FMCSA Deactivating DOT Numbers of URS Scofflaws

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it has started to deactivate the Department of Transportation registration numbers of trucking companies overdue for updating their Unified Registration System data, which is due every other year.

FMCSA said March 4 it sent out letters and e-mails to motor carriers in November, warning them of the need to file the registration updates. URS is a company registration program — not vehicle registration — required of motor carriers, freight brokers and forwarders, intermodal equipment providers and some other businesses. Those companies must have Department of Transportation numbers in order to operate.

“The agency will begin deactivating USDOT numbers starting in March 2014 for motor carriers due to update in January 2014 who failed to complete their biennial update,” the FMCSA notice said. Every month the agency will proceed with purging carriers two months beyond deadline.

Fines for failure to comply are $1,000 a day up to a maximum of $10,000.

FMCSA said the DOT numbers themselves tell a company when to file. The last digit — 1 to 9 and then 0 — tells the month to register, January to October. The next-to-last digit indicates the year: odd numbers in odd-numbered years and evens in evens.

The URS carrier census was mentioned in a March 5 report on FMCSA written by DOT’s inspector general. The report said, in part, that FMCSA must figure out how many trucking companies there are and how many trucks each company owns in order to improve the reliability of the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.

URS is a separate program from Unified Carrier Registration, a system that collects carrier fees and distributes them to states.