BASIC and ISS Scores Demystified

Raymond Moss: Some people would call this an extremely fun topic. Some people would call this an extremely boring topic. The people who go to a party and sit in the corner and don't talk — those are the people who would say this is extremely fun. Now, I've got to be careful about that, because there's a piece of this that I think is extremely fun. So I'm kind of in that category sometimes, because you can really nerd out on what are the BASIC scores, right? Scores — or let's just call it "scores" at this point in the conversation — what are scores for trucking companies, for motor carriers in the industry? That's the topic. We're going to try to demystify that. That is a hard thing to do.

Ben Curtis: We have an uphill battle for sure.

Raymond Moss: We absolutely do.

Ben Curtis: And we're not really the "sit in the corner at a party" kind of people, so somehow we're going to make this a little more interesting and fun than that, I hope. At least that's our goal. Otherwise we'll both be asleep before the end of the episode.

Raymond Moss: Let's jump right in. Let me start with this. Welcome to the podcast that accompanies the DOT Analysis platform, where we discuss real-time trends in the truck insurance market and explore answers to the questions you're not allowed to ask. I'm Ray.

Ben Curtis: And I'm Ben, and this is The Inside Lane. All right, so you mentioned in the setup there, Ray, that this is an uphill battle and a difficult topic to cover — but I tell you what, we might as well just throw in teaching everybody how to play Euchre on the episode today. I mean, if we're going to cover some of the world's most complicated topics, we might as well hit them all at once, don't you think?

Raymond Moss: That's exactly a good idea. And let's name it something really simple to start with — we'll call it "the BASIC scores," because they are anything but basic. But before we even get into that, here's a question that always comes up, whether it's directly asked of me or I see this question materialize in someone's mind and play out conversationally as I'm working with someone in the industry. It's this: what's the story with the scores?

Ben Curtis: Yeah — man, what a challenging and yet telling question. There's so much wrapped up in a question like that, and to me that highlights so much of the ambiguity that exists. You say, "what's the story?" Well, the story is totally different depending on what your frame of reference is. What's the reason you're even trying to understand the scores in the first place? In many cases, an underwriter has a very different perspective than the producer does, and certainly the motor carrier does too. And then add to that the generic term you just used in the question — "scores" — because, boy, is that generic.

Raymond Moss: I did choose that specifically.

Ben Curtis: I know you did — you were trying to trick somebody there. But how generic and how really worthless a term is that, to just be really blunt?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it really is worthless. It is absolutely worthless, because people will say it in different contexts, and—

Ben Curtis: And to be clear, the word "score" is what we're saying, because it's so generic.

Raymond Moss: Yes. The word "score" is very generic. Let me throw out a couple of other not-super- helpful terms — okay, you ready? So you can say "score," you can say "SMS score," you can say "[possibly CSA] score," you can say "MC score," you can say "[gap/GAP score]." You can say the ubiquitous "score." There are a hundred other variations. What do those things actually mean, right?

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so we want to cut through some of that mist and fog, I think, and try to bring clarity to the conversation a little bit. There are some truly definable terms, and we want to bring clarity to what those terms are and what those definitions are, so that we can speak with clarity on the topic. In some cases, the terms you just mentioned — people use those, and they are referencing one of those definable terms when they use that word. And so in that case, they think they know exactly what they're talking about, and they might. The person they're speaking to thinks they know exactly what they're talking about, and they might — but they've just introduced so much ambiguity into the conversation, because what if they actually meant something different than the actual defined term? I mean, isn't that—

Raymond Moss: And I see that happen all the time in conversations, where people will genuinely believe that they're talking about this with the same basis in mind, and they're talking completely past each other.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, totally missing it.

Raymond Moss: Yeah — unless you define your terms, you've got to understand... so how about this, let me start this way. I'm going to pull up our terms glossary here. We at DOT Analysis really care about [everyone] being on the same page when we're talking about subjects that are this important. So I'm going to go to our website here, and if I click on Resources, I'll go to Terms Glossary — and how about I just state what this is.

Ben Curtis: Well, let me go through our setup for our episode here. We're going to walk through a list of questions that we've kind of synthesized down from numerous conversations across our client base and just in the industry at large. The first one is related to the BASIC scores, if you want to maybe start there. That first question is: who came up with, or where did, the BASIC scores come from? So let's look at what the BASIC scores — what that means — because, boy, talk about a misleading term. Can you get more misleading than calling these scores "basic"?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, exactly. So let's start right there. BASIC — notice the word is all in capitals, because it stands for Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories. And we did not come up with that. No one in the industry, even in the insurance industry, came up with that. That came from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — the FMCSA — which is part of the Department of Transportation at the U.S. government. So that's where these came from.

Ben Curtis: And who could possibly be better at calling something "basic" and then making it one of the most complicated and convoluted things you can understand than the federal government?

