FMCSA Compliance Review Help & Conditional Safety Rating Upgrades

What triggers an FMCSA compliance review?

A compliance review is an onsite examination of your records, such as hours of service, maintenance and driver qualification, to decide whether you meet the safety fitness standard. FMCSA does not review every carrier. Common triggers include:

• High CSA scores, when one or more of your BASICs, such as Unsafe Driving or HOS Compliance, crosses an intervention threshold based on roadside inspections and crashes.
• A serious crash that leads FMCSA to look closer at your operation.
• Complaints from drivers, the public or other companies.
• Your own request for a rating change.

How FMCSA decides your safety rating

Under Appendix B to Part 385, the investigator scores six factors: General (insurance and registration), Driver (drug and alcohol, CDL, qualification), Operational (driving rules and hours of service), Vehicle (inspection and maintenance), Hazardous Materials, and Accident (your recordable crash rate).

Violations are either acute, where a single instance counts, or critical, where a pattern counts. A pattern generally means violations in at least 10% of the records checked, and a pattern of hours-of-service violations counts double. Each factor is rated Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory. The accident factor only applies if you had two or more recordable crashes in the 12 months before the review. It is rated Unsatisfactory above 1.5 crashes per million miles, or 1.7 for carriers operating only within 100 air miles. If you had three or more roadside inspections, a vehicle out-of-service rate of 34% or higher starts the Vehicle factor at Conditional.

• Satisfactory: no Unsatisfactory factors and no more than two Conditional factors.
• Conditional: no Unsatisfactory factors but more than two Conditional factors, or one Unsatisfactory factor and no more than two Conditional factors.
• Unsatisfactory: one Unsatisfactory factor plus more than two Conditional factors, or two or more Unsatisfactory factors.

What does a proposed rating mean?

FMCSA must send written notice of your rating no later than 30 days after the review (49 CFR 385.11). A Satisfactory rating is final right away. Conditional and Unsatisfactory ratings start as proposed. They become final 60 days after the notice, or 45 days for placarded hazmat and passenger carriers.

A Conditional rating does not stop you from operating, but it tells everyone you have gaps in your safety controls. A final Unsatisfactory rating is much worse. You are barred from operating starting on the 61st day after the notice, or the 46th day for placarded hazmat and passenger carriers (49 CFR 385.13). FMCSA then issues an out-of-service order and moves to revoke your operating authority. For most property carriers, FMCSA may allow up to 60 more days if you are making a good-faith effort to improve.

How to request a safety rating upgrade

Under 49 CFR 385.17, you can ask FMCSA in writing to change a proposed or final Conditional or Unsatisfactory rating at any time, based on corrective action. Send it to the FMCSA Service Center for the region where your main place of business is. It must include a written description of what you fixed and documents that prove it. FMCSA bases its decision on those documents and any other relevant information.

For a proposed Unsatisfactory rating, FMCSA reviews the request within 30 days for hazmat and passenger carriers and within 45 days for everyone else. For hazmat and passenger carriers, filing a request does not pause the 45-day clock, so send it early. If FMCSA denies the request, you can ask for administrative review within 90 days of the denial.

Administrative review: when FMCSA got it wrong

If you believe the rating is based on an error, you can request administrative review within 90 days of the proposed rating, the final rating, or a denied upgrade request (49 CFR 385.15). If you received a proposed Unsatisfactory rating, file within 15 days of the notice so FMCSA can decide before the ban on operating takes effect. FMCSA decides within 30 days for hazmat and passenger carriers and 45 days for others.

Administrative review is about mistakes, such as violations counted wrong or the wrong records used. If the violations were real, a corrective action upgrade request under 385.17 is usually the better path. You can pursue both.