QUALIFIEDCARRIERS.COM LAUNCHES QUALIFIEDMARINETERMINALS.COM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

QUALIFIEDCARRIERS.COM LAUNCHES QUALIFIEDMARINETERMINALS.COM

Cherry Hill, NJ USA, February 18, 2013

QualifedCarriers.com CEO Jeff Tucker is pleased to announce the launch of QualifiedMarineTerminals.com.

As the petro-chemical industry seeks to reduce spills, accidents, losses and other risks, the industry is moving toward a more comprehensive and global standard for screening, selecting, and monitoring marine terminals for compliance, safety, and security.  To assist this effort, QualifiedCarriers.com has launched a Web-based risk management toolbox specifically designed for managing marine terminal risk.  The Web site, QualifiedMarineTerminals.com, provides users with platforms for measuring compliance against industry standards, performing marine terminal self-assessments and on-site audits, and launching and tracking corrective and preventive action (CAPA) .  The system comes complete with secure document management, task scheduling functions, and a variety of related tools.

A major oil exploration, refining retailer, and long-time subscriber to QualifiedCarriers.com, approached QualifiedCarriers in early 2011, seeking a solution for growing marine terminal risk.  The client had been relying on QualifedCarriers.com for years as a Web-based toolbox for managing risk associated with hiring motor carriers.  Seeking a similar solution for marine terminal risk, the client naturally turned to QualifiedCarriers.

QualifiedCarriers.com is the nation’s most comprehensive USDOT data reporting and compliance toolbox for shippers. Among other things, we offer secure document management for key carrier documents, plus e-mail alerts when urgent changes occur to a carrier’s FMCSA status (e.g., authority, safety rating). We are the only firm of this type founded and managed by professional risk managers.  Our clients benefit from our knowledge and involvement of matters occurring in Washington, at FMCSA, PHMSA, and on Capitol Hill. Our Co-founder, Jeff Tucker has chaired the TIA Carrier Selection Framework Committee since 2006, is a member of the FMCSA MCSAC CSA Subcommittee, and has testified on CSA before Congress.

Contact: Jeff Tucker, CEO; jeff.tucker@qualifiedcarriers.com ; 856-773-9325 ext. 122; mobile: 856-498-5361 ###

QualifiedCarriers.com | 900 Dudley Ave, Suite 250, Cherry Hill, NJ 08002 | 856.773.9325

FMCSA Ignores Calls to Improve Highway Safety Today

QualifiedCarriers.com, TIA and other industry have asked FMCSA to address these needs each of these enhancements are simple data pushes. FMCSA has the data, and must share it through its public data files. Unlike the ambiguity of CSA, these items will have an immediate and positive impact on highway safety. Plus, this is what shippers and brokers really need to know. Even FMCSA doesn’t know what a 62 BASIC score means to a carrier’s safety fitness, but everybody knows that it’s business suicide to use a carrier who has been placed out of service. FMCSA has not responded to the following requests for months, yet they push CSA.

 1. FMCSA does not have the regulatory authority to revoke the authority of new carriers who they place out of service (OOS)! Yet they don’t send that data to the public in one of their downloadable files, so brokers and shippers can use it in their risk or operating systems.

2. FMCSA does not have regulatory authority to revoke the  operating authority of carriers with whom they enter a negotiated settlement to correct deficiencies, and the carrier fails to rectify them. FMCSA places the carrier OOS, yet they don’t send that data to the public in one of their downloadable files, so brokers and shippers can use it in their risk or operating systems.

3. When a carrier fails its compliance review, it receives an “Unsatisfactory” safety rating. FMCSA does have the authority to revoke that carrier’s operating authority, but due to the fact that one department has to email an OOS message to another department, email sometimes fails, and the carrier remains operating for months, even years. We asked FMCSA to publish the OOS, so if any email doesn’t go through, at least the public picks up on the OOS, and avoids using such a carrier.

4. By law, FMCSA is required to maintain a “high risk carrier” database and report to Congress what it’s doing about it. FMCSA plans to replace safety rating, with safety fitness determination (SFD) in a year or two. When they do, there is widespread speculation that those high risk carriers will have SFD’s equivalent “unsafe” rating. We have asked FMCSA to post all of the high risk carriers daily, to one of its several publicly available data files, so that industry can make swift use of that data, and stop using those carriers.

5. FMCSA and PHMSA have no way of talking or synchronizing their data. FMCSA does not know what carriers have hazmat certificates! PHMSA, the agency that issues the hazmat certificates, has a database that they, themselves, can’t validate, due to high number of errors. Neither shippers nor brokers nor the DOT itself can validate which carriers have a valid hazmat certificate! Yet, FMCSA plans to introduce a new hazmat BASIC score, essentially guessing who the hazmat carriers are, and reporting on them.

We invite letters and emails to be sent to FMCSA Administrator Ferro (anne.ferro@dot.gov) asking her to focus on the real issues that shippers and brokers care about, and leave CSA to her own use