UCR Fees to Increase by 25% in 2025, FMCSA Says
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Proposed fees for Unified Carrier Registration Plan participants in 2025 will be raised by about 25% compared with 2024 fees, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced Jan. 9.
Fees for the 2025 registration year would be increased above the fees for the 2024 registration year by amounts between $9 and $9,000 per entity, depending on the applicable fee bracket. The proposal is based upon a recommendation from the UCR Plan.
The 2025 Unified Carrier Registration fees will be increased to $46 for companies with up to two power units. For companies with 1,001 or more power units, fees will increase to $44,836.
Created by Congress in 2005, the UCR Plan and the 41 states participating in the UCR agreement establish and collect the fees and then dish out the more than $100 million in safety enforcement programs annually to the participating states.
The UCR Plan and agreement are administered by a 15-member UCR board of directors — 14 appointed from the participating states and the industry plus the deputy administrator of FMCSA.
The UCR board provides fee adjustment recommendations to the transportation secretary when revenue collections result in a shortfall or surplus from the amount authorized by statute. If there are excess funds after payments to the states and for administrative costs, they are retained in the UCR Plan’s depository, and fees in subsequent fee years must be reduced as required by regulation.
The fee adjustments are authorized by federal regulation because the total revenue collected for previous registration years has exceeded the maximum annual revenue entitlements of $107.78 million distributed to the 41 participating states plus the amount established for administrative costs associated with the UCR Plan and agreement.
The Unified Carrier Registration board must obtain approval by USDOT to revise the total revenue to be collected. (U.S. Department of Transportation)
The board also must obtain Department of Transportation approval to revise the total revenue to be collected. Its recommendation now uses an average of the historical monthly collections over the prior three-year period to determine projected collections, which will yield a more accurate result.
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As of the summer of 2021, up to 44,000 motor carriers had not registered with the plan, failed to pay their fees or had been issued penalties for past violations. Since then, the UCR board approved an aggressive three-pronged strategy to identify and contact unregistered motor carriers, authorizing three pilot projects that called for hiring a private contractor to contact, attempt to register and collect fees mostly from errant carriers from the nine nonparticipating UCR states to raise funds for the plan.
The notice of proposed rulemaking for 2025 follows UCR adjustments for the prior two registration years that, collectively, reduced fees by an aggregate average of 37.3%. The need for registration fee adjustments is unavoidable due to both the statutory requirements for the UCR Plan and agreement and the fluctuations in the number of entities registering with the plan.
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