International Roadcheck Week is hardly the sexiest topic<\/a> in trucking, but it is a darn-tootin\u2019 important one. Inspectors in the U.S. and Canada halt tens of thousands of trucks for vehicle inspections for a few days every summer or early fall. They remove thousands of trucks and drivers from the road; in 2021, 16.5% of inspected vehicles were put out of service along with 5.3% of drivers.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s uncommon for truck drivers to actually get their vehicles inspected at random during most of the year. To avoid International Roadcheck Week, many truckers simply don\u2019t drive during that period of time \u2014 which, presumably, means more unsafe vehicles and drivers on the road outside of the inspection blitz. It\u2019s a question that ate at <\/em>Andrew Balthrop<\/em><\/a>, a research associate at the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Around 5% fewer one-person trucking companies are active during International Roadcheck Week. But Balthrop and his fellow researcher, Alex Scott of the University of Tennessee, found a major upside to the inspection blitz \u2014 even with all the folks who avoid it. According to <\/em>their working paper published in March 2021<\/em><\/a>, vehicles are safer a month before and after the inspection period. There\u2019s a 1.8% reduction of vehicle violations, according to Balthrop and Scott\u2019s analysis. Surprise inspection blitzes don\u2019t result in the same uptick of compliance.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I caught up with Balthrop about his research last week at FreightWaves\u2019 Future of Supply Chain conference, and we chatted again on the phone this week about his findings on International Roadcheck Week.<\/em><\/p>\n Enjoy a bonus MODES and a lightly edited transcription of our phone interview:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: For our readers who are not aware of what Roadcheck Week actually is, can you explain a little bit about what it and why it is important to drivers and companies?<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP:<\/strong> \u201cThe International Roadcheck is part of an alliance between the inspectors in Canada and the ones in Mexico and the U.S. to have a unified framework for making sure trucks are safe to operate. That should make it easier to go across borders when you have this kind of unified structure.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the U.S., one of these CVSA inspection blitzes is the International Roadcheck that happens for three days in the summer. Usually it\u2019s a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And usually it\u2019s the first week in June.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd in it, they focus on Level One inspections, the North American Standard Inspection where they inspect the driver records, the hours of service, the licensure and I believe medical records as well. Then they inspect the truck. It\u2019s an in-depth inspection where the inspector will actually crawl under the truck to look at various things. And these inspections, from the data that I\u2019ve seen, take about a half an hour on average.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the Roadcheck Week, they\u2019ll do about 60,000 inspections, so 20,000 a day. They\u2019re going to pull over a lot of trucks, and this can cause a little bit of congestion at the weigh stations and the roadside inspections localities as the inspectors are doing these inspections.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: So, can most drivers kind of expect to be pulled over? How likely is that?<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cThere\u2019s 1 million or 3 million trucks on the road, somewhere around there on any given day. With 20,000 inspections, most drivers still will not get inspected, but there\u2019s going to be a higher proportion of drivers inspected.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re more likely to get inspected on these days. If you don\u2019t have a recent inspection on your record, or if you have a bad recent inspection on your record, you\u2019re more likely to be pulled over on these days.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: Your research focused on that it\u2019s just unusual that this inspection is announced, that it\u2019s planned. We were talking before about how normally, if you\u2019re trying to assure quality or compliance, you would not announce an inspection in advance. It would be more of a surprise-type situation.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Can you walk us through why that\u2019s so unusual, or what\u2019s the rationale that you see behind announcing it in advance?<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cIt is unusual, and on the surface, it doesn\u2019t make much sense, but it turns out to be kind of an ingenious strategy. So I\u2019ll walk through it here.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOver the course of a year, there\u2019ll be 2 million inspections of 3 or 4 million trucks out there. The average rate of inspections is pretty low. It\u2019s not uncommon for truckers to go years without having an inspection. With this low inspection intensity, the FMCSA has sort of a problem of, how does it get anybody to abide by the regulations?<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a jaded economist, and I don\u2019t worry or consider too much ethics and morality and all that kind of stuff. It comes down to incentives for drivers to follow these inspections. The incentives do guide behavior. So, how could the FMCSA incentivize drivers to follow these regulations more closely and adhere to the standards?<\/p>\n \u201cThey do this by announcing the blitz. This does two things. On one side, it allows everybody to prepare in advance. There\u2019s a bunch of anecdotal evidence out there that people do prepare for these blitzes in advance. They will have their trucks inspected beforehand for any problems. They\u2019ll time maintenance and upkeep in advance to make sure that their vehicles are in order. \u201cThey\u2019ll be a little bit more cognizant of the driver-side regulations. One thing we notice in our study is that hours-of-service violations really drop during these extensions, because people see them coming. They don\u2019t fudge the books in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cThe issue with the announcement, on the flip side, is that it allows people to just dodge the inspection entirely. For a long time, people have talked about how owner-operators and smaller carriers time their vacations for this particular time. They could do this for a couple reasons. To avoid the hassle is a nice way to put it, but it also allows you to be noncompliant to avoid the high-intensity inspections.