FMCSA Utilizes New Regulatory Power to Close Uncooperative Motor Carrier

This story appears in the April 8 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is using new authority Congress granted it under last year’s transportation law to crack down on errant trucking firms and to reinforce safety regulations.

FMCSA recently shut down a trucking company that it said refused to cooperate with investigators. Previously, FMCSA was not able to shut down a company solely for being uncooperative.

Also, the agency is tweaking its regulatory plans to protect drivers from being coerced by shippers to breach safety procedures.

Southern Transportation Inc., based in Tucker, Ga., refused to supply FMCSA investigators with company safety records, the agency said in a March 29 statement. The agency then shut the firm down, the first time it has used its new power granted by MAP-21 to suspend uncooperative fleets, it said.

“MAP-21 strengthens the ability of FMCSA investigators to take necessary and appropriate actions to protect innocent lives,” Administrator Anne Ferro said in the statement. “We will not allow the safety of the traveling public to be compromised by an unsafe commercial truck or bus company.”

The agency’s statement did not cite the specific actions that triggered its investigation of Southern Transportation and spokesman Duane DeBruyne declined to elaborate.

It was more forthcoming about the shutdown of another fleet — General Trucking Inc. — a week earlier, declaring it to be an “imminent hazard to public safety,” due to its use of unqualified drivers, inadequate monitoring of drivers’ hours of service and operation of overloaded vehicles.

FMCSA said Southern Transportation, which it also labeled an “imminent hazard,” and General Trucking had operated from the same location.

A carrier that operates as a new company after it is shut down is known as a “reincarnated” carrier, and it could be shut down again under FMCSA rules. FMCSA did not indicate whether either of the companies it took action against was a reincarnation.

The phone number listed for Southern connected to E Z Trucking Inc., also based at the same location. But Allen Sun, E Z’s manager, said his company is not affiliated with either Southern Transportation or General Trucking.

“We are another trucking company,” Sun told Transport Topics. “I don’t know about Southern Transportation.” He said he had heard that General Trucking had been shut down but that his company is unrelated.

But in the order shutting down General Trucking, FMCSA mentioned E Z as a company affiliated with General Trucking, and the agency shut down E Z, too, and prohibited General Trucking from reincarnating and using E Z’s operating authority.

But E Z continued to operate as of last week, Sun said.

Citing the ongoing investigation, DeBruyne declined to comment on the carrier’s operations.

FMCSA first used the MAP-21 authority to revoke uncooperative carriers’ operating authorities earlier in March, when it shut down Boston-based Fung Wah Bus Transportation Inc. While the Fung Wah action was the first revocation under the MAP-21 authority, Southern Transportation was the first carrier to have its operating authority suspended.

Meanwhile, the agency is working on a “fast-track” process to implement a MAP-21 provision to protect truck drivers from being coerced into breaking safety regulations. Under the law, FMCSA’s regulations must ensure that truck and bus drivers are not coerced by carriers, shippers, receivers or transportation intermediaries.

The coercion provision became effective Oct. 1, when the law went into effect, the agency said in a March update on regulations it is writing. FMCSA must now consider driver coercion in every rule it writes.

Ferro told reporters last month that coercion includes pressure, “either by threat of economic damages or threat of physical harm, to violate a core safety rule, whether it’s hours of service or something else.”

Drivers are already protected from motor carriers that pressure them to break the law under the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982. MAP-21 extends FMCSA’s power.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association supports MAP-21’s coercion provision, said spokeswoman Norita Taylor. “We’ve often said that the rest of the supply chain needs to have a responsibility for their role in highway safety since they are the ones who have control over drivers and their schedules,” Taylor said.