Open Letters to Our New FMCSA Administrator

LETTER 1:

Dear Administrator, Barrs,

I read where you have an aggressive agenda of rulemaking headed our way in the coming months and NASTC will have comments to make accordingly.

From what I see, so far your reign as FMCSA’s administrator is poised to make tremendous positive strides toward “cleaning up the messes” that have been allowed to grow, fester, and damage almost irrevocably the image of trucking, its companies, and its drivers. I hope you’ll see fit to move away from “apnea-mania” and STOP-BANG protocol as you pick your fights. I hope you’ll be able to begin a de-regulation stance as opposed to the re-regulation era of the past two decades. And I hope you’ll allow the apnea/fatigue hysteria to die a quiet and unsignificant death. There is very little, if any connection directly between apnea, fatigue, and truck safety. There is however a direct connection between chronic fatigue, sleep deprivation, narcolepsy, and truck safety.

I ran across an article that I penned some time ago for our newsletter and I copied a former administrator then without any response. Please take it as intended and I would welcome acknowledgment of receipt, and a follow up conversation with you or your people about its content.

Sincerely,

David Owen,

President, NASTC

LETTER 2:

An open letter to our new FMCSA Administrator

While speaking at the Annual TCA Meeting recently, you “Vowed to Clean Up the Mess in Modern Trucking.” In my opinion, you need to clean up the mess in your agency first.

While NASTC intends to wholeheartedly support your mission, we’d also like to assure our membership and the entire trucking community that the agency will develop and use an accurate system to identify and segregate the drivers and carriers who are doing it right and the “bad actors who drag trucking down.” This looks and sounds a lot like past knee jerk, failed endeavors from the last few FMCSA regimes on its face.

A good start would be to identify the “bad actors” at the state level who have systematically ignored many of the regulations we’ve had in place for years. Our Secretary of Transportation has shown that the administration will do its part in helping to clean up CDL, non-citizen driver, and non-English-speaking drivers and companies, and is taking dead aim on addressing chameleon carriers. I can’t believe that FMCSA has not figured out how to eliminate these fraudsters years ago. We’ve got some ideas that we’d gladly share that could be implemented to help.

Please do not throw the baby out with the bath water and blame small carriers and owner-operators for this “mess” you’re speaking of. In the full-truckload, long-haul sector of trucking, they represent the best of the best – the safest and most profitable business model in the sector.

A second great move would be to scrap CSA in its entirety and start over. Please admit that it is broken beyond repair, does nothing to help identify bad actors, and has put 100’s of perfectly safe carriers out of business. Also, in this vein, you need to comply with the Congressional mandate given to the agency in its inception and audit all new entrants and RATE all carriers who have an MC number. By the way, is there a good reason why MC #’s were deemed unnecessary and US DOT numbers took their place? I see trucks all the time that do not have the name and location of the authority holder on the driver’s door like it used to be. NASTC plans to come up with their own rating system and give all our carriers a NASTC rating since the agency can’t come anywhere close to getting this done.

I’m delighted to see the renewed focus on freight fraud. A recent Transport Topics article was titled “Trucking Logistic Companies are losing $18,000,000 per day to fraud.”

I’m also delighted to see that you’re re-structuring the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Board and I’m hopeful that you’ll actually have small trucking company and owner-operator representation. A great idea would be to include a subcommittee composed of million-mile drivers to act in an advisory capacity. You could choose from ATA’s Driver Team, TA/Petro’s Citizen Drivers, NASTC’s Driver’s of the Year, Women in Trucking’s Drivers of the Year, OOIDA’s Driver of the Year, and TCA drivers for this committee.  Their input could possibly temper some of the bone-headed ideas rolled out of laboratories, classrooms, and central planning inside the beltway.

Please consider driver-turnover percentages as a safety issue and cease promulgating the myth that there’s a driver shortage. We run good people out of the industry daily with the ways they are treated by mega carriers. If a company can’t maintain a turnover rate of 60% or less, they should not be allowed to add trucks until they reach that threshold. Also, pre CDL training as an entrance requirement has produced no positive safety results and greatly discourages young people from entering our industry. As a result this creates a fertile field for spurious CDL training schools to open and produce unending classes of window-foggers who are turned out on the road without the knowledge to safely operate. Here again, I see where the administration has pulled the credentials of over 500 of these CDL mills that only train for the test, not for the long haul.

I saw recently where CVSA was changing the maintenance criteria for placing a truck out of service. Where does that non-governmental, ad hoc group get the authority to do that? I know you come from that group, but I feel they have greatly over-reached by making policy, not through rule making, but by fiat. Let’s address the “mess” by cleaning up and simplifying the rules and regs, not by adding to them.

I could go on and on about the failed policies coming from inside the beltway regarding large trucks. Thank goodness sane minds prevailed regarding mandated speed limiters, automatic braking systems, the never-ending attack on the owner-operator model, sleep apnea, circadian rhythms, and the ridiculous and unnecessary forced 30-minute break and the 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM forced break. Thank goodness for Ray Martinez and his brief stint as administrator where he actually brought some relief and flexibility to the hours of service. Thank goodness we now have an administration who is taking trucking regulations seriously and, thank goodness we have a new administrator who is going to help clean up the mess that FMCSA has created by making the agency a political football and/or a DEI appointment.

NASTC will help you any way we can, but do not blame the industry, small carriers, or owner-operators for creating such a mess.

We are not guilty!