{"id":1379,"date":"2026-02-20T14:14:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olpolicy.com\/blog\/?p=1379"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:14:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:14:56","slug":"how-your-csa-score-affects-trucking-insurance-premiums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olpolicy.com\/blog\/how-your-csa-score-affects-trucking-insurance-premiums\/","title":{"rendered":"How Your CSA Score Affects Trucking Insurance Premiums"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Your CSA Score Affects Trucking Insurance Premiums<\/span><\/p>\n

A complete guide for carriers and owner-operators on understanding, monitoring and improving your FMCSA CSA score to protect your insurance rates<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

OLPolicy\u00a0 |\u00a0 <\/span>(866) 757-5350\u00a0 |\u00a0 Last Updated: 2024\u00a0 |\u00a0 Reading Time: ~20 min<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Key Takeaways<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) scores are publicly visible FMCSA safety performance measurements that insurance underwriters actively use when evaluating your risk profile.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Alerts in high-weight BASIC categories – Unsafe Driving and HOS Compliance – have the most direct impact on your insurance premiums and market access.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>A carrier with multiple BASIC alerts can see premium increases of 20 to 50 percent or more and may be declined entirely by standard market carriers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>CSA scores are calculated on a rolling 24-month basis, meaning violations eventually age off – but their impact on your insurance can persist longer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Proactive score monitoring, violation data challenges and a structured safety program are the most effective tools for protecting your CSA profile.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>OLPolicy reviews CSA scores as part of every underwriting consultation. Call (866) 757-5350 to understand how your score affects your current and future premiums.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most trucking operators know that their driving record affects their insurance rates. Fewer understand how deeply the FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program – commonly called CSA – extends that principle beyond individual driving incidents to encompass the entire safety culture of their operation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your CSA score is not just a government compliance metric. It is a publicly accessible data set that insurance underwriters review as a standard part of evaluating any motor carrier. A carrier with deteriorating CSA scores is, in the eyes of an underwriter, a carrier with increasing accident probability – and that probability gets priced into your premium whether you have filed a claim or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Understanding how CSA scores are calculated, which categories carry the most weight with insurers, how score problems translate into premium increases and what you can do to improve your profile is one of the highest-value insurance management activities available to any trucking operation. This guide covers all of it. For a direct assessment of how your current CSA scores are affecting your insurance options, call <\/span>OLPolicy<\/span><\/a> at (866) 757-5350.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What Is the CSA Program?<\/span><\/h1>\n

Overview and Purpose<\/span><\/h2>\n

The Compliance, Safety, Accountability program is the FMCSA’s primary safety measurement and enforcement framework for commercial motor carriers. Launched in 2010, CSA replaced the earlier SafeStat system with a more granular, data-driven approach to identifying carriers with safety performance problems before those problems result in fatal accidents.<\/span><\/p>\n

The core idea behind <\/span>CSA <\/span><\/a>is straightforward: the <\/span>FMCSA<\/span><\/a> has limited enforcement resources and it needs to direct those resources toward carriers most likely to be involved in serious crashes. <\/span>CSA<\/span><\/a> creates a ranked, data-driven prioritization system that allows the FMCSA to identify and target those carriers for investigation, audit and enforcement action. As a byproduct of that system, it also creates a publicly visible safety record for every carrier that the rest of the freight ecosystem – shippers, brokers and insurers – can access and act on.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Safety Measurement System (SMS)<\/span><\/h2>\n

The operational engine of <\/span>CSA<\/span><\/a> is the Safety Measurement System or SMS. The SMS aggregates data from three primary sources and uses it to generate percentile-ranked scores for every motor carrier with sufficient data:<\/span><\/p>\n