White House Plans Quick Announcement of New FMCSA Leadership, Ferro Says

This story appears in the Aug. 18 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will soon announce new leadership at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency’s outgoing administrator said.

Anne Ferro, who will depart FMCSA to become president of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators on Aug. 25, said she will remain administrator through this week. Before she begins her new job, a transition plan will be unveiled, she told reporters Aug. 14.

“The Department [of Transportation] and the White House will let everybody know what the succession plan is with a message to the internal community here before it reaches out to the public, but it’ll be in all due time, and near time,” Ferro said at DOT headquarters. “So I’m administrator for now and will be, and a successor will be named in that timeframe.”

She said her advice to whomever takes over the agency is: “Staying engaged with our leadership team; staying engaged with our workforce; staying engaged with our state partners who really leverage the outcome — they’re the boots on the ground that get this job done. And listen, continue transparency, listen to the stakeholders, listen to industry, and above all stay mindful why this agency was created, which is to protect the public.”

Ferro is the longest-serving FMCSA chief. She took over as the top safety regulator for commercial trucks and buses in 2009. Before that, she led the Maryland Motor Truck Association.

Bill Bronrott, the agency’s deputy administrator, is the highest-ranking official after Ferro. Bronrott joined FMCSA in 2010, and during that time, he has sought to improve the safety of motorists, according to the agency.

A longtime transportation safety advocate, Bronrott was elected to the Maryland General Assembly before coming to FMCSA.

During his career Bronrott has been a spokesman for the Truck Safety Coalition, a group that represents Parents Against Tired Truckers and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways.

He is credited for launching the Mothers Against Drunk Driving movement and had a key role in establishing the Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving and passage of the National Uniform 21 Minimum Age Act, according to FMCSA.

Despite her departure, Ferro said FMCSA in the next few months expects to release a study of how to assign fault to crashes listed on carriers’ Compliance, Safety, Accountability records.

The study has been delayed because the agency is completing an “additional scrub” of the results before presenting to Congress.

A proposed rule outlining how the agency will align CSA scores with a safety fitness determination is expected in February 2015, she said.

Ferro said she views the controversy over the restart provision of hours-of-service rule as a “natural dynamic” between some in the industry and the agency that regulates them.

“In an economic system that tries to drive the last penny out of the supply chain, the transportation sector — certainly freight movement and trucking in particular — gets squeezed the hardest because it has the least leverage to bid back,” Ferro said. “This is an industry that’s highly fragmented, highly competitive, highly mobile, and it has a strong cadre of small business operators who are more the ‘David’ than the ‘Goliath’ of the supply chain.

“The tension will always bump up against an hours-of-service rule,” she added.

Ferro said her biggest frustration as administrator has been finding a way to “leverage a national conversation” on commercial motor vehicle safety.

“This agency was set up to serve 300 million people to strive for achieving safety for everybody on those roads,” Ferro said. “And yet my primary conversation is with an audience of 10 million — of drivers, of company officials, shippers, brokers and our law enforcement partners.”

She added, “So how do you take that conversation with 10 million and turn into a matter of interest to 300 million? And how do you hear all the different views?”

She said the public is “shocked” when they hear that drivers can work 70 hours a week. “The public mind set is a 40-hour week,” she said.

Ferro said she counts the agency’s CSA program, the HOS rule, electronic logging device mandate, establishment of a certified registry of medical examiners and a driver pre-employment screening program as among her biggest accomplishments.

“Clearly CSA has been a game changer since the get-go,” Ferro said. “It has put safety in the board room, it has put the safety manager at the table of company officials, it has created a conversation between the company and drivers that was not in place before, and it has given the public and users and competitors clear access to the information on other companies’ performance more than ever before. It has paved the way for significant change.”