On December 28th, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced that as a registered motor carrier, recent Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) and Power Unit (PU) information from their Motor Carrier registration form (MCS-150), are required and must be up-to-date to properly assess their level of exposure in the Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator BASICs in FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS).

If the carrier’s VMT data in FMCSA’s database is from 2010 or older, it will not be used in your calculations when the January SMS snapshot is posted at the beginning of February. Instead, the level of exposure will default to average PUs over the previous 18 months which can impact the carrier’s percentiles in the Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator BASICs. View the SMS Methodology for addition details on BASIC percentile calculations.

FMCSA urges carriers to update their MCS-150 now with 2011 VMT/PU information or shortly after January 1, 2013 with their 2012 data to ensure that FMCSA is using the most accurate data available to calculate their percentiles. Carrier will need to visit https://li-public.fmcsa.dot.gov/LIVIEW/PKG_REGISTRATION.prc_option to update their MCS-150 information. Under the “Existing Registration Updates” section, choose the first option – “I need to update my USDOT number registration information or file my biennial update.”

PLEASE NOTE: The SMS website is updated monthly, so the MCS-150 changes will not be reflected on that site until the next monthly update. You can find the schedule of SMS updates at http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/sms/InfoCenter/Default.aspx#question30897. MCS-150 updates show up faster on SAFER and the FMCSA Portal websites.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact Logistec/TTS at admin@operatingauthority.com or (800) 226-1474.

Information contained in this update courtesy of the Transportation Intermediaries Association.