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have this balance here that on one side you get the behavior you want with people complying with regulations. That\u2019s the behavior the FMCSA wants. But on the flip side, you get a bunch of people that are kind of outright dodging inspections.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you compare these two things on balance, the policy is actually pretty effective because you get a lot of people focused on maintaining their trucks and obeying the rules during that particular week. Especially with the vehicle maintenance stuff, that lasts a long time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn our research, we saw that vehicle violations, a month before and up to a month afterwards, is when you still notice your vehicle violations. That trucks are kind of better maintained around these blitzes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ingenious aspect of it is that the FMCSA, by concentrating their inspection resources all at one time and announcing it, they\u2019re making it clear that they\u2019re serious about enforcing these regulations and everybody prepares for it. For the number of inspections that are happening, you get fewer tickets than you would have otherwise expected.<\/p>\n \u201cThe FMCSA, they\u2019re putting people through a little bit of a hassle, but they\u2019re not having to write a bunch of tickets to get people to comply. They\u2019re not really punishing a whole bunch of people because, by making this apparent that this is going to happen, people comply and the FMCSA gets what they want essentially without having to come down on carriers too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: OK, interesting. And how does this pattern of shutting down, how does that compare for an owner-operator versus a driver for a big fleet?<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cIf you\u2019re a motor carrier with thousands of power units, you can\u2019t just pack up and not do business on a particular day. They just don\u2019t have that option. So they get inspected at a higher intensity, and you see the larger carriers kind of more focused on making sure that they\u2019re prepared for these inspections. With so many inspections, the larger carriers are going to be inspected at higher rates. You can really damage your reputation if your equipment isn\u2019t in order on this particular day.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cVersus the smaller carriers, especially if you\u2019re talking about a single-vehicle fleet, an owner-operator type, it is not that difficult to just not work for those three days. And so you see a lot about that.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of what the roadway composition looks like, if we look at inspection data and relative to a typical day with the usual inspections, on these Roadcheck days, you have about 5% fewer owner-operators on the road than you otherwise would expect.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: Wow. And when you say owner-operators, you also mean just like fleets with just \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cOne-vehicle fleets.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: OK, that\u2019s interesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cYou know, you see a little bit of effect with the smaller fleets, below six vehicles, but it basically disappears by the time you get to a hundred vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cThis effect is being driven by smaller carriers staying off the road in terms of avoidance. You see this goes also how you would expect; it\u2019s also older vehicles that stay off the road. This is correlated with carrier size. The larger carriers use newer vehicles and owner-operators tend to use some of the older vehicles. But it\u2019s particularly the older vehicles that are off the road.<\/p>\n \u201cThis makes intuitive sense. Older vehicles are more costly to keep compliant. Maintenance is more costly, and they\u2019ve been around longer so there\u2019s time for more stuff to have broken essentially.<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: Can you explain a little bit more, the idea of having this inspection history and why it would benefit a larger or small carrier?<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cGetting flagged for inspection is sort of random, but not totally. If somebody notices something obviously wrong with your truck, that\u2019s ground for a more in-depth inspection. Or if you get pulled over for some other reason, this can be grounds for inspection of some type.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s also the inspection selection service. The computer program that is random, that it randomly flags people in for inspection, but it\u2019s based on your inspection history.<\/p>\n \u201cSo if your firm hasn\u2019t been inspected recently, or if your carrier doesn\u2019t have a very dense inspection history, you\u2019ll be more likely to trigger that system to pull you in and have you inspected. If you have a dense inspection history, you\u2019re less likely to get inspected.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: So how do you get pulled over for inspection? As a person who only drives a passenger car, my main interaction with being pulled over is, I\u2019m driving down the freeway or wherever, and I get stopped by the police. How does it work for a truck driver? How does getting pulled over or inspected work in that way?