ScoopMonkey’s new ‘CSA Score Explainer’ tool

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Updated Nov 18, 2015

I wrote about the ScoopMonkey business-to-business rating and review service (think Angieslist for truckers and brokers) a little earlier in the year. Having made strides in recent times by inking partnerships to be the go-to business-rating service within a variety of load boards, as previously written, the company’s now taking up carriers’ and brokers’ concerns with the CSA Safety Measurement System and offering what company CEO calls “technology’s response to the ineffectiveness and incompleteness of CSA scores, giving motor carriers the opportunity to share the other side of the story.”

As you can see in the screenshot from within their new “CSA Score Explainer” tool, the company has developed a feature within ScoopMonkey.com that allows motor carriers to explain their CSA scores and provide more context than a number or threshold can offer.

“Government scores are only a number and don’t provide a complete or even accurate picture of motor carrier safety, and we as an industry can’t rely solely on inspections and audits when making hiring decisions,” says Peloke. “Our CSA Score Explainer is technology’s response to the ineffectiveness and incompleteness of CSA scores, giving motor carriers the opportunity to share the other side of the story and the reasons” why their scores are high or, as it were, low or nonexistent. If you have a ScoopMonkey account set up for your business, you can check out the tool via this link. If not, you’ll need to register there with your DOT number to do so.

The tool may be too little too late, however, given both House and Senate versions of the highway bill contain language that would remove CSA percentile rankings from public view, necessarily dampening their use in carrier-vetting decisions by brokers and shippers. Language in the House version, as I reported previously, however, would continue to allow the agency to publish the absolute measures (which are numbers themselves, though not percentiles, in the Safety Measurement System’s BASIC categories of measurement).

One carrier’s measure in the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC changing over time, as shown today in the CSA SMS.One carrier’s measure in the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC changing over time, as shown today in the CSA SMS.

I wonder if, absent percentile rankings, such measures would become something of a standard for carrier vetting in and of themselves? If they are to remain publicly available, perhaps there’s another argument for truly fixing the “interim hiring standard” — aka “poison pill” — I’ve written so much about.

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For more, read this story from last week — at last check the hiring standard as written in the House version, notably excluding Conditional and Unrated carriers, remained as House/Senate got to work on reconciling the highway bills’ differences.

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