New legislation introduced last week would, if passed, require the Department of Transportation to enact a Safety Fitness Determination test for trucking companies, as well as require manufacturers, shippers and brokers to ensure trucking companies are licensed, registered and insured before using their services.
The bipartisan Motor Carrier Safety Selection Act was introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin) and Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts).
If passed, the bill would require shippers and brokers to use carriers that are not deemed unfit to operate safely under current federal regulations, whether that means having an Unsatisfactory rating or whose authority is otherwise out of service. Additionally, within 18 months of the bill’s passage, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would be required to issue a rulemaking to update and revise its regulations to provide a procedure for determining if a motor carrier is not fit to operate. The vision bill supporters have for the future in some ways resembles past proposals, differing in other ways.
"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,” Gallagher said. “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."
Ben Campbell, Chief Legal Officer for C.H. Robinson, said the bill would not only improve highway safety, but it would also help small carriers looking to work with shippers and brokers.
“Some shippers and brokers have already begun excluding motor carriers from their networks based on their own assessment of who is ‘safe’ and who is not,” Campbell said. “This harms small carriers with five trucks or fewer who make up 90% of the market. Shippers and brokers should be able to rely on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and their trained safety experts to keep the motoring public safe."
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