RELO Roundtable…a gathering place

The American Moving and Storage Association awarded Atlas Van Lines the trade group's 2010 Fleet Safety Initiative Award.

Atlas is the second-largest interstate household goods motor carrier in the U.S.  Headquartered in Evansville, Indiana, the company is known for its integrity, quality and solutions in the worldwide transportation of people, products, and lifestyles.

The company is part of Atlas World Group, an international transportation provider that specializes in corporate relocation and move management services through it's worldwide network of over 500 agents in the U.S. and Canada and service partners in 140 countries.

The honor comes just several months after the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), unveiled their new Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA) program to improve truck and bus safety on the nation's highways.

Launched in December, 2010, FMCSA's new CSA program provides safety information to all commercial motor carriers based on detailed analysis of roadside inspections and crashes. The centerpiece of CSA is the Safety Measurement System (SMS), which analyzes all safety-based violations from inspections and crash data to determine a commercial motor carrier's on-road performance.

SMS is organized into seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs). The BASICs sort the carrier's safety information into seven specific safety related categories:

• Unsafe Driving
• Fatigued Driving (Hours-of-Service)
• Driver Fitness
• Controlled Substances and Alcohol
• Vehicle Maintenance
• Cargo-Related
• Crash Indicator

This new automated safety program will reportedly allow FMCSA to recognize potential problems and communicate with more interstate carriers earlier to address a licensed company's specific safety issues. All commercial carriers licensed by FMCSA must comply with CSA recommendations.

To prepare their agents and drivers for the introduction of CSA, Atlas Van Lines began developing an intranet application in late 2009 that manages the carrier data being supplied through FMCSA's new internet based SMS program.

According to Rick Kirby, Atlas Van Lines' Director or Safety, their integrated new system inputs the safety data from CSA, and then:

• Verifies the accuracy of the driver and equipment entries from the last 24 months
• Identifies individual van operators and the local moving and storage agency their equipment is qualified through
• Sorts and assigns the SMS results to the correct agency

Each Atlas agency can then click on any of the links for the 7 BASIC categories to obtain an inspection summary and report. The information is used by company managers and agency operations personnel to monitor and manage equipment safety and to counsel the company's thousands of van operators on the new CSA compliance programs.

AMSA's Safety Initiative Award is given to a carrier whose single component of its safety program does the best job of improving its overall safety and risk management position.

  is a mutually supportive but commercially neutral learning environment that deals with the trials and tribulations of movin’.

Have questions or need professional assistance with an upcoming moving and storage issue, or help choosing a domestic or international relocation product or service supplier?

FOLLOW US and SUBSCRIBE at: