged as "Active, Interstate Carriers". We have registered approximately 20,600 of these carriers and show a UCR Universe remainder of about 950 carriers. This leaves about 11,000 carriers that are "off our UCR radar", primarily because they have not had an inspection, a crash or an MCS-150 update in the past 12 months. To my knowledge, nobody is cleaning up those records.
In the next post, we'll talk some more about the significance of these carrier records.
Unregistered Carriers on 02/08/2010 - 953
Illinois - 95.58%
Maine - 93.43%
In the last post, I discussed the connection between MCMIS and UCR. I also explained the "UCR Universe" and how that came about.
Now, I want to make a very important point about the connection between UCR and MCMIS:
The performance of the states under UCR is being "judged" by the percentage of the carriers in the UCR Universe they register.
This means that the states are actually helping to clean up Fed MCMIS data for many of the carriers in the UCR Universe --- but not for the tens of thousands of carriers who are NOT in the UCR Universe.
Here's an example: according to MCMIS, Illinois has about 32,000 carriers that are flagged as "Active, Interstate Carriers". We have registered approximately 20,600 of these carriers and show a UCR Universe remainder of about 950 carriers. This leaves about 11,000 carriers that are "off our UCR radar", primarily because they have not had an inspection, a crash or an MCS-150 update in the past 12 months. To my knowledge, nobody is cleaning up those records.
In the next post, we'll talk some more about the significance of these carrier records.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
MCMIS, UCR and More! - Part 1
Unregistered Carriers on 02/04/2009 - 971
Unregistered Carriers on 02/06/2010 - 950
Illinois - 95.60%
Maine - 93.40%
Those of you who are new to this blog have missed some of the earlier posts which described the relationship between the Unified Carrier Registration (UCR) and the FMCSA's Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS). We can all stand a review once in a while, so I'm going to begin a multi-part series that describes, from my own point of view, the relationship between MCMIS and UCR ... and then offer a few observations about the future of that relationship --- at no extra cost!
Let's start by explaining how MCMIS got connected with UCR.
The UCR program registers interstate motor carriers, brokers and freight forwarders. For the sake of simplicity, I will heretofore refer to this entire group as "carriers".
When the UCR Board was trying to figure out about how many carriers were currently in operation (in order to determine first-year fees), the Board quickly reached concensus that the most comprehensive source of entities fitting the federal definition of "interstate commercial motor carrier" was MCMIS. IRP and IFTA were considered, but since their definition of carrier starts at 26,000 pounds - and they don't include brokers or freight forwarders - and their definition of "interstate" is considerably different - they were not considered comprehensive enough by the Board. After all, the more potential carriers we could identify, the lower the fees could be set.
The Board's next task was to use MCMIS to figure out 1) who was likely to actually register under UCR and 2) about how many vehicles those carriers would register.
After much deliberation by the Board's Revenue and Fees Committee, the Board adopted the recommendation that a "UCR Universe" Carrier would be a carrier designated in MCMIS as an "Active, Interstate Carrier" with some level of activity - an inspection, a crash, or an MCS-150 update - within the past 12 months.
This set of criteria produced a "Universe" of approximately 350,000 MCMIS records which the States would actively solicit for UCR registration.
This set of criteria also "left behind" literally tens of thousands of MCMIS records that were designated as "Active, Interstate Carriers" that did not have the aforementioned activity in the last 12 months. We'll talk a lot more about this group in the next few days.
Have a great weekend!
Unregistered Carriers on 02/06/2010 - 950
Illinois - 95.60%
Maine - 93.40%
Those of you who are new to this blog have missed some of the earlier posts which described the relationship between the Unified Carrier Registration (UCR) and the FMCSA's Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS). We can all stand a review once in a while, so I'm going to begin a multi-part series that describes, from my own point of view, the relationship between MCMIS and UCR ... and then offer a few observations about the future of that relationship --- at no extra cost!
Let's start by explaining how MCMIS got connected with UCR.
The UCR program registers interstate motor carriers, brokers and freight forwarders. For the sake of simplicity, I will heretofore refer to this entire group as "carriers".