Raymond Moss: That's right. Which — that's another one of the common questions we always see: who came up with the BASIC scores? Well, there's your answer. It was the government. They came up with these scores.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so without getting too far into the weeds, just give a brief version of where that came from and why, because it does provide good context that I think we're going to want to reference back to. I want to steer the conversation around discussing the terms, but we have to have a little history here, because it's so insightful in unpacking what these scores actually mean and how they work.

Raymond Moss: Let me give you the sixty-second overview — if I start to go too long, just reel me back in, because you could get really in the weeds with this. But here's basically what happened. In the eighties and nineties, the government had some other mechanisms by which they were trying to see the safety complexion of a motor carrier on our public roads in the United States. But around the early two-thousands, the government decided, "hey, we now have, technologically, all of these inspections and violation records of motor carriers that are on the road — let's put together a methodology that will allow us to calculate something that tells us how safe a motor carrier is while they're on the highway, on public roads."

Ben Curtis: And their intention for that was actually to inform the public — it had nothing to do with insurance.

Raymond Moss: The motoring public.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, no doubt.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, their intention was to inform the motoring public of how safe these, you know, 80,000-pound missiles are that are passing them on the highway. And I completely understand that. So that's where they came from — that's a little bit of the history of it. There's more to it. The scores were available publicly until 2015; with the passage of the FAST Act, the public availability of the BASIC scores went away, and those scores went dark.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and that was really because — as you said — the poor motoring public didn't really have a good understanding of what to think of those scores, and it actually was really hurtful to a lot of the motor carriers. And they realized—

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it was—

Ben Curtis: —"hey, our country relies on these trucking companies, they're the lifeblood of our economy, we can't throw them all under the bus or we're going to be in trouble."

Raymond Moss: Yeah. They move everything.

Ben Curtis: So they just said, "well, we'll just pull the scores away." Now, something we just skipped over there: for several years, while those scores were in publication in the market, the insurance companies — the whole insurance industry — grasped onto those, because that was really one of the only standard benchmarks that existed for really being able to measure and understand—

Raymond Moss: Yeah, the safety.

Ben Curtis: —a motor carrier's relative safety profile compared to other trucks on the road.

Raymond Moss: Right. And that's really important, because here's the thing — everybody wants to be the standard, right? Every insurance company has its own methodology for grading risk and measuring safety. But the insurance industry gravitated toward the BASIC scores because, arguably, the government is a disinterested third party that's trying to find the truth about safety and doesn't have a dog in the fight, so to speak, on their methodology.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so it really showed how much of a lack there was in the industry, in my opinion, for that benchmark — that global standard. The fact that everyone grasped onto it and started putting so much weight on the BASIC scores, which weren't even designed for insurance — they're certainly valuable for getting a view into a risk profile, but, as we'll get into throughout the episode, there are definitely some pretty big gaps, or some oddities, when you're trying to look at the scores through an underwriting perspective or a risk-analysis perspective. And that context — understanding they weren't designed for insurance — kind of helps explain why that's the case.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, absolutely. So okay, that was a little more than sixty seconds, but there you go — that's the history of where they originated.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so our next question, which piggybacks right off of that, is: what's the range for the BASIC scores? What a fantastically insightful question to ask, right?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, absolutely — because if you don't know the range, then it's meaningless. Numbers on a page are meaningless if you don't have the context to understand why they should be meaningful. I think of the fact that I can tell you my daughter scored five goals in her soccer game, right? And you don't know whether to be happy or sad, because what is five goals? Well, if I tell you the other team had one goal, then you're like, "wow, great, that's wonderful." But what if the other team had seventy-two goals? Well, then it's a totally different picture.

Ben Curtis: Totally different picture.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, you have to have a frame of reference.

Ben Curtis: Ray, that reminds me of a hilarious — well, a sort of hilarious — situation that happened a few weeks ago. My wife and I were out with the kids, and we were out with another family, eating at an outdoor venue, and there was live music. I've got a couple of boys, and their friends were trying to get them to go dance to this music in this public space. Of course, they were embarrassed and didn't want to do it. So one of their friends said, "I'll give you five dollars to do it." Well, that wasn't going to really move the needle. Well, my daughter — their older sister — steps up and very strategically says, "I'll give you two hundred." Well, that motivated them, so of course they go perform.

Raymond Moss: Hey, I would do that for two hundred.

Ben Curtis: So they perform, come running back to collect their two hundred, and she was so happy to deliver it to them.

Raymond Moss: That is a really smart older sister — I'll just point that out.

Ben Curtis: Well, it almost started World War Three, so that's got to be taken into account as well. But yeah — it perfectly illustrates that if you don't have a framework for understanding the numbers you're talking about, they really are meaningless. And not only meaningless — they can actually be dangerous, because they can deceive you and give you a false sense.

