Trucking industry challenges fingerprint checks

By James A. Cooke -- Logistics Management, 6/1/2005

WASHINGTON—The trucking industry has taken its case against fingerprint-based background checks for hazardous materials drivers to the halls of Congress.

In January the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began requiring new applicants for hauling hazardous materials to furnish their fingerprints so they could be checked against criminal history and terrorist databases. As of May 31, current hazmat drivers also must undergo fingerprint-based background checks when they renew or transfer their commercial licenses. The TSA estimates that some 2.7 million drivers will have to undergo fingerprint checks.

In testimony last month before the House Subcommittee on Highways, Transit, and Pipelines, Daniel England, chief executive officer of truckload carrier C.R. England Inc. of Salt Lake City, Utah, criticized the fingerprint rule both for its excessive costs and its procedural shortcomings. In states that have contracted with the TSA for the background checks, drivers are being charged a $94 fee. That fee breaks down to $38 for fingerprint capture, $22 for an FBI check, and $34 for threat assessment. However, states are allowed to charge more than $94 and some, such as New York, are doing that.

England noted that truck drivers are paying higher background-check charges than workers in other industries. For instance, an airport worker seeking a badge for unescorted access to a secure area pays less than $50 and submits his or her fingerprints at work, he said. Truck drivers, on the other hand, lack convenient locations for fingerprint collection in many cases. Some states, such as Connecticut, Delaware, and Maine, have only one site where a driver can submit fingerprints for a background check.

Motor carriers are also concerned that the TSA is using the trucking industry as a pilot to build similar fingerprint-checking programs for other transport workers. The American Trucking Associations, England told the committee, "is deeply troubled by the thinly veiled admission by TSA that the trucking industry is bearing the costs of establishing a system that will be used by applicants from other modes of transportation in the future, but at significantly lower costs."

The trucking industry is also questioning why drivers can't simply undergo a name-based check against terrorist and criminal-history databases. Named-based checks, carrier executives point out, are allowed for gun purchases under the Brady Act. "There is no need to subject the trucking industry to the burdensome fingerprint-based process concocted by TSA," England told legislators. "The solution is to continue to conduct name-based checks of drivers ... and put in place a proper nationwide, coordinated transportation-security credentialing program for access to secure areas or hazardous materials."