When the UCR Board was trying to figure out about how many carriers were currently in operation (in order to determine first-year fees), the Board quickly reached concensus that the most comprehensive source of entities fitting the federal definition of "interstate commercial motor carrier" was MCMIS. IRP and IFTA were considered, but since their definition of carrier starts at 26,000 pounds - and they don't include brokers or freight forwarders - and their definition of "interstate" is considerably different - they were not considered comprehensive enough by the Board. After all, the more potential carriers we could identify, the lower the fees could be set.
The Board's next task was to use MCMIS to figure out 1) who was likely to actually register under UCR and 2) about how many vehicles those carriers would register.
After much deliberation by the Board's Revenue and Fees Committee, the Board adopted the recommendation that a "UCR Universe" Carrier would be a carrier designated in MCMIS as an "Active, Interstate Carrier" with some level of activity - an inspection, a crash, or an MCS-150 update - within the past 12 months.
This set of criteria produced a "Universe" of approximately 350,000 MCMIS records which the States would actively solicit for UCR registration.
This set of criteria also "left behind" literally tens of thousands of MCMIS records that were designated as "Active, Interstate Carriers" that did not have the aforementioned activity in the last 12 months. We'll talk a lot more about this group in the next few days.
Have a great weekend!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Look Out Louisiana & Kansas
Unregistered Carriers on 02/01/2009 - 999
Unregistered Carriers on 02/04/2010 - 971
Illinois - 95.50%
Maine - 93.40%
With 971 unregistered carriers, we are within "shouting distance" of two states:
USLA 964
USKS 950
Fair warning: we're coming after you! Just to keep things interesting!
Meanshile, we're halfway to 96% --- a little bit ahead of schedule.
One other thing ... California passed the 20,000 registration mark today. I don't care who you are, that's a lot of registrations in a state.
Unregistered Carriers on 02/04/2010 - 971
Illinois - 95.50%
Maine - 93.40%
With 971 unregistered carriers, we are within "shouting distance" of two states:
USLA 964
USKS 950
Fair warning: we're coming after you! Just to keep things interesting!
Meanshile, we're halfway to 96% --- a little bit ahead of schedule.
One other thing ... California passed the 20,000 registration mark today. I don't care who you are, that's a lot of registrations in a state.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Less Than 1,000 To Go! Tentative Target Date - May 15th!
Unregistered Carriers on 01/30/2009 - 1006
Unregistered Carriers on 02/01/2010 - 999
Illinois - 95.37%
Maine - 93.40%
I don't know why, by moving to "under 1,000" unregistered MCMIS carrier records seems like a cool thing to me. The bad news is that there are still "just under 1,000" unregistered MCMIS records out there.
On March 17th, 2009, when I started the "Getting to Zero" effort, we had 5,123 unregistered carriers left to go, so we have, indeed, come a long way .... and we've learned a lot!
On January 1, we had 1,301 unregistered carriers, so I would consider removing a net of 300 records per month to be entirely realistic. Simple math using that pace "gets us to zero" around May 15th. Do I think it will go down that way? Maybe, maybe not.
My hope is that we will get 2010 fees and have to direct our attention first and foremost to 2010 registration. We've been collecting "other people's money" for about a year now and it's time to get some revenue in the door that we can keep. In that case, we will continue to collect 2009 revenues, but we will probably be less aggressive about deactivating unregistered carriers.
For now, it's business as usual ...
Unregistered Carriers on 02/01/2010 - 999
Illinois - 95.37%
Maine - 93.40%
I don't know why, by moving to "under 1,000" unregistered MCMIS carrier records seems like a cool thing to me. The bad news is that there are still "just under 1,000" unregistered MCMIS records out there.
On March 17th, 2009, when I started the "Getting to Zero" effort, we had 5,123 unregistered carriers left to go, so we have, indeed, come a long way .... and we've learned a lot!
On January 1, we had 1,301 unregistered carriers, so I would consider removing a net of 300 records per month to be entirely realistic. Simple math using that pace "gets us to zero" around May 15th. Do I think it will go down that way? Maybe, maybe not.
My hope is that we will get 2010 fees and have to direct our attention first and foremost to 2010 registration. We've been collecting "other people's money" for about a year now and it's time to get some revenue in the door that we can keep. In that case, we will continue to collect 2009 revenues, but we will probably be less aggressive about deactivating unregistered carriers.
For now, it's business as usual ...
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