Safety Award Nominations for 2021 are now available!

 

The Safety Management Council of the Colorado Motor Carriers Association is pleased to provide Safety Award Nominations.   You will find fillable nomination forms for:

Driver of the Month / Driver of the Year
Safety Professional of the Year
Fleet Safety Awards (View Fleet Safety Instructions)

 

Here are some ideas and comments from the Safety Award Selection Committee Judges on this year’s applications.

 

We highly recommend each of our member companies to submit nominations!  This is a great opportunity to recognize your company, drivers, and safety professionals for their dedication to highway safety.  Please read the enclosed information carefully, as some changes have been made.  Awards will be presented at the Safety Awards Banquet to be held on April 8, 2022.

 

All forms need to be returned to the Colorado Motor Carriers Association by February 28, 2022 to be eligible.  If you have any questions about the Competition, please contact Patti Gillette at (303) 433-3375, extension 104 or patti@cmca.com.

2022-23 Ray Smith Scholarship Applications Now Available for Vocational and Academic Scholarships

 

The CMCA Scholarship Committee met and has released applications for the 2022-2023 Ray Smith Scholarship Program.

Eligible recipients include High School graduating seniors to returning College and Technical School students.  Scholarships valued at up to $2,500 will be awarded in May.

 

Annually, the Ray Smith Scholarship program helps fund continuing education / training for worthy students furthering their academic or technical training.  The Scholarship Program is funded through generous donations from CMCA members, memorial gifts and other fundraising activities.  For more information on the program, visit our website.

 

Download an ACADEMIC scholarship application

Download a VOCATIONAL scholarship application

 

Completed applications MUST be received in full by 4:00pm on April 29, 2022. 

 

 

 

Jan 6 - Safety Management Council Meeting (12:30-1:30pm)  Click here to register for this meeting.

 

Jan 11 - Allied Meeting (11:30am-12:30pm)

 

 

Jan 15 - Brake Certification (9am-Noon)

 

Jan 26 - Western Slope Meeting via Zoom (8:30am)

 

Feb 10 - DOT Safety & Compliance Essentials (8am-4:30pm)

 

E-470 Tolls Dropped January 1st   Tolls will cost less on Colorado's E-470 starting Saturday.  E-470 Public Highway Authority leaders are taking their first step in what they hope will be a multiyear makeover that will get motorists who may not be using the eastside tollway to rethink its viability as a connecting corridor.   A pilot program that offers commercial trucks with ExpressToll accounts a 5% discount at all tolling points and a 20% discount between 9 a.m. and noon also will extend into 2022 — and likely beyond.    The highway authority’s board have decided to invest in efforts to attract more traffic. And the 1.7% to 3.8% reduction in electronic-pass and licensed-based tolling that will kick in on Jan. 1 is just the first bit of outreach. Board members have recommended similar reductions in tolls and continuation of the trucking pilot program take place in 2023 and 2024 as well, though those further price drops must be approved on an annual basis. The pilot program is particularly important because the highway, which boasts only 6% of traffic as coming from commercial trucks, wants to increase its load of these higher-paying vehicles at a time when goods deliveries have risen during the pandemic.   Beginning Saturday, two-axle vehicles with ExpressToll passes will pay between $2.60 and $2.90 at each of the five tolling points, while those without a pass will pay between $4.20 and $4.60 per tolling station. Three-axle vehicles with passes will pay between $3.95 and $4.40 per tolling point between 9 a.m. and noon and between $4.95 and $5.50 per tolling station the rest of the day (with extra costs for more axles), and commercial drivers without passes will pay between $8.40 and $9.20 per tolling point throughout the day.   Excerpted from the Denver Business Journal.  To see full story, click HERE.   CMCA worked with E-470 staff and board members for the past few years to create the Truck Pilot Program, and we are currently working on getting that Pilot expanded and increased.

ATA Update on OSHA's ETS

 

Our legal challenge to OSHA’s vaccine-or-test Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) continues to move at a fast pace. Within an hour of the Sixth Circuit’s December 17 order lifting the stay that the Fifth Circuit had previously imposed, ATA and our coalition of business groups filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court seeking to stay the ETS once again. The government’s opposition to that application was filed on December 30, and briefing on our application closed yesterday with the filing of our reply.

The Supreme Court routinely decides these kinds of emergency stay motions on the briefs, without oral argument. However, the Court took the unusual step of scheduling oral argument on two of the emergency applications before it (out of at least fourteen that have been filed): one by a group of states, and ours. That choice presumably reflects the Court's recognition that the seriousness of our arguments and presentation of the issues makes our application the best vehicle, among the many private-party challenges, for resolving this complex matter.

The oral argument is scheduled for this Friday, January 7, at 10:00 a.m. (The Court will also hear argument during that session on the healthcare worker vaccination requirement issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.) While the Supreme Court is free to issue its decision at any time, we would expect them to do so quickly in this case, in light of the current January 10 enforcement deadline for the initial phase of the ETS (with full testing requirements for unvaccinated employees set for enforcement on February 9).

In the meantime, we continue to seek further clarification from OSHA on the extent to which commercial drivers are exempted by the ETS’s carveout for employees who work alone or outdoors (with only occasional brief indoor contacts with co-workers or customers). Shortly after the ETS was published, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh indicated that this carveout meant that the rule would not apply to most truck drivers. ATA’s request for formal guidance on that issue remains pending, though OSHA has indicated that it is working on a comprehensive update to the FAQs it published when it first released the ETS (work on which was suspended by the Fifth Circuit’s stay ordering OSHA not to take any steps to implement the ETS).