Trucking Groups Ask FMCSA for More UCR Comment Time

This story appears in the Sept. 14 print edition of Transport Topics.

Less than a week after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed more than doubling registration fees for motor carriers and brokers, American Trucking Associations and several other groups urged the agency to extend its short 15-day comment period.

ATA and four other groups said the increase in fees associated with the Unified Carrier Registration agreement “will be highly controversial. Many parties will wish to comment . . . [and] FMCSA should welcome comments on it.”

The organizations — the National Private Truck Council, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the Transportation Intermediaries Association and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. — represent the five industry-held seats on the UCR board.

FMCSA on Sept. 3 proposed to more than double UCR fees for 2010. The charge for the smallest fleets and brokers would rise to $87 from $39 and jump to $83,412 from $37,500 this year for fleets of more than 1,000 trucks. The comment period expires Sept. 18, after which FMCSA will have to issue a final rule to allow states to collect fees (9-7, p. 1).

In a Sept. 8 letter, the organizations said that the brief comment period and the proposal’s release close to the Labor Day holiday “will serve to preclude many motor carriers and allied businesses, especially smaller ones, from submitting comments.”

A spokesman was unable to confirm that FMCSA had received ATA’s request, adding the “agency is prohibited from commenting on matters that are currently in rulemaking.”

 Rick Schweitzer, general counsel for NPTC, told Transport Topics he believed an extension in the comment period would delay implementation of the fees for 2010.

“You can’t have the fees go into effect until you have a final rule,” he said.

“It would definitely put off our mailing to the industry,” said Bill Leonard, a member of the UCR board and director of the New York State Department of Transportation’s motor-carrier compliance bureau.

The delay, he said, would be problematic for states and the UCR board as they try to implement the fees.

“We’re desperately trying to get this onto a calendar year program. So, it is to our benefit, as well as the industry’s, to get this in sync, and that makes it so much more clean as enforcement goes,” Leonard said. “I hate reaching out . . . saying, can we do an enforcement bulletin saying, ‘Please start enforcing the 2010 on Feb. 13.’ . . . Enforcement likes it clean also.”

Rick Holcomb, senior vice president and general counsel for ATA, said the effect of an extension would “not necessarily” delay enforcement of the fees.

“The purpose of the request is only to give those questioning the justification for such a large increase sufficient time to properly challenge that increase in sufficient detail,” he said.

Holcomb said that, despite the brief comment period, he thought FMCSA “has an open mind on the issue, and we look forward to providing them with information on why the increase is not justified.”

Schweitzer, however, said he thought the short comment period indicated the agency already had made up its mind.

“It certainly seems like they are trying to rush this through so that they can get the bills out for next year,” he said.

Leonard said he thought the brief comment period was an effort by FMCSA to “live up to the statutory requirement of them doing it within 90 days . . . versus them making up their minds as to what the final fee structure should be.”

Created in 2005, UCR was intended to replace the Single-State Registration System used by states to fund commercial vehicle enforcement activities.  SSRS collected a $10-per-truck fee from for-hire interstate carriers.

UCR, initially supported by ATA and other industry groups, aims to reduce the burden on for-hire fleets by also collecting fees from private carriers and non-asset-based entities such as forwarders and brokers.

However, the program has been plagued by undercollection of fees and has yet to hit the required revenue targets set in the law that created it, leading industry groups to call for its abolition.

By press time, only a handful of comments had been placed in the docket, but almost all decried the fee increase.

One comment came from Northern Steel Transport in Toledo, Ohio.

“I am astounded yet again at another massive fee increase for all motor carriers that have so far survived this economy is going to have pay in the name of ‘state motor carrier safety programs,’ ” wrote Sandra Moore, director of business development. She said that Northern Steel’s “140-truck fleet will be required to go from paying $3,840 a year to over double that to $8,370.”