Raymond Moss: I have seen that play out in our industry, where that absolutely happens — people are talking about scores, and they think they're on the same page, and they're totally referring to different things.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and we're going to unpack more of that as we go through here. So let's just focus on this one specifically: the range for the BASIC scores is what?

Raymond Moss: All right, so the range for the BASIC scores — the answer to that is wrapped up in the first few words of the definition. The BASIC scores are the percentile ranking of a motor carrier. What does that mean? A percentile ranking is zero to a hundred. So there's your range.

Ben Curtis: Right — it has to be zero to a hundred, because definitionally, one hundred percent is the maximum, that's the entire sample set.

Raymond Moss: Exactly. Yep.

Ben Curtis: Now, percentile rankings can be a little confusing as well, but the reality is — even though it's not called a percent, it's called a "score" — the BASIC score itself, that number value, is the percentile ranking. The term that gets used is "the score," but that score is actually the percentile ranking. It's not an absolute-value number — there's nothing underlying that actually adds up to that score. That score represents the percentile ranking.

Raymond Moss: Correct. And because it's a ranking, that's why people call it a score — you're being scored against your peers. That's what a percentile ranking is.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Okay, so this next question is going to help us unpack that a little more. The next question is: is the BASIC measure the same thing as the BASIC score?

Raymond Moss: Boy — it is not. That's the easy answer. But there's more to it.

Ben Curtis: Should we say "buckle your seatbelts" as we get into this one?

Raymond Moss: That's great — yes, buckle your seatbelt, because there are people out there who have the false assumption that the BASIC measure is akin to the BASIC score, and it just simply is not. Let me unpack it.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so tell us — what is the BASIC measure, then, so we don't confuse it with the BASIC score?

Raymond Moss: The best way I can illustrate this is to explain that the BASIC measure is just a simple calculation, taking just a motor carrier's violations and inspections into consideration, with nothing else around them — as if they're the only motor carrier on the road. It's just a little math formula to add up the severity of the violations and inspections they actually have on the roadway. Just them.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so let me rephrase that and see if we can bring as succinct a clarity to this as possible. So the BASIC measure is an actual number, not a percentile ranking — it is an actual number, and it's—

Raymond Moss: Yes. It's an actual number. Yep.

Ben Curtis: —derived from underlying data of violations, once again defined by the FMCSA, within categories, because — as we have on the screen in front of us here — the BASIC scores are split across seven categories. So let me say this as well, and once again correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, just so we get full clarity: there is a BASIC measure underlying each of these BASIC scores, and that BASIC measure is an actual number that comes from violations or events that occurred within each of these categories. Is that an accurate statement?

Raymond Moss: That is an accurate statement, yes.

Ben Curtis: Okay, beautiful. Now, why don't you — I know you have some examples — why don't you illustrate the difference between the BASIC measure and the BASIC score? Because if there's confusion here, this example will blow that to smithereens.

Raymond Moss: If you get your understanding of the BASIC measures versus the BASIC scores wrong, you have the potential to make some really egregious errors that you will quickly discover, because it'll be embarrassing. So let me show you the BASIC measure and the BASIC score of a particular motor carrier. I'm going to jump over to the DOT Analysis platform and pull up a DOT report for a motor carrier. I'm on the summary tab. I'm going to scroll down, and I'm looking at the BASIC scores — all seven categories — for this motor carrier. And I'll point out, if you're watching the stream on YouTube, you can see this: I'm going to point out Hours of Service, which is one of those seven categories in the BASIC scores. Well, this motor carrier has a 92 score in Hours of Service.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so just to restate — they're in the ninety-second percentile.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: Only eight percent of that category has a worse Hours of Service score than them. Okay.

Raymond Moss: That is correct. And the percentile ranking for all these scores is — the higher number is worse — because, like you said, the ninety-second percentile is the worst motor carriers, with hours of service being the category.

Ben Curtis: Right. And the measurement is measuring violations and risk, if that's the right word to use — I've got to carefully define that — but it's measuring violations, so the higher percentile is worse, because we're not measuring safety, in which case the higher percentile would be better. We're measuring violations. The higher the number, the worse the offense.

Raymond Moss: Right — violations are bad, no one wants to have violations. So this motor carrier has a 92 in the category of Hours of Service. So that information — the 92 — that's not public, right? The methodology by which to get there, yes—

Ben Curtis: Since 2015, right.

Raymond Moss: —that's not public. The measure is public. And I'm going to jump over to the—

Ben Curtis: Well, okay, I'm sorry, Ray, I don't want to interrupt, but I feel like I have to clarify, because we're showing the value, so we can get the number — it's not public, meaning the government is not freely offering that value, that number, or the score.

Raymond Moss: I'll say it this way: the information by which to derive the score is publicly available.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Do you have that?

Raymond Moss: I did save that, so — get ready.

Ben Curtis: Boy.

