An HOS BASIC percentile in the high 70s puts a fleet close to FMCSA intervention levels because the Hours of Service threshold for many property-carrying carriers is 65%. FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System weighs violations by severity and recency, then compares carriers against peers, so a high percentile usually reflects both the number of violations and how recently they occurred.

This result started with a full violation audit to determine what was actually driving the score. That step matters because HOS percentiles do not improve just by telling drivers to “be more careful”; improvement comes from identifying whether the score is being pushed up by invalid violations, repeat procedural mistakes, recent high-severity events, or a combination of all three. In this case, CDL360 found 12 eligible DataQ challenges, which created an opportunity to remove or correct violations that should not have been counting against the fleet’s record.

DataQ work was only one part of the improvement. CDL360 also implemented updated HOS procedures to reduce the flow of new violations into the system, because FMCSA scoring is heavily affected by recent activity and recent violations carry the strongest weighting. That means score recovery happens faster when a fleet does two things at once: remove inaccurate violations and stop creating fresh ones.

The 34-point drop happened because the project addressed the mechanics behind the percentile. Correcting invalid records through DataQs lowered the violation burden, while better HOS procedures helped prevent repeat issues tied to log accuracy, ELD use, and hours-management behavior. Since FMCSA updates SMS monthly and applies stronger weight to recent violations, fleets that clean up bad data and immediately tighten compliance can see meaningful movement relatively quickly.

Result: BASIC score reduced from 78% to 44% in 45 days.

Services: CSA Management, DataQ Challenges