For the transportation industry, it’s important to follow the rules of the road—but just as important to follow the rules behind the scenes too. Keeping your company compliant with state, federal and international regulations may not be the most glamorous part of business, but that doesn’t make it any less critical to your success. Here are four tips for reducing your compliance risks and how a transportation management system—a TMS system for shippers—can make it easier for you to stay on top of things.
1. Keep Your Trucks Compliant
Like all cars on the road today, commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) need to follow safety standards and meet certain requirements to help ensure safe travel. That means your truck needs to be properly titled and registered with the appropriate state or states’ departments of motor vehicles (DMVs), that your base plate and apportioned plates are renewed and kept up to date, and that you complete any required inspections on time. It also means keeping your truck in good working order to ensure it’s running both safely and efficiently.
Using a TMS system for shippers can help you keep track of all the moving pieces of your day-to-day operations without making yourself crazy—and freeing up more time to invest in your truck and to protect your business from potential compliance risks.
2. Keep Your Drivers Compliant
Making sure your truck is ticking all the boxes is only part of the equation, of course, and ensuring your drivers are on the up and up is just as important. Drivers must, at all times, maintain the appropriate licensing (like a commercial driver license, or CDL) and endorsements to legally operate a CMV and transport inventory across state lines. Additionally, you’ll need to maintain the driver logs and driver qualification files (or DQ files) to demonstrate that safety standards, driving hour limits, and break time requirements are being met.
Using a TMS designed with companies like yours in mind can make it easier to manage drivers, run performance reporting, and help you streamline your compliance processes.
3. Keep Your Reporting Compliant
What about compliance for your other data? For truckers in the United States and Canada, the International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) and the International Registration Plan (IRP) collect taxes and fees that help fund transportation and public works projects—and encourage interstate commerce by allowing CMVs to travel among member jurisdictions. IFTA’s member jurisdictions include 48 American states (Alaska, the District of Columbia, and Hawai‘i do not participate in IFTA) and all 10 Canadian provinces. The IRP is a reciprocity agreement among the 48 contiguous American states and the 10 Canadian provinces, as well as the District of Columbia (Alaska and Hawai‘i are not member jurisdictions).
When staying up to date with your IRP and IFTA reporting, ensuring you keep those Is dotted and Ts crossed is essential—and can also help you avoid future stress by ensuring you don’t face penalties or audits.
4. Keep Your Business Compliant
It’s hard to focus on both managing your operations and meeting compliance requirements and neglecting either can cause major headaches. Not only does it make for a frustrating day-to-day experience running your business, but it could put you at risk for losing revenue—or for compliance violations, penalties, audits, and more. Investing in a TMS designed with companies like yours in mind is the fastest way to get your ducks in a row without adding even more stress to your plate—and making it easier to focus on what’s most important to your business.
Contact Super Dispatch
At Super Dispatch, our team is committed to helping you keep your inventory moving and your operations thriving with auto transport technology designed specifically with the car industry in mind. Our TMS systems for shippers, auto transport load board, and other digital solutions can help you minimize frustrations and maximize growth.
Ready to see how Super Dispatch can help you move cars faster, smarter, and easier? We’re ready to help! Sign up for your free trial to get started today.
