FMSCA -- who?
An important agency you may never have known existed
I am very appreciative of all the commercial truck drivers who delivered goods and food during the pandemic and did not stop even when they were up against the supply chain pressures, that persisted after the pandemic was waning. They kept commerce flowing from coast to coast, and kept the economy going. They deserve our thanks.
The agency that regulates commercial trucking is not well known but has an immensely important safety mission when transport crosses state lines. I became acquainted with FMSCA. the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, when I served as Chief Counsel of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, another agency in the US DOT, (one of the cross cutting agencies). FMSCA is a fairly new agency being established January 1, 2000 by statute,1 and its existing functions were drawn from the Federal Highway Commission in the establishment of the agency. You may be more familiar with the NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,2 that regulates automobile safety and sets emission standards with the U.S. EPA.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is generally divided into agencies that focus on a mode of transportation. Modes of transportation are cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships and airplanes. They each have their own agency and acronym. The one common purpose of these agencies is to ensure safety in interstate commerce. These agencies are all equivalent in their relationship with DOT. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest of these agencies. But each agency has the same statutory relationship to U.S. DOT.
The Scope of FMSCA’s Authority
Broadly, to be regulated by FMSCA the truck must be 10,000 pounds or more or carry hazardous waste. A Commercial Drivers License is required that involves physical exams, drug testing and keeping detailed records. States can still regulate the registration of trucks and still have jurisdiction over intrastate trucking. However, almost every state requires DOT regulatory compliance by registering and obtaining a U.S. DOT number for the commercial truck. State tort law determines liability for accidents and state criminal law also applies to commercial trucks within a state.
One of the important and visible requirements is that each commercial truck must have a DOT number3 which identifies the vehicle at 50 feet, and requires the number be visible from both sides of the truck. (Now that you know this, you will likely be unable to avoid noticing whether the trucks you pass on the highway are in compliance!)
Regulation and Unintended Consequences
In December 2017, the Electronic Logging Devices (ELD) mandate took effect for small and independent drivers regulated by FMSCA. Large carriers had already been using ELDs for some time. These devices can show how much time you have left to drive for the day. For example; if there has been a long traffic delay at the end of the day, and the ELD shows the driver has only 20 minutes left to drive for the day, it will likely tend to make the driver want to speed up to reach the destination. This can cause speeding and unsafe driving by switching lanes, driving too close and other maneuvers.4
The purpose of these regulations is to increase safety and reduce highway accidents. However, a study in 2022 by the University of Arkansas, Supply Chain Management Research Center found that these behaviors had indeed increased accidents rather than reduce them5 — an unintended consequence of the ELD regulation.
Another proposed regulation
Another study that was started by FMSCA in 2022 looks at the detention time at facilities while truck drivers wait for loading and unloading to start and end. Detention time is the actual wait time, not the time it takes to load and unload. Truckers lose over a billion dollars each year due to detention times.6
This larger study comes from a small study done by FMSCA in 2013 and DOT in 2018, that showed the longer the detention time, the more likely an accident would occur. The theory being that lost time waiting for loading and unloading (detention time) would result in the driver increasing speeds to make up for this lost time. The study found that for every 15 minutes of detention time, there was a 6.2% increase in the likelihood of a crash.7
A proposal was made in the 2022 Transportation Act to determine how to invoice for detention times that exceed some standard, but this did not stay in the final legislation. However, the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) another agency you may never have heard of, will be determining these rates and standards for invoicing for detention times. This rulemaking information collection likely came from the effort to reduce the long wait times for trucks waiting to load their goods from ships that were delayed from docking. These supply chain delays that made national media coverage, drew attention to this detention problem and cost to truckers,8 but developing a regulation that will have the right effect (and not have unintended consequences) will be the challenge.
So if this new regulation (not yet proposed) is eventually implemented, will it create more unintended consequences for health and safety in the trucking industry? If drivers are paid for their detention times, will this create a perverse incentive to have longer and more detention times? The development of this regulation should include the economics of making driving more profitable than being paid for detention, yet without causing increasing speeding to make up for that detention time. If the driver can invoice for detention time, will the driver receive the benefit or the driver’s company employer?
The complexity of transportation especially in this multi-modal dynamic makes the goal of promulgating regulations without unintended consequences particularly challenging. Perhaps learning from the ELD unintended consequences of the regulation the detention regulation will consider how to avoid unwanted unintended consequences.
Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999 (49 U.S.C. 113).
https://www.nhtsa.gov/
https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/registration/do-i-need-usdot-number
https://www.truckinginfo.com/10164234/eld-mandate-fmcsa-and-the-law-of-unintended-consequences
https://news.uark.edu/articles/58587/trucking-accidents-up-after-electronic-logging-device-mandate-study-finds
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fmcsa-details-new-truck-driver-detention-time-survey
https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/FMCSA%20Driver%20Detention%20Final%20Report.pdf
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-13/ships-keep-coming-pushing-u-s-port-logjam-and-waits-to-records