Dive Brief:
- As hazardous materials and dangerous goods regulations become more stringent, shippers should increase efforts to mitigate compliance risk to avoid loss of property or fines, Labelmaster said in an infographic.
- Over $2.3 trillion and 2.5 billion tons worth of hazmat goods are shipped over the U.S. annually, but 62% of shippers lacked confidence in their logistics partners' compliance capabilities.
- Meanwhile, the survey revealed 81% of employees believed their senior staff did not show proper concern over compliance, while another 30% noted their company did not have the proper visibility infrastrucuture to meet compliance goals.
Dive Insight:
Lack of compliance carries high costs when shipping hazardous goods. As of June 2015, the price for each individual hazmat violation was at minimum $75,000.
A single violation may be a nuisance, but the lack of internal compliance controls or across the supply chain can quickly rack up, as Amazon shows. Since 2013, the e-commerce giant has racked up over $800,000 in violations for not properly documenting hazardous goods to UPS and FedEx.
The most common violations are not securing packages in vehicles, not registering hazardous materials to the carrier and damaging or obscuring the placard, according to True North. Altogether these three categories accounted for 3,402 violations as of 2015.
Clearly better hazardous material management is required. Shippers can establish mutual responsibility or chains of responsibility agreements, or improve communication efforts with compliance to avoid damaging fines. After all, as the tallies of violations show, the violations typically come from mislabeled packages or lack of registration, not intentional demands. Often, though, it is the small but systemic mistakes that are most difficult to prevent.
