A significant percentage of trailers on the road today lack rear-impact guard manufacturer’s labels, Pitt Ohio VP of Safety and Risk Management Jeff Mercadante said in an interview this week.
The extent of sticker noncompliance is unknown, but industry groups will be collecting data to share with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in a resubmitted Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance petition to exclude the stickers from inspections.
Mercadante estimated the percentage could be as high as half at many fleets, which he said means enforcing the requirement as part of truck inspections risks throwing another wrench into supply chains.
Trucking Dive spoke with Mercadante following the decision to postpone enforcement of the labels at a meeting of CVSA, FMCSA and industry association officials late last month.
Editor’s note: The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
TRUCKING DIVE: Why is this a big potential concern?
JEFF MERCADANTE: With the harsh weather we have, especially in the wintertime, those labels come right off.
You could possibly take out, for some of these fleets, 50% of their trailers. They couldn’t operate.
Does the label have any bearing on a trailer’s safety?
OEMs are not just going to give you new labels, because they don't know what kind of condition that IC bumper is in, and that's an issue.
These labels do not have any material safety impact once the equipment's in operation.
To what degree would Pitt Ohio’s trailer fleet be affected if enforcement begins in December?
That's something that we're going to be looking into, an audit to see how many trailers, in fact, don't have labels. We're just starting to look into that right now.
