DOT Compliance and Safety | RMR Consultants

RMR Solutions

RMR Consultants have over 50 years of combined experience in building affordable solutions for maintaining Department of Transportation compliance within the cumbersome, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. RMR Consultants not only guide our clients to compliance we actually perform reviews, provide affordable record keeping, and expose our clients to updated knowledge,consistently, based on their company needs. RMR Consultants are known for being knowledgeable, efficient and always on time with providing the regulatory essentials to support our carrier clients.

In business for ourselves now for 10 years STRONG! RMR Consultants can honestly say that "We are qualified to provide our clients with the services they need and our methods are a proven SUCCESS!!!

RMR Consultants can define and provide business services that can support a increased need for efficiency within your company that may be necessary in order to maximize your bottom line, whether its budgetary and necessary for financial stability or for D.O.T. support, management, or necessary regulatory services.

CSA 2010 Initiative
Safety Performance Analysis

CSA 2010 is a major change to how the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will review your information and is more detailed and takes in more data than the current Safe Stat System. Your safety rating could change as often as every 30 days. All violations, not just Out of Service violations, will have a value assigned to it. This review of your operational safety information is needed to insure a pro-active program is established to control any violation of the DOT rules to maintain a Satisfactory rating. CSA 2010 is in test States now but will be nationwide beginning July 2010. Carriers need to start accessing their data and setting up plans NOW, in order to preserve their safety rating and avoid “Intervention”. This service is a review of your Roadside Inspections, Accidents, Driver Tickets, to provide suggested corrective action plans. It will also assist you, the carrier, in setting up a pro-active plan to help prevent FMCSA intervention. This service will also include the filing fee for the Unified Carrier Registration, yearly and the MCS-150 filing every two years, if required under your subscription for Monthly or Quarterly reviews.

Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 - csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov

Driver Log/Hours of Service Audits

We feel this is in an important tool for carriers to use in providing on-going training to drivers as well as monitoring their hours of service violations to insure all drivers are complying with the Rules in Part 395. This along with a good disciplinary policy for non-compliance is a step towards total DOT COMPLIANCE.

All carries should be performing a regular audit of their driver’s logs and hours of service records. This could consist of time cards for local, logs for over the road drivers or a combination of time cards and logs for drivers that do both types of work. This should be performed at least once a month or even twice a month is even better. The more frequent the audit helps in getting the results back to the driver faster so that they can take corrective action for the future.

Our audit consists of taking the log and reviewing each one to insure it is properly filled out according to the regulations. We then input it into our computer system to insurer the Hours of Service Regulations are complied with. It will also check for the maximum speed allowed by your company on an average for the day of the log. All major driving rule violations are manually checked to insure accuracy.

We also can perform “Falsification Audits”, by comparing the logs to other sources that contain time and date information, for example fuel tickets. Our program is setup to interface with Comdata fueling and other fuel card companies information to help in comparing this information.

We have a wide selection of reports that can be customized with valuable information on them for your review. This is in addition to an individual personalized letter to your driver, making them aware of the violations that were found. If no violations were found, we produce a “Congratulations” letter to them thanking them for their efforts.

Driver Qualification File Setup and Maintenance

When the DOT comes to audit your records the first thing, generally, the auditor will ask for is your “Driver Qualification Files”. This is the first impression the auditor will get on your Company and the efforts you are putting forth towards Compliance. Make a good impression by having your files reviewed and setup by RMR Consultants.

In order to insure files are neat the first thing we prepare for you are customized “Driver File” forms. We provide them to you on a CD-ROM so originals can be produced for each driver file from application to annual review. We provide training to all new clients on filling out the driver file forms. This live training is performed on your computer with the assistance of Go To Meeting, at a time convenient your you and your staff.

RMR Consultants will perform an audit on each existing file. An audit report on each driver is sent to you in plain English and instructions on how to fill out each form that needs to be corrected or completed. We take all forms and neatly organize them. Each file is setup the same way making it neat and organized.

When you hire drivers, simply send us the filled out forms and we will then audit and complete the Driver Qualification file process. Driver work references and Drug and Alcohol checks are time sensitive, since the regulations give you a specific time frame to make “a reasonable attempt to secure”. Motor Vehicle Reports (MVR) must be secured within 30 days of employment and yearly. We can help insure these are done in a timely manner. We will safely keep all records in our office. Should you need for an audit they will be FedEx’d to you. You have 48 hours to produce records kept off site.

