Clean up on aisle, FMCSA.

The FMCSA’s barrier to entry is incredibly low. Their database is far from reliable.

That’s our foundation.

I’ll share examples of this in a future article.

All technology uses FMCSA data in some way. Because of this, we’ve masked the underlying problems and blamed everyone other than the ones responsible for allowing bad carriers and bad brokers in.

Our vetting tools tell us, “good carrier” or “bad carrier.” But we don’t truly know why they’re good or bad. This leads to a mass belief that a pattern exists in an individual data element and becomes a standard rule. Like number of roadside inspections, and that is such a silly measurement to apply across the board.

In a way, we’ve replaced common sense with automation. We haven’t taught anyone what to actually look for, rather we’ve given them technology with a red X or green check mark.