Raymond Moss: Let me throw that on the screen. This fantastic document — this is the Safety Measurement System, SMS, Methodology. This is a 78-page document, last revised in June 2026, with a methodology revision of May 2026. This is what the government publishes, and if you want some really riveting reading that will for sure put you to sleep—

Ben Curtis: Boy.

Raymond Moss: —go through and read the 78-page document. This is what the federal government publishes, so that you can take all the publicly available information and derive the genuine score of a motor carrier in each one of these BASIC categories. But the calculation itself—

Ben Curtis: I think I'd rather try to follow a map to the lost city of Atlantis than wade my way through this document.

Raymond Moss: [laughs] Yeah, I totally agree.

Ben Curtis: Now, fortunately, we do have some members of our team who are phenomenal at this, and that's how we have the scores — I don't know that I could make it through the 78 pages. It's the careful explanation of all that data that gives us so much insight into this, and allows us to be able to talk confidently about how these scores work, how each of these numbers work, and why it's so important.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that is the intellectual firepower behind everything we're talking about here. Absolutely.

Ben Curtis: All right, so — I'm sorry, I derailed us — but I want to make sure we're building out this whole logical argument, so everything we're saying makes sense. So we have the scores published, because we're doing the calculation based on this massive document that explains how the government comes up with the score. But the score—

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: —is not publicly available in the sense that the FMCSA no longer just publishes this BASIC score value — in this case, for Hours of Service, that 92. That's not publicly available from the FMCSA.

Raymond Moss: Right. A general member of the public, or someone in the industry, can't just go to the FMCSA and say, "tell me what the Hours of Service score is for this motor carrier." This 92 doesn't exist publicly.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so now continue on comparing that to the BASIC measure, which so rudely interrupted us a minute ago.

Raymond Moss: All right, that's all right. So this 92 — while that's not publicly available — the underlying data for Hours of Service is publicly available, which includes the BASIC measure for Hours of Service, which is a number. I'm going to jump over to the FMCSA's SMS website here, Safety Measurement System — I already have this pulled up.

Ben Curtis: And once again, publicly available — anybody can go and see this number.

Raymond Moss: Anybody can go and see this information by going to fmcsa.dot.gov and clicking on SMS. Here is the Hours of Service category for the BASIC safety categories. This is the measure: 2.55. Look at that.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so when we use the term "BASIC measure" — here it is, right on the SMS website — the BASIC measure for the Hours of Service category is 2.55.

Raymond Moss: Right. Now think about it — if you're talking to someone and they don't have an understanding of the difference between BASIC measure and BASIC score, and you say to them, "hey, this motor carrier has a score—"

Ben Curtis: A score.

Raymond Moss: "—of 2.55," you'll go, "wow, 2.55, that's great, they must be really safe." But the real score — making that 2.55 meaningful — the only way to make it meaningful is to put it in that percentile ranking, so that it's a ranking against their peers. What is it? It's at 92. What is 92? It's above the alert threshold. Let me explain what alert threshold is here. An alert threshold is that line in the sand, so to speak, where the FMCSA defined — hey, we have a problem here, we want to point out that there's an alert going off in this category. In this case, 65 is the threshold for being in alert status. So this motor carrier, above the alert threshold of 65 for Hours of Service with a score of 92, is based off a measure of 2.55. So if you aren't talking with a framework to understand that BASIC measure of 2.55, it's a meaningless metric unless it's converted into a score. How's that?

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and boy, that's great — and we started with that definition of terms. That's why that leading question of "what's the story with the scores" is so telling of how confusing the topic is, because you can't just use the word "score." Someone could say—

Raymond Moss: Yeah, you can't say that.

Ben Curtis: —like you just referenced, someone could make the quote-unquote truthful statement that they have an Hours of Service "score" of 2.55. That's true in the sense that their BASIC measure — the number value for the BASIC measure — is 2.55. It's just completely different from, or distant from, the actual meaningful value of the BASIC score for Hours of Service, which would be the technical way to say that, correct? The BASIC score for Hours of Service is 92 for this motor carrier.

Raymond Moss: Right — which is a ranking of this motor carrier in that category against its peers, thereby making it meaningful. So instead of just saying, "hey, my daughter made five goals in the game, good" — but tell me the rest of the story, 'cause I don't know whether to praise you or say I'm sorry. You've got to tell the rest of the story — the other team had, you know, seventy goals, sorry about that, that's a bummer. You have to have the full picture in order for the information to be meaningful. So if you're out there looking at BASIC measures, you've got to have the rest of the picture.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and man, that's a great point — I want to make sure we don't miss this either. Because the BASIC measures are publicly available, and the BASIC scores are so difficult to come up with, there are a variety of sites and platforms and resources out there that are publishing those measures and saying things like, "we have the scores," or "we have safety data," or "safety scores," or any of those terms. And if it's not clarified that those are actually the BASIC scores, you just need to understand that it's a totally different category and be very careful not to confuse it with something it's not.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, yeah — don't confuse the BASIC measure for the BASIC score. That's so valuable to understand.

