Bipartisan Motor Carrier Safety Selection Act makes a case for needed upgrades

A piece of bipartisan legislation introduced in the United States House of Representatives earlier this month by Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Seth Moulton (D-MA) focuses on augmenting road safety through a requirement by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to enact a Safety Fitness Determination test for motor carriers, coupled with requiring manufacturers and shippers to make certain that trucking companies are licensed, registered, and insured.

Entitled the “Motor Carrier Safety Selection Act,” this legislation stems from how each year more than 100,000 truck crashes end up resulting in injury and more than 4,000 end up resulting in fatalities, according to the offices of Gallagher and Moulton. And they added that there are now more than 3,000,000 shippers and 20,000 third-party logistics (3PL) that are using carriers lacking consistent safety requirements geared towards protecting drivers and preventing accidents.

“When manufacturers select trucking companies to ship their products, they are left without any standard to ensure those trucks are safe or fit to be on the road. The lack of a data-driven method to help manufacturers pick the best carriers has led to hundreds of thousands of accidents on roads and highways,” said Rep. Gallagher in a statement. “This bill directs the Department of Transportation to establish a safety rating process for trucking companies, and sets an interim standard to ensure manufacturers work with reliable trucking companies that are fully authorized, licensed, and insured.”

And Rep. Moulton added that on a daily basis, hundreds of thousands of Americans unwittingly put their lives in the hands of motor carriers like major trucking companies simply by driving up an on-ramp and onto the highway.

“That’s because right now there is no way for businesses shipping goods to verify the safety of the companies, they pick to ship them,” he said. “Our bill orders the government to set new safety standards and, until those exist, creates a three-check system for motor carriers so that everyone who hires them knows whether they’re choosing safe drivers or companies with a reputation for cutting corners and causing accidents.”

This legislation was soundly endorsed by the Alexandria, Va.-based Transportation Intermediaries Association, the largest organization representing third-party logistics (3PL) service providers.

TIA President and CEO Anne Reinke called this legislation a commonsense bipartisan measure that lays out, in the clearest terms possible, that before a shipper selects a carrier, it must certify specific information regarding the carrier.

“The Federal government’s safety rating system is effectively broken, leaving industry stakeholders with no reliable information on carrier selection,” said Reinke. “This has created a situation of confusion and conflicting vagaries in the marketplace and quite frankly less safe highways and roads. H.R. 3042 would amend the way the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) conducts its compliance review audits and replaces the physical system with one of data. Currently, nearly 90% of motor carriers remain unrated, which is a direct result of the dysfunctional system that exists today. This legislation is about one thing, safety. The current process for selecting a carrier does not work; we need the federal government to facilitate one that does. This legislation adds clarity and rigor to our member's day-to-day operations.”

Another TIA executive, Chris Burroughs, the organization’s vice president of government affairs, stated that when CSA 2010 was introduced near the end of 2010, it came with the objective of tying a data-driven system to the safety rating process, but more than a decade later, the same problems and issues remain intact.

“H.R. 3042 is a bipartisan solution to address a severe safety gap in the marketplace supply chain, by fixing the system and in the interim establishing a standard that requires entities selecting motor carriers to undertake due diligence,” said Burroughs.

From a practitioner’s perspective, Jeff Tucker, CEO of Haddonfield, N.J.-based Tucker Worldwide, the nation’s oldest freight brokerage, told LM that this legislation has been desperately needed since 2004.   

“Simply put, there are more for-hire motor carriers in 2021 than in any time in our nation's history,” he said. “With each passing month, that number grows. Similarly, there are more drivers driving for these carriers than any time before. Extremely knowledgeable shippers and brokers alike, struggle to decipher FMCSA's labyrinth of multiple subsets of compliance data to do the right thing when hiring a carrier.  I own a motor carrier safety compliance tool named QualifiedCarriers.com, and even with all our resources, it's still a guessing game. H.R. 3042 provides desperately needed clarity and a roadmap for FMCSA to provide a safety determination for motor carriers. There are some within FMCSA who have publicly stated they like the ambiguity, which is ridiculous and reckless. There are some leaders within the trucking community who similarly like the ambiguity because incredulously they wish for shippers and brokers to share in the nuclear verdicts against carriers. It is high time, now 11 years past the introduction of CSA (formerly CSA 2010). Shippers and brokers are tired of guessing what a safe carrier looks like.” 

An FMCSA official told LM that organization does not comment on legislative matters.