We also have the capability to secure Criminal checks on a County, State or National level. It is getting more and more important to know who you are hiring and this check will help in your driver hiring process.

Our maintenance program keeps track of all expiration dates with reminders and forms sent to you when items are coming up to expire, for example annual reviews, drivers license, etc. It is our practice to re-audit every file we have at least once a year. If you have over 5 drivers we will also provide the Random Drug and Alcohol selections periodically. Companies with fewer than 5 drivers we recommend you join our Consortium.

DOT Compliance is not a one time project it is a process and we as professionals dedicate our time to insure the auditor will get a food first impression on the “Driver Qualification Files”.

Fuel Tax Reporting

RMR Consultants has the latest in technology and uses software that is recognized to be state of the art by most IFTA jurisdictions and used by their auditors. Our staff has been fully trained on all IFTA regulations and the record keeping requirements, in addition to the software that is being utilized.

We have internal audit controls established to insure accuracy of all data inputted and exception perimeters established to recognize areas that would be troublesome during an IFTA audit and insure a high degree of accuracy. Some of these are:

• High or low MPG calculations for each unit that could indicate missing miles or missing fuel receipts.
• Odometer/hubometer readings on each unit that do not match up and there are missing miles.
• Fuel purchased is States or Provinces that do not contain mileage’s being reported, by each unit.
• Gaps between starting and ending locations.

We can audit from any type of source document as long as it contains the required IFTA record keeping requirements:

• Trip Mileage Reports
• Driver Logs with Fuel Receipts
• Paper Fuel Receipts or Fuel Billing Reports
• Scanned or mailed to us

Our charges are based on a per truck per month basis and it depends on the type of documents produced for input and calculation of the taxes and reports.

Contact us today for a free quote.

Mock Audits

RMR Consultants offers two methods to conduct a audit of your records. The first method is more economical and is efficient for smaller fleets, generally less than 50 drivers. All records that are required would be shipped to our office for review and promptly returned to you (within one week of receipt). We would check for compliance in the following areas:

DRIVER QUALIFICATION FILES

DRIVER LOGS/HOURS OF SERVICE AUDIT

DRUG AND ALCOHOL TESTING RECORDS, POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

ACCIDENT RECORDS

MAINTENANCE RECORDS

COMPANY POLICIES/INSURANCE

TRAINING BEING PROVIDED

Our second method and preferred for larger fleets is an actual on-site audit by a member of our Staff. We would review the same information as above except on a larger scale. The benefit to us being at your location is that we can also provide training to your personnel in areas we feel are deficient and can communicate person to person our findings along with suggestions for improvements.

Substance Abuse and Consortiums

RMR Consultants has contracted with a major Laboratory and MRO service to provide a complete Drug Testing Program at a competitive rate and also insure the necessary documentation is provided to you and the DOT Auditors at time of audit. When they request the “Annual Summaries” you will have them for the time period you are with our program.

Our program includes periodic random selection of drivers for drug and alcohol testing. This selection process is provided from the drivers you provide us and we will contact you prior to each selection to update our records, to insure the selection is from your current drivers. This is an important area often over looked but questioned by the DOT “Why was a Driver selected and not processed”. This could lead to violations cited. This selection is made from only your drivers when you have more than 8 drivers.

Consortiums

RMR Consultants maintains a “Consortium” for smaller fleets and Owner Operators. A consortium will take your drivers and mix them with drivers from other companies in order to provide a larger base for random selection. This is accepted and approved by the Regulations and is recommended for fleets with 8 or less drivers.

This program can be structured to provide a one fee per year per driver or on a test by test basis. Often companies with Owner Operators pass along the cost of drug testing and the one fee per year works well.

In either program we can provide you with a Substance Abuse Policy that meets all requirements specified in the regulations.

Additional Services Available

USDOT NUMBER – We can file and obtain your USDOT number in a matter of hours.

MOTOR CARRIER, BROKER OPERATING AUTHORITY – Filings Professionally prepared and secured as fast as allowed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

BOC 3 FILING – Each operating authority must have a process agent designation filed, called a BOC-3. Our service is fast and efficient.

UNIFIED CARRIER REGISTRATION (UCR)– This is required by all persons holding a USDOT number. It is an annual filing. We can file and remind you of renewals each year.

UPDATE MCS-150 – An update must be filed every two years. We can file and remind you of renewals needed.