Ben Curtis: Or even — haven't you seen this too, Ray? There are other people who take those BASIC measures, realize they're not that valuable, and build their own analysis tool, come up with their own—

Raymond Moss: Yeah, "proprietary," they call it.

Ben Curtis: —yeah, one of these throwaway words they put around it — they'll call it a "DOT score" or something like that, and put it out there. It's not exactly the BASIC score, but once again, there's not a widely accepted framework around it to understand it by, which makes it, once again, essentially a worthless number — something distracting and confusing.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, you've got to be talking apples to apples with somebody if you want to pull value from a score conversation about a motor carrier.

Ben Curtis: Okay, last thing I want to mention before we move on to the next question. You referenced the alert status there — I just want to add a little more clarity to that and make sure we don't miss it. Once again, because this is related to the BASIC scores, which is an FMCSA derivative, the FMCSA is the one who defines that status. So it's not specifically—

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: —an insurance-defined threshold, which is another important thing to know.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: However, it is something that many underwriters look at as a benchmark. And so, someone being "in alert" — which just means they're above that threshold line, as defined by the FMCSA —

Raymond Moss: That's set by the FMCSA, that's right.

Ben Curtis: —is a key thing that many underwriters look at to rate risk, or sometimes to disqualify motor carriers.

Raymond Moss: And you say "underwriters" — and that's absolutely true — but there are appetite guides that have criteria in them about BASIC scores and being at or above the threshold for different categories, because it's that great apples-to-apples comparison and conversation that can be applied across the industry to any motor carrier, because it's the government — this third party — actually doing that rating.

Ben Curtis: So one kind of interesting thing I want to note about this: because the score is a percentile ranking, and because that alert threshold is defined by the FMCSA, there isn't actually a specific underlying event, status, or risk profile that defines "this puts you in alert." It's actually just that there's always going to be a certain percent — because this is a percentile ranking, and they're saying everyone above this percentile is in alert — there's always—

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: —a subset of motor carriers, regardless of their underlying data, that's going to be in that alert status. So just an interesting thing to point out — and we don't have time to dig into all of this today — but our DOT Analysis platform does have the ability to unpack and see all of the underlying data behind these scores, which is really valuable in understanding the true risk profile, and not just that relative rating.

Raymond Moss: Correct.

Ben Curtis: I wanted to make sure to clarify that as well, so there's more clarity around what that alert status really means and the different ways you can utilize it.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Curtis: Okay, should we move on to the next question? All right, this is a great one — you're going to love this one, Ray. Does a score of zero mean that the motor carrier doesn't have violations in that category?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's a really, really commonly asked question — or I'd say it's a commonly perceived question, because you look at a score, and you'd think that if you have a zero or no score, which people interpret as a zero, you'd think, "good, there are no violations there, they're clean in that category." The answer to that is no — not necessarily, right? Could be.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, could be, and that's what makes it confusing.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, could be, but not necessarily. So I'm going to pull up another motor carrier here in the DOT Analysis platform so we can illustrate this. Check this out — I'm going to put in a DOT number here, and we'll pull them up. Here we go — I'm on the DOT report for another motor carrier. I'm going to scroll down and look at their BASIC scores. And look — they have a 37 in Hours of Service and a 48 in Vehicle Maintenance. But that means Crash, Unsafe Driving, Controlled Substance, Driver Fitness, and Hazmat all have no score, or zero.

Ben Curtis: All zeros. Yep.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, so now let's dig into that. If I click on the Insights tab inside a DOT report, I can actually dig into understanding this motor carrier's scores. Check this out — Unsafe Driving. Remember what we had — a zero score, or no score. You'd make the assumption, "good, they're clean, no unsafe driving issues." Look what we have here — we actually have forty-five different inspections resulting in one violation, where a seatbelt — the driver was not wearing a seatbelt. That's a driver-activity issue. You'd want to know that as an underwriter, or as a safety manager, or as a trusted advisor — that agent — right? Absolutely important. So does that answer that question well?

Ben Curtis: Yeah, I think so. So just to clarify, there are multiple cases in which someone might have a zero, and that could indicate a number of things. It could mean that they legitimately have a score of zero, meaning they really don't have violations in that category. Or — once again, in that huge, eighty-page document — there's a threshold before which a score gets calculated. There has to be enough data in the system. So sometimes there's just not enough data in the system — there are violations, but not enough underlying data for them to be included in the scoring mechanism. That's another reason someone could have that zero, right?