<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cThe law is that you cannot pass a weigh station without pulling in and getting weighed. At that point they may flag you to be inspected. Now, in the past decade or two, there\u2019s been a bunch of electronic devices that are installed in cabs. You may have heard of PrePass or Drivewise. This allows you to pass weigh stations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have data on how many trucks have the in-cab devices. But from a trucking perspective, they\u2019re so convenient that you don\u2019t have to stop every time you cross a state line. I think the vast, overwhelming majority of trucks have some sort of one of these electronic devices. The DOT inspectors at these roadside inspection points have a dial they can twist essentially about how many people they want to inspect.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo during the roadcheck inspection week, they\u2019ll crank that dial all the way up and pull everybody over. And if they get too backed up, they might crank it back down a little bit and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: OK, interesting. It reminds me of a highly sophisticated E\u2011ZPass.<\/strong><\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: Zooming out, when we hear about large truck crashes, something like a vehicle maintenance issue is not really the most sexy explanation. But just looking at the FMCSA data, in 29% of all truck crashes, <\/strong>a major factor is brake problems<\/strong><\/a>. So it seems like a lot of the truck crashes on the road are caused by vehicle maintenance, versus something like the driver using illegal drugs or some other sort of more dramatic explanation. Can you speak a little bit to why this sort of vehicle maintenance is important for safety in preventing large crashes?<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cWe did a little bit of a back-of-the-envelope cost benefit analysis of this. Let me try and make sure I remember it clearly, but we have it in the paper that the cost of this on one side is that you have the compliance costs the firms are undertaking, and then you have to add to that the delay costs from doing this, and then the cost of the inspection itself, having to pay federal inspectors to do this.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the benefit side, it reduces crashes. So when we add up, just looking at the cost of what an inspection is, we don\u2019t have a good idea of how to measure the compliance cost. It\u2019d be fun to measure the delay cost, but I don\u2019t have good enough price data on that to get at that cost.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut if you look at what the cost of an inspection is, it is something like $100 or $120 is what you would pay to have one of these inspections done privately. A lot of people do this in the run-up to inspections, and have it done privately so that you can fix whatever the problems are and be sure that you would pass the FMCSA inspection.<\/p>\n \u201cWith that $120 figure, if you aggregate that up to 60,000 inspections or whatever, and you take that in comparison, I\u2019m going to give you a bad figure here, it\u2019s on the order of $10 million. That is about the value of a statistical human life. Looking at this economically, it\u2019s worthwhile if it saves one human life. If you identify just one faulty brake system that would\u2019ve resulted in an accident, you\u2019re getting some value out of the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you add those other costs in there, we\u2019re going to need to save a couple of lives, but in terms of cost benefit analysis with this kind of stuff, we\u2019re usually looking at orders of magnitude differences in cost and benefits to say something for sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can save just a couple lives, this program will pay for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: Then one last question: Is there any rationale for this program happening in the summer?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cI think part of it is that for the inspectors this gets much harder and much more miserable to do in winter conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: That makes sense.<\/strong><\/p>\n BALTHROP: <\/strong>\u201cInspectors are less productive. One of the things that we talk about in the paper, that they have in addition to the International Roadcheck, is that they have Brake Week where they focus a little bit more on brake inspections. You have Operation Safe Driver a little bit later on in the summer, usually in September, where it\u2019s a little bit more focused on passenger vehicles and how they drive around these trucks.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s not one in the winter time. There\u2019s an unannounced brake check that usually happens in May, a surprise inspection that\u2019s just one day. But you\u2019re right in pointing out that it might be worthwhile having one of these in the wintertime. You have this periodic high-intensity inspection that kind of incentivizes everybody to be compliant through the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing in the winter, so that\u2019s an area. But if I was managing the FMCSA, that would be one of the first questions I ask, \u2018Why don\u2019t we have one of these in the wintertime?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n FREIGHTWAVES: That makes sense. Maybe they can do it in the South or something. Maybe a Miami January inspection \u2026\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s it for this special bonus MODES. Subscribe here if you\u2019re not already receiving MODES in your inbox every Thursday. Email the reporter at <\/em>rpremack@www.freightwaves.com<\/em><\/a> with your own tales on International Roadcheck Week or any other trucking topics.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The post The \u2018ingenious strategy\u2019 behind most truckers\u2019 least favorite week of the year: International Roadcheck<\/a> appeared first on FreightWaves<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nRoadcheck Week doesn\u2019t catch all truck drivers, but it has a long-lasting benefit to safety<\/h2>\n
Owner-operators can evade Roadcheck Week. Big carriers, not so much.<\/h2>\n
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A convenient time for a vacation, indeed<\/h2>\n
How a truck driver gets stopped for inspection<\/h2>\n
A $10 million-plus expense to trucking companies every year \u2026 but it\u2019s worth it if just one fatal crash is avoided<\/h2>\n
Time to start inspecting in the winter<\/h2>\n