Here is how a person becomes a federally authorized motor carrier today.

You apply for a USDOT number. As part of that application, you certify on a form, the MCS-150, that you are knowledgeable about the applicable federal motor carrier safety regulations and, where relevant, the hazardous materials regulations. You check the box. You get your new entrant authority. You start hauling freight. Then, at some point within your first 18 months of operation, FMCSA conducts a safety audit to see how you are actually doing.

Read that sequence again, because the order is the entire issue. You affirm that you know the rules by signing a form. You operate on public highways with an 80,000-pound vehicle. And the real look at whether you understand what you are doing comes after you are already out there doing it.

A lot of people in and around trucking have argued for a long time that this is backwards, that validating a new carrier’s safety knowledge should come before authority is granted, not after. FMCSA is now revisiting exactly that question, and the rulemaking that would address it, dormant for more than 15 years, has a new target date.

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