Raymond Moss: Yep, absolutely. So don't look at that zero as an absolute guarantee that there are no violations in that category for that motor carrier. You have to have a tool that will allow you to look at that category and brush past the assumption that the FMCSA's scoring mechanism oftentimes causes people to draw.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, and Ray, one of the terms we like to use is "magic zero" for that — which is when you have violations there, but you still have a score of zero. We use the term "magic zero," meaning those violations magically turn into a score of zero. And interestingly, this is really not that uncommon — there are violations that exist in a category, but the threshold for calculating a score for them hasn't been met. And then a certain thing happens, and—

Raymond Moss: A threshold that's set by the FMCSA, I'll point out.

Ben Curtis: Right — and it's oftentimes related to just a number of inspections. So before they're going to get entered into the scoring mechanism to receive a percentile ranking, they can all of a sudden meet that threshold, and all of a sudden they're included in that calculation — and they don't move into a minimal score, you don't just move up gradually through this system necessarily.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: There are times when someone goes from a zero score all the way into alert status in one event.

Raymond Moss: Right — in one monthly calculation, which layers on a little more understanding here: these scores are calculated on a monthly basis, right?

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so there's roughly thirty days' worth of data that goes into each score calculation.

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: We'll unpack that whole thing in a second here, in another question. But yeah, the point being, you can definitely have violations in a category, and that can actually result in catapulting into a high score from zero — right up to a high score, in some cases. So understanding the underlying data even behind a zero is really important, whatever framework you're looking at this from — producer, underwriter, or motor carrier.

Raymond Moss: Right. Absolutely. Super important.

Ben Curtis: Okay, let's move on to the next one here — this is another really interesting question. Can I predict how a motor carrier's scores will change when certain violations fall off their record? Man, a great question — really interesting question.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, there's so much that's baked into that.

Ben Curtis: And there are a few context things I think we need to set up before we fully answer this. So when someone asks that, what do they mean? Let's explain first — what do they mean when they say the violations "fall off their record"?

Raymond Moss: So the way each of these BASIC categories, the BASIC scores, work is that the FMCSA is looking at the last twenty-four months — so call it the last two years — of violations and inspections for the motor carrier. So there's the context to understand what someone means when they say a violation falls off their record: what they're saying is, when that violation is older than two years, it'll no longer be included in the calculation that the FMCSA's methodology causes it to be calculated in.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so that's great context. And then, just a second ago, you mentioned that this recalculation is happening on a monthly basis. So that's the other context that's helpful to understand why someone would want to predict a score — because if these were getting recalculated daily, there'd be no need to predict it, you'd know every day what it is. But people want to look ahead and try to skip that thirty-day waiting period for the next score, or sixty days for two scores out, and go, "well, what's going to happen when we get here?" 'Cause you have to wait for that recalculation to get done, right?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's one reason. There's another reason too — sometimes what people want to do is manipulate the underlying data, and they'll say, "well, if we wouldn't have had this truck, and this VIN wasn't in there," or "if we wouldn't have had that driver, and that driver's behavior wasn't surfaced in the score," or "if this" or "if that." And that's a really dangerous thing to do, because that score—

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: —understanding what it is and how it's created — is a percentile ranking. If you're going to try to inject a hypothesis like that, there are so many variables — not only about that motor carrier, but about all of the different peers in that motor carrier's safety-event group—

Ben Curtis: They change the picture.

Raymond Moss: —it changes the picture entirely.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so let's just look very technically at the question again: can I predict how a motor carrier's scores would change when certain violations fall off the record? Technically, because this is a math formula — technically, the answer to that is yes. You can manipulate the—

Raymond Moss: Yeah, you can do that. Absolutely.

Ben Curtis: —data going in, you change the BASIC measure that's being used in the formula, and you can come up with a theoretical placement in that percentile ranking. Now, what you were just saying, though, about the danger, is that once you actually get to that point, tons of other variables have also changed — and many of those variables are outside that specific motor carrier's control, because it's influenced by the activities and occurrences of all the other motor carriers in their peer group.

Raymond Moss: It's a very dangerous thing from both perspectives — and when I say "both perspectives," I mean from the agent's perspective. It's very dangerous, because everyone knows a good agent is great at painting a rosy picture about a motor carrier that carries a lot of risk, right? And that's a dangerous thing to do, because you can manipulate statistics, you can manipulate things in any way. So, in my opinion, it's very dangerous to try to do that — to paint too rosy of a picture — because it degrades the quality with which that underwriter, who's working with you to try to price that premium, degrades their ability to trust what you're saying, oftentimes.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, I mean, the analogy that comes to mind for me is when you hear the weather forecast, and you hear, "it's supposed to be 75 degrees tomorrow," and you think, "well, that sounds fantastic." But the context can make a whole lot of difference for that, right? If it's cloudy and windy, that might feel cold and you're going to need a sweatshirt; if it's sunny and humid as can be, that could feel like a hundred degrees to you. So the context makes so much difference in how you actually understand what that means. And yeah, I think that illustrates part of why this is so dangerous to try to manipulate those scores.

Raymond Moss: Just to send that point home — does anyone ever read The Babylon Bee? It's a—

Ben Curtis: I love The Babylon Bee.

