What is a CSA score?

Your CSA score is the federal government's running grade on your trucking company's safety record — and the first thing most brokers look at before they hand you a load. CSA stands for Compliance, Safety, Accountability, the FMCSA program that turns your roadside inspections and crashes into scores. This page explains what the scores are, where they come from, and how to read yours. When you're ready, check your own CSA score free — it takes one DOT or MC number.

The seven categories

FMCSA scores carriers in seven categories, called BASICs (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories). Five are public. Two — Crash Indicator and Hazardous Materials — are used by enforcement and are not published as percentiles for carriers; we explain them honestly rather than invent a number.

Measure, percentile, and why both matter

Each category starts as a measure — a number built from your violations, weighted by how severe each violation is and how recent it is, divided by your exposure (inspections, trucks, miles proxies FMCSA uses). For the carriers FMCSA publishes them for, the measure becomes a percentile: your ranking against every other carrier. A percentile of 70 means your record is worse than 70% of carriers in that category. Higher is worse — the opposite of a school grade.

Worked example: a Vehicle Maintenance percentile of 82 means that, on the defects inspectors find, this carrier's record is worse than 82% of carriers — only 18% look worse. It does not mean "82 out of 100, pretty good." That one misunderstanding costs carriers loads every week.

FMCSA stopped publishing percentiles for most carriers in 2015. Where no official percentile exists for your record, our report card says so and shows a peer position labelled our estimate, computed from the same public files against carriers your size. We never print a percentile we don't have.

How a score is built, step by step

Roadside inspections and crashes are the inputs. Each violation found is given a severity weight (1–10). The weights are time-weighted — the newest six months count ×3, months 6–12 count ×2, months 12–24 count ×1 — and summed into the category measure. The measure is compared against other carriers to produce the percentile, where one is published. Nothing in the chain is a secret and nothing in it is negotiable: the only ways in are through the inspections themselves and the correction system, DataQs.

The lines that matter: 65 — and 80

FMCSA's intervention thresholds for property carriers are the 65th percentile in Unsafe Driving, Hours of Service, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances, and the Crash Indicator — and the 80th percentile in Vehicle Maintenance and Hazardous Materials, the two volume categories. Cross your category's line and two things happen at once: FMCSA puts you in line for enforcement attention, and brokers' standard policies flag you. One honest note: in FMCSA's current public files, the alert symbol on a carrier's record prints at the 65th percentile in the published categories — when your report card shows the flag, believe the flag. Your card calls any flagged category by name. Read more: what is a good CSA score?

Who sees your score

Brokers and shippers screen carriers before offering loads — it is the first check, run by software, in seconds. Insurers read the same record when they price your policy. FMCSA itself uses the scores to choose who gets audited and warned. And any competitor or customer who knows your DOT number can read the public parts. The record is public; the only question is whether you've read it as carefully as they have.

A score, built in front of you

Take a two-truck carrier and one bad stop. An inspector finds a brake defect (severity 6, out-of-service) and a burned-out lamp (severity 1) and writes both. Because both violations are fresh, each counts at the ×3 time weight: the stop puts 21 points of weight into the Vehicle Maintenance pile. Divide by the carrier's inspection exposure and you have the measure — a small carrier's measure jumps from one stop, because there are few inspections to spread the weight across. Now rank that measure against every carrier in the country and you have the percentile. Nothing about the stop changed; what changed is how much of the carrier's whole record that one stop is. This is why small carriers feel scores so sharply, and why the fix order is what it is: remove what's wrong, stop adding weight, and let clean inspections spread what's left thinner.

What a CSA score is not

It is not a grade FMCSA assigns to your driving. It is not your safety rating. It is not a fine, and it cannot be paid off. It is not private — and it is not permanent: every number in it is built from a rolling 24 months, which means the record you are building this quarter is the score you will carry next year. Carriers who understand that one sentence stop asking how to delete the past and start managing the window.

A CSA score is not a safety rating

They sound alike and they are different systems. A safety rating (Satisfactory, Conditional, Unsatisfactory) comes from an on-site audit, and most carriers have never had one — "not rated" is normal and is not a fail. Your CSA scores come from roadside data and exist whether or not you were ever audited. Brokers watch both; your card shows both, labelled as what they are.

Points — the other word for the same thing

Carriers often call the building blocks "CSA points." Every violation carries a severity weight — points — from 1 to 10. Points feed the measure, the measure feeds the percentile. The CSA violation points list shows the real weights from the current federal file, and how to fight CSA points covers the correction system, DataQs.

Where your score comes from — and how long it lives

Scores are built from the last 24 months of inspection and crash records, refreshed in FMCSA's monthly safety run. Recent violations weigh more: the newest six months count triple. Old violations don't vanish at once — they step down at 6 and 12 months and fall off at 24 (the math is in how to lower your CSA score). Your report card stamps the exact file dates it read, so you always know how fresh your numbers are.

Questions