FMCSA Allows Longer Period to Comment on UCR Fee Hike

This story appears in the Sept. 21 print edition of Transport Topics.

As trucking groups continue to express opposition toward the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposal to more than double registration fees starting in 2010, the agency said it was extending the public comment period by 10 days.

In a Sept. 17 notice, FMCSA said the new deadline for submitting comments is Sept. 28.

The proposal, which would set fees as high as $83,000 for the largest fleets, was issued Sept. 3. At that time, the agency gave just 15 days for public comment (9-7, p. 1).

FMCSA defended the initial 15-day commenting period in its notice, but said that “in the public interest” it was granting the extension, which had been re-quested by American Trucking Associations and other groups that sit on the board that oversees the Unified Carrier Registration agreement.

ATA Vice President Bob Pitcher said the extended period was “better than 15 days,” but added it was still an “extremely short time for so significant a rulemaking.”

Pitcher is vice chairman of the board that oversees the UCR fees.

While FMCSA said that federal law allows for “in some cases, a shorter comment period . . . good cause has been shown to grant a short extension of the comment period in this matter.”

Created in 2005 by Congress, UCR was to replace the Single State Registration System. Under SSRS, only for-hire carriers paid the registration fee, used by states to finance law enforcement activities.

The creation of UCR was aimed at easing the burden of the $10-per-truck SSRS fee by requiring all carriers, as well as freight brokers and forwarders, to register and pay in a slotted system based on fleet size.

However, since its inception, the program has been plagued by undercollections. In addition, a change in law to exempt trailers from being counted as part of overall fleet size led to the proposed increase.

Several truckers already had filed comments with FMCSA last week.

“The UCR fee proposed is not what the industry agreed to when UCR was originally formed,” said Barry Stang, executive vice president of the Montana Motor Carriers Association. “Unfortunately, it has not collected the revenue it was designed to collect because there is no means of enforcement. This means that you are penalizing those who are honest, fill out the forms, and pay the fees, while those who do not go undetected.”

Michael Massengill, president of Diesel Express Inc., Blue Mountain, Miss., said the agency “has failed to consider the most important aspect of the issue: the state of today’s economy and the devastating effect such an increase will have on the trucking industry.”

Massengill said that because of the fees, “motor carriers that have so far survived this economy and will now have another setback” will suffer.

“We are prepared to contribute our fair share, but to increase the fees by 122% in order to offset losses from carriers who elect not to pay or elect to jump to a lower bracket is unacceptable,” wrote Mack Dove and Reid Dove, the CEO and president, respectively, of AAA Cooper Transportation, Dothan Ala.

However, Doug Dean, director of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, said the agency “has appropriately taken into consideration the three key points needed to be addressed for a new fee structure,” namely the elimination of trailers from the tabulation of fleet size, carriers’ shifting from higher fee brackets to lower ones and state enforcement efforts.

Dean said CPUC, which is responsible for collecting UCR fees in Colorado, agrees that “states need to do more to improve overall compliance,” but said the states have had challenges stemming from the increased number of companies subject to the fees and “properly identifying” which companies need to pay.

In the notice, FMCSA said its legal requirement is to complete work on a final rule within 90 days of when it received the board’s recommendations, a period that ends in mid-October.

FMCSA said it had “no other option” than to set a short comment period because of the 90-day deadline, and added that “the 15-day comment period is the same comment period that was provided in 2007, without any objection by any interested person.”

Pitcher said the comparison FMCSA was making was “absolutely” an apples-to-oranges one.

In 2007, he said, “there was an agreed level of fees by both states and industry and it was very largely noncontroversial. Now, the economic times are extreme and so is the proposed increase.”