WASHINGTON — Regulators are moving ahead with plans for a new registration system that will help the government keep better track of motor carriers and freight brokers.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will be asking the White House Office of Management and Budget to review and approve a request to collect new information that will inform the FMCSA Registration System (FRS). FRS will replace the current Unified Registration System (URS), according to a Federal Register notice...
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are not convinced that the potential for lost wages for prospective truck drivers outweighs the safety benefits of current rules on how states must administer CDL skills tests.
In a notice scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration denied a petition by Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles asking that the state be exempted from a federal regulation requiring that the three-part...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/florida-denied-flexibility-on-cdl-skills-testing
The California Trucking Association and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association will appeal last month’s decision that rejected their latest attempt to block imposition of California independent contractor law AB5 on the state’s trucking sector.
The decision to appeal the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, filed Friday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, came as something of a surprise given the consensus in the trucking legal community...
Members of the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) have adjusted smoothly enough to the disruptions at the Port of Baltimore that a conference call among its members scheduled for Thursday — the latest in a series — was canceled because a great deal of initial concern among TCA members has disappeared.
“A lot of the shock we had was in the first two calls,” David Heller, the TCA’s senior vice president of government affairs, told FreightWaves when asked about the scheduled meeting. “We want to...
Autonomous trucking regulation is already a state-by-state issue. In California, it may soon embody the adage “All politics are local.” Advocates of driverless vehicles see passage of newly introduced legislation as a death knell for the technology.
After vetoing legislation last year that would have required a human driver in autonomous vehicles over 10,000 pounds, California Gov. Gavin Newsom may again have to choose between two of his main constituencies: Big Tech and organized labor.
2 bills...https://www.freightwaves.com/news/autonomous-trucking-may-descend-the-rabbit-hole-of-local-politics
WASHINGTON — The loss of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge is ramping up truck drive times in the region as data from the government and private sources begins to accumulate.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration confirmed on Wednesday that it is seeing “significant impacts” on truck trips in the region based on data supplied by the University of Maryland, particularly on traffic now being diverted through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel (Interstate 895), the Fort McHenry Tunnel...
WASHINGTON — Regulators received heavy opposition from truck owner-operators and safety advocates on a proposal aimed at making it easier to test and employ new drivers.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposed rule, “Increased Flexibility for Testing and for Drivers after Passing the Skills Test,” would loosen current CDL testing regulations by:
The ability of California to set its own, more stringent environmental and emissions standards — the basis for the state’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule and possibly its Advanced Clean Fleets rule — was upheld Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The case, Ohio vs. EPA, had a plethora of plaintiffs, including 16 states besides Ohio and a group of petroleum-focused trade groups such as the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and the National Association...
WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says only 113 motor carriers have applied for its under-21 truck driver apprenticeship program since the agency began accepting applications in July 2022, a dismal sign for an initiative that had been expected to recruit up to 1,000 carriers and 3,000 drivers.
The data, included in a fiscal year 2022 report submitted to Congress last week by FMCSA, also revealed that as of February 2024, FMCSA has rejected 34% – or 38 of the 113...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fmcsa-has-rejected-34-of-under-21-truck-driver-applications
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has issued a waiver for trucking impacted by the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Maryland. Meanwhile, the outlines of a possible return to at least partial service at the port of Baltimore has been sketched out by the state’s Department of Transportation.
The FMCSA issued the waiver late Thursday night. Most prominent among the changes is adding two hours to the allowed hours of daily driving under the 14-hour on-duty limit. That...