Raymond Moss: The Babylon Bee is so great — they're a satire website, satire news. I live in Michigan, so we have a lot of humidity in our heat, and that's always juxtaposed with people who are out in an arid place where you might have heat, but they always say, "it's not so humid as Michigan, so we don't mind the heat." Well, let me see — I think I have this, check this out — I do, it's right here. This is an article from The Babylon Bee: "Yeah, but it's a dry heat," says an Arizona man who is currently on fire. So it's all about perspective, right?

Ben Curtis: Yeah, I mean, that's like the agent who's like, "this picture's pretty rosy" — you know, to the motor carrier that's on fire.

Raymond Moss: Exactly, exactly.

Ben Curtis: It all depends on how you want to frame something up.

Raymond Moss: It all depends on how you want to frame something up. So to answer that question specifically — because it is one we'll occasionally get — can you predict the motor carrier's score? Well, yeah, you can predict anything. You can change the underlying data, and in this case, since it's a math formula — a very complicated, algorithmic formula — you can change the data and make a prediction. But is it valuable to make the prediction? And what's the use case for that prediction? So be careful there.

Ben Curtis: Yeah. Yeah, so there are some tools out there, because people want to do that — the temptation to do that. There are some tools out there for it. We do not have one of those tools built into the DOT Analysis platform, and not because it would be—

Raymond Moss: Purposely.

Ben Curtis: —difficult to do, but it can be so distracting and confusing and misleading.

Raymond Moss: That's a dangerous thing to do.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so we have a very high standard for truth within this platform, and that just doesn't quite meet it for us, because of—

Raymond Moss: Yeah, it kind of grates against that.

Ben Curtis: —the confusion. Yeah. Okay, we've got time for one more question here before we wrap up, Ray.

Raymond Moss: Sure, yep.

Ben Curtis: And this is so clarifying, because we've spent the majority of this episode now talking about the BASIC scores, which is totally valid, because that's the number-one scoring mechanism that's used. But this last question asks: how is the ISS score different from the BASIC score?

Raymond Moss: Yeah.

Ben Curtis: And once again, what a fantastic question, because there are legitimate scoring methods and systems other than the BASIC scores, and the ISS score is one of those. In fact, those are probably the two main, or primary—

Raymond Moss: Well.

Ben Curtis: —scoring mechanisms, but have some important differences.

Raymond Moss: I want to point out a word you said there, because it's really important — you said "legitimate." And I think the reason you used the word "legitimate" to reference the ISS score is because it's coming from the same place the BASIC scores came from — the FMCSA, the U.S. Department of Transportation. So it's that same third party putting in place a methodology by which to calculate this score. So, yeah — the ISS score comes from the FMCSA as well.

Ben Curtis: All right, so why don't we look at that definition, and then explain how that contrasts with the BASIC score.

Raymond Moss: Sure. All right, I'm going to jump back over to our Glossary of Terms here, and I'm going to search "ISS" — and here we go, I have "ISS score" in the Glossary of Terms here on DOTanalysis.com. ISS stands for Inspection Selection System, and let me explain how that name is really informative of exactly what this is — because it is where the rubber meets the road, reality-wise, for motor carriers in the industry. The Inspection Selection System is a mechanism used by the government to identify motor carriers — literally, going down the road, who they need to inspect, who they need to flag down, who they need to pull over and inspect that vehicle and that driver. So it's a zero-to-a-hundred rating assigned to trucking companies by the FMCSA, calculated from a motor carrier's safety violations, and inspection results, and their crash data, and — like I was saying — used by inspectors and bypass systems to decide in real time whether a truck should get pulled over for inspection. So this is really meaningful to motor carriers, because—

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: —their daily operations intersect with the reality of what their ISS score is.

Ben Curtis: All right, so let me compare and contrast a few of the things you just said there with the BASIC scores, because I want to make sure we avoid confusion. This is also a zero-to-one-hundred rating, just like the BASIC scores are. However, it doesn't have categories like the BASIC scores, so it's a little bit differentiated from that — although that's still the framework for the scores, that zero to one hundred. Now, we're not going to unpack this in as much detail as we did the BASIC scores, but suffice it to say that this rating system prioritizes and takes into account the specific types of events and violations that the FMCSA deems most able to be addressed roadside. Is that the actual verbiage they use?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, the actual verbiage they use is that it's dealing with violations that are best addressed roadside. And that's why it has that "rubber meets the road" reality, and that's why it's used to identify vehicles traveling on the highway, on public roads, that need more inspection. And I'll say it this way — the ISS score is a bubbling-up and simplification of all those BASIC categories.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so generally the same underlying data set as is being used to calculate the BASIC scores. So in some ways it's a more genericized version of the BASIC scores, although—

Raymond Moss: Correct.

