Originally published at: C.H. Robinson Is Removing Carriers Based on Safety Scores. A Supreme Court Decision Two Weeks Ago May Explain Why. - FreightWaves
A notice has been going out to carriers in the C.H. Robinson network, and it is worth reading carefully because of what may sit behind it. The message, branded under C.H. Robinson and titled “Changes to carrier eligibility,” tells the recipient that their company “exceeds intervention thresholds for C.H. Robinson’s scoring model based on data…
Kansas black people are saying I’m a foreign national i don’t have to pay for this then they run out of the truck stop into a new Volvo and trailer parked in the fuel island laughing
Dear C.H. Robinson,
As part of your exciting new “ongoing commitment to safety and reliability,” many of us in transportation would respectfully like to inquire whether you plan to revoke Super Ego Holding’s former “Carrier of the Year” recognition.
You remember Super Ego, of course.
The same Super Ego operation now associated throughout the industry with: lease-purchase controversies, questionable carrier structures, regulatory scrutiny, and operational practices that somehow escaped detection during the era when brokers repeatedly assured America they were merely “telephone switchboards” with no practical ability to evaluate carrier safety or operational integrity.
Awkward.
Judging from your latest post-Montgomery carrier eligibility notices, it suddenly appears brokers now possess:
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scoring models,
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intervention thresholds,
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carrier disqualification systems,
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FMCSA analytical capabilities,
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and “ongoing commitments to safety.”
Remarkable technological breakthrough at breath-taking speed!
Apparently the ability to identify operational risk materialized sometime between the Supreme Court opinion and last Tuesday afternoon.
Many compliant carriers who spent years losing freight to ultra-cheap, operationally questionable capacity are undoubtedly thrilled to discover that safety and compliance have finally entered the conversation — immediately following the arrival of broker liability exposure. What incredible timing.
Naturally, nobody expects perfection. The trucking industry is complicated.
But the public is increasingly asking a very uncomfortable question: If sophisticated brokers now claim to possess robust safety scoring models capable of excluding carriers from freight networks, then why were so many problematic operators welcomed into those same networks during the “race-to-the-bottom” freight era?
To be fair, perhaps the answer is simple:
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Before Montgomery, safety was considered inspirational marketing language.
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After Montgomery, safety became discoverable evidence.
That tends to sharpen corporate attention wonderfully.
Additionally, we veteran peons in the freight world would respectfully like to request photographic evidence of Super Ego physically returning its “Carrier of the Year” award to C.H. Robinson corporate headquarters.
Preferably: during normal business hours, with a signed chain-of-custody receipt, and perhaps accompanied by a modest mariachi band playing “The Sound of Silence.”
Purely for compliance documentation purposes, of course.
In closing, please understand this letter is written in the spirit of admiration. Watching the modern brokerage industry rapidly evolve from: “we cannot possibly evaluate carrier safety” to “your BASIC scores exceed our intervention thresholds” in under one Supreme Court ruling has been one of the most astonishing operational transformations in transportation history.
Respectfully,
Concerned Participants in the American Freight Experiment