Steven Charles Hunt President, ShipMate, Inc. from here to there: topics in transportation Compliance is as Easy as A-B-C I began my career as a Dangerous Goods Consultant more than 20 years ago when I was working at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office in Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA. I was the Division Chief for the Port Safety & Security and Container Inspection Divisions. Although I enjoyed my job immensely and working with the fine young men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard even more, I found it very difficult and time consuming to process hundreds of civil penalty actions against those that violated the U.S. Dept. of Transportation’s (DOT) Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) in one form or another. Although there were certainly a number of law-breakers that deserved to have the hammer dropped on them, most were one-time offenders that committed some rather benign error or omission. Because there was a “zero tolerance” policy in effect, our warnings were given in the form of civil penalty actions that ranged in price from a few hundred dollars to several tens of thousands of dollars. I wondered what the solution might be—and then it dawned on me! We (the U.S. Coast Guard) should train the shippers, forwarders and steamship lines on how to comply with the regulatory requirements. I put together a manual and invited 650 people to attend the “almost-free” training course at a local hotel. To my surprise, we had more than 600 positive responses, but sadly, had to close the door at 375 because we 34 Spray November 2013 were exceeding the maximum occupancy for the ballroom. The training went well and it launched a rather exciting and lucrative career for me. Now that I look back on it, I think compliance is really rather easy. It’s as simple as A-B-C. A few letters of the alphabet, when stringed together into simple mnemonics, can help the shipper and carrier understand some of the most complex regulatory requirements. A mnemonic is “...any learning technique that aids information retention. Mnemonics aim to translate information into a form that the human brain can retain better than its original form. Even the process of merely learning this conversion might already aid in the transfer of information to long-term memory...Their use is based on the observation that the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, ... humorous, or otherwise ‘relatable’ information, rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information.” For example, one of the more common violations of the HMR is the incorrect basic description sequence. Prior to 2012, the basic description sequence on hazardous materials shipping papers was: (a) proper shipping name, including correct technical or chemical
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