CPAC wants Trump to overhaul FMCSA’s waiver regime

WASHINGTON — An organization that holds significant weight with President Donald Trump is pressuring the administration to ease restrictions for approving exemptions and waivers to regulations it says disproportionately hinder small trucking companies.

The Center for Regulatory Freedom (CRF), a project of the Conservative Political Action Coalition Foundation, also known as CPAC, has taken issue with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s requirement that exemption applications include a statement explaining “how you would ensure that you could likely achieve a level of safety that is equivalent to, or greater than, the level of safety that would be obtained in the absence of the waiver.”

The code of federal regulations under 49 C.F.R. §381 also states that exemption applications must also “include a copy of all research reports, technical papers, and other publications and documents you reference.”

These FMCSA waiver and exemption requirements are “far too restrictive, requiring excessive justification and public comment periods even for minor exemptions,” CRF contends in comments filed in response to the U.S. Department Transportation’s request for deregulatory recommendations.

“The ‘equivalent safety’ standard … disproportionately disadvantages small trucking companies, as FMCSA’s regulations create a presumption against providing regulatory relief. Thus, carriers are forced to prove how receiving an exemption will improve safety conditions on the road, as opposed to stating the necessity of the exemption and how it will likely not affect safety.”

Smaller companies have been forced to pay additional costs to help assist in providing the additional safety information, CRF noted.

Waiver requests filed by truck drivers and small carriers during the Biden administration were routinely rejected for failing to clear the “equivalent safety” hurdle, including those seeking exemptions from hours of service and electronic logging device regulations.

‘Modify’ 30-day public comment period

CRF also takes issue with FMCSA’s mandatory 30-day public comment period that comes with waiver and exemption requests, arguing that delay in the application process caused by the requirement exposes drivers and carriers “to competitor challenges and subject firms to higher relative costs due to limited administrative capacity,” the group maintains.

CRF pointed out that the extra burden FMCSA’s waiver and exemption process places on truck drivers and small carriers violates Trump’s Executive Order 14219, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementation of the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Agenda,” issued the day before he was sworn in on Feb. 19. The mandatory public comment period, therefore, needs to be “modified” to comply with the order, according to the group.

To further comply with the executive order, CRF recommends adding a provision to FMCSA’s regulations to provide a separate exemption application category “for relief from non-safety-critical rules and regulations, such as recordkeeping requirements or paperwork reductions,” the group stated.

“This separate category can be expanded upon by adding a provision … that describes an expedited process for applying and receiving exemptions, eliminating all safety approximations and the inclusion of additional technical reports.

“For all exemption applications, CRF recommends removing the ‘equivalent safety’ standard.”

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Click for more FreightWaves articles by John Gallagher.

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