Ben Curtis: —with some important differences, because — like we said — this scoring system is prioritizing the things that can be addressed roadside, because that's their goal with inspections, to address things roadside. So it's prioritizing that, but it's drawing from that same data — and having higher BASIC scores is going to be correlated with having a higher ISS score. As a broad rule, that's generally true, right?

Raymond Moss: As a general rule, yeah, absolutely — that's true.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so talk about the three categories here. The ISS score is broken up into three categories — can you just quickly cover what those categories are and what they mean practically?

Raymond Moss: Sure. Yeah, so we have listed here three categories: red, yellow, green. Most people in the industry know there's a red category, a yellow category, and a green category. And I'll just point out — it's possible for there to be so little data that the government has on a motor carrier that they don't have an ISS score. So it's not necessarily "insufficient data"—

Ben Curtis: And that literally is stated as — is it stated as "insufficient data"?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, that's what that's listed as.

Ben Curtis: But commonly, you mentioned those red, yellow, green categories — that's the terminology that's generally used, they're "red ISS" or they're "green ISS," right? That's the industry terminology that's most commonly used.

Raymond Moss: Correct.

Ben Curtis: Okay.

Raymond Moss: Yes. And then within that, there's a score that the motor carrier will have. So if you're red — if you're a red ISS — that means your score is between 75 and 100. If you're yellow ISS, that means your score is between 50 and 74. If you're green ISS, that means your score is between zero and 49. So there are numbers to go with that, but oftentimes in the industry, people will refer to the color first — they'll say, "we don't write anyone that's red ISS," or "we only call on motor carriers that are green ISS," or "our appetite guide allows for some yellow ISS," things like that.

Ben Curtis: Okay, so that's perfect, then — explain the practical implication of that, and why it matters, why it would influence the appetite guide.

Raymond Moss: So here's what often happens — and I'll go back to that concept that the ISS score is very meaningful to a motor carrier because it's where the rubber meets the road. Motor carriers — especially fleets — are very aware of their ISS score, because here's what happens: if a motor carrier is red ISS, for example—

Ben Curtis: And if they pull into a weigh station, what happens?

Raymond Moss: Yeah, if they're red, the inspector — the DOT officer who's seeing that truck — is obliged to pull them aside and do a full inspection.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, hence the terminology for that category — "red, inspect."

Raymond Moss: Correct, because they're obliged to inspect that vehicle with more thoroughness — they can't just say "sorry, go ahead, go ahead." Now if they're green, that's the go-ahead category.

Ben Curtis: Hence the term "pass" for the green category.

Raymond Moss: Exactly — they just pass on through. Now, we get to the middle ground: optional. That's at the inspector's — the officer's — discretion. They can say, "hey, I've got a little extra time, I'm going to pull them in, I'll wave them in and do a fuller inspection." So here's what's fascinating — what happens when you get into that yellow, or especially that red, score: it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because—

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: —the more times you're inspected, the more likely it is that an officer or inspector is going to find an issue with your truck, or your logbook, or whatever it might be. It doesn't mean it's impossible to get out of red once you're in red, but it does become harder, statistically speaking—

Ben Curtis: Yeah.

Raymond Moss: —because there are more inspections being levied against you.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, it definitely can become that self-fulfilling prophecy.

Raymond Moss: Yeah, so that's really good to know. And it's also really good for people to be aware of how important the ISS score is to a fleet and the safety manager at that fleet, because it's going to have a real-world operational effect on them today, this week. Absolutely.

Ben Curtis: Yeah, so that totally explains why underwriting guides — or appetite guides — would sometimes want to not have red in their book, for example, because of the inherent additional risk—

Raymond Moss: Right.

Ben Curtis: —that's carried with the motor carrier, not to mention that whatever underlying data is rolling up into that red score is obviously a potential problem as well.

Raymond Moss: Yeah. Yep. And again, I'll point out — not every appetite guide, not every underwriting guideline. There are plenty of underwriting outfits out there that specialize in the hairier, riskier, red-ISS motor carriers, because—

Ben Curtis: Right.

Raymond Moss: —they set the premium accordingly.

Ben Curtis: Right. And as we say all the time — we're not trying to say whether things are good or bad here. We're trying to just provide context for what all the data means, so that you can utilize it in the way that's most meaningful to you, whatever role you fit into in this industry.

Raymond Moss: Yep, absolutely — that's very important to us.

Ben Curtis: Okay, well, let's go ahead and wrap up this conversation today. Those of you who have made it with us to the end — way to go, you're a true warrior, and you really care about your clients and your job. That's fantastic that you want to do the best job you can for your customers and your company, and understanding all this data is so helpful. We say this all the time, too — please continue to give us your feedback. If there are other branches of this conversation, or other topics related to this that you wish we would have covered, let us know, and we'll see about trying to get those into another episode in the near future.

Raymond Moss: All right — until next time, you guys have a great weekend. We'll see you next time.