A Carrier Safety Rating Comes Out of One Thing: a Compliance Review

One thing produces a carrier safety rating: a compliance review. 49 CFR 385.9(a) assigns the rating “following a compliance review of a motor carrier operation,” using the factors in 385.7 as computed under the Safety Fitness Rating Methodology in appendix B. Not a roadside inspection, not a CSA percentile, and not the new entrant safety audit — 385.3 says it plainly: “Safety audits do not result in safety ratings.”

Which is why most carriers have no rating. In fiscal year 2019, FMCSA and its State partners conducted 11,671 compliance reviews out of more than 567,000 active interstate carriers (88 FR 59489). Everyone else is an “unrated carrier” under 385.3 — a status, not a grade.

What are the three safety ratings?

All three are statements about safety management controls, and only the third one stops the trucks. The definitions are at 49 CFR 385.3.

385.3 adds a proportionality rule to the top row: controls “are adequate if they are appropriate for the size and type of operation of the particular motor carrier.” The occurrences the definitions point at are the eleven risks listed at 385.5, from CDL violations under part 383 to crashes and hazmat incidents.

How does a compliance review turn into a rating?

Points, then a lookup table. Appendix B assesses one point “for each instance of noncompliance with an acute regulation or each pattern of noncompliance with a critical regulation during the CR.” A pattern is more than one violation, and “when a number of documents are reviewed, the number of violations required to meet a pattern is equal to at least 10 percent of those examined.” Patterns under part 395, hours of service, are assessed two points.

The points land in six factors — Factor 1 General, parts 387 and 390; Factor 2 Driver, parts 382, 383 and 391; Factor 3 Operational, parts 392 and 395; Factor 4 Vehicle, parts 393 and 396; Factor 5 Haz. Mat., parts 397, 171, 177 and 180; Factor 6, the recordable accident rate — and each regulatory factor is rated Satisfactory at 0 points, Conditional at 1, Unsatisfactory at 2 or more.

Two factors carry extra arithmetic. Where three or more inspections were recorded in the twelve months before the review or performed at it, a vehicle out-of-service rate of 34 percent or greater starts the Vehicle factor at Conditional, and a part 396 acute violation or critical pattern drops it to Unsatisfactory. The Accident factor applies only where the carrier had two or more recordable accidents in the prior 12 months, and rates Unsatisfactory above a recordable rate of 1.7 per million miles for a carrier operating entirely within a 100 air-mile radius, 1.5 for everyone else.

Then the table in appendix B, section III.A, does the rest:

Read the fourth row before dismissing single-factor findings: one Unsatisfactory factor plus three Conditional factors is an Unsatisfactory carrier. Do not import this math from the new entrant context — that audit is scored under a different grid in appendix A and produces a pass or fail, not a rating (new entrant safety audit).

When does a proposed rating become final, and when do you have to park?

Two clocks, and the second starts the day after the first ends. A Satisfactory rating, or one that improves an existing Unsatisfactory, “is final and becomes effective on the date of the notice” under 385.11(b). Everything else issues as a proposed rating first.

385.11(d) calls a proposed Unsatisfactory a preliminary determination that the carrier is “unfit.” When the prohibitions land, 385.13(d)(1) puts the carrier out of service in interstate commerce and in operations affecting it, and 385.13(e) revokes the operating authority — the registration required under 49 U.S.C. 13902 — with penalties under 49 U.S.C. 14901 for operating afterward. Under 385.13(b) and (c), a federal agency must not use an Unsatisfactory carrier at all. And under 385.19 final ratings are public on request and through SAFER — which is how a broker or insurer learns about a Conditional rating.

How do you get a Conditional or Unsatisfactory changed?

Two different doors, and picking the wrong one burns a clock you cannot get back.

If the violation was cited wrongly, go to 385.15; the request must “explain the error” and “include a list of all factual and procedural issues in dispute.” If the violations were real, go to 385.17 and document the corrective actions. Part 385 offers no third mechanism.

The gotcha is that 385.15(c)(1) sets no bar at 15 days; it warns that filing later “may prevent the FMCSA from issuing a final decision before such prohibitions take effect.” The outer limit is 90 days. The real one is 45 or 60.

Is a CSA score the same thing as a carrier safety rating?

No. FMCSA stated the relationship in a rulemaking document: “FMCSA’s SMS currently is not used in any way to generate SFDs.”

They connect in one direction only: the alert status that follows a high percentile can bring the investigation that produces the rating. Reason enough to correct bad roadside data; see how CSA scores work and DataQs challenges.

The structure has survived one attempt to replace it. The 2016 NPRM proposed dropping the three ratings for a single determination of “Unfit”; FMCSA withdrew it on March 23, 2017 (82 FR 14848), and its 2023 advance notice asked whether to “retain the current three-tiered rating system.” Until a final rule says otherwise, part 385 as written is the operative law.

What a safety rating cannot tell you

It describes a company on the day it was examined, and nothing about the drivers you are about to hire. FMCSA said as much when arguing for change: “the safety rating is a snapshot of a company’s safety performance at the time of the investigation,” and a Satisfactory rating that persists until a later review “may be misconstrued as an FMCSA approval of the current operations of a motor carrier.”

Factor 2 is built out of parts 382, 383 and 391, so the driver qualification file and the hiring sequence are where the Driver factor is won or lost months before an investigator arrives. But no rating — yours, or a previous employer’s — says whether an individual driver returned the truck, answered dispatch, or finished the contract.

That is the layer cdlscan is built for: reviews written by carriers that actually employed the driver. It sits on top of the required checks and never in place of any of them — the driver qualification files under 391.51, the investigations under 391.23 and the Clearinghouse queries under 382.701 all remain yours to satisfy. Before relying on third-party information about a driver in an employment decision, confirm with your own counsel which obligations attach under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Our overview of carrier-written driver reviews covers the format.

Frequently asked questions