In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, catch the address delivered by, and Q&A with, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration chief Derek Barrs at the annual transportation symposium of the Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association, held last week in Birmingham, Alabama.
Barrs touches on quite a lot, including the last-week-introduced Dalilah Law that might cement the FMCSA’s preferred approach to limiting non-domiciled CDLs for non-citizens but that also casts a wide net on CDL recertifications.
His talk came the morning of the very day, Feb. 26, that petitioners challenging that non-domiciled final rule filed a formal request for a stay of the March 16 effective date, pending court review. While Barrs didn't note the new filing -- read about it here -- or the past court action against the prior rule version, he cast the agency's moves on CDL qualifications as fundamentally necessary.
[Related: Lawsuit seeks to halt FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL final rule]
"We are taking steps from our non-domiciled CDL process to make sure that we strengthen that so that when we issue, we're not issuing to someone who has not been truly vetted," Barrs said, "and we're not giving driver's licenses to individuals who are only supposed to be in this country for two years but we're allowing them to have CDLs for eight or nine years. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life" -- a reference to evidence uncovered by federal auditors in a variety of states of legal presence and CDL term mismatches.
After the applause died down, Barrs added, "That is a one-size-fits-all."
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A non-domiciled CDL holder for many years now, owner-operator Rivera, unlike many more recent arrivals to the country, has lived virtually his entire life in the U.S. after his undocumented parents brought him to California.
He enjoys the protections of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, as listeners heard with our talk with Rivera a few weeks back. He and fellow litigants asked the court to stay the rule pending review, generally charging the agency paints the situation of non-domiciled CDL holders today with too broad a brush, Rivera a principal example.
[Related: What does the Dalilah Law mean for your (and my) CDL?]
Hear much more from Barrs about the agency's perspective in the podcast, likewise potential upcoming rulemakings around electronic-logging-device and training-provider certification, "chameleon carrier" enforcement and more.
It included this anecdote, too, related to the agency's December in-person audits of 1,500 registered training providers, showing the work, as it were, of investigators when they find what might reliably be called a "CDL mill":
"We go there and it's a parking lot, there's no trucks that are there," Barrs said. "We ask them for records, they drive up in a van, they throw out records and then they drive off. That actually happened." He called again for reform of the "self-certification" process in place today for training entities and ELD providers, among other actions.
"We have to clean this mess up," he added. Take a listen:
Also in the podcast:
A bit of sad news to share about the guitarist you've heard for years now in the Overdrive Radio theme, Long Haul Paul Marhoefer's "Legend of the Snakeman." That'd be Travis "The Snakeman" Wammack, celebrated picker and prolific studio presence in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, dating back more than 50 years now.
From Long Haul Paul:
Today we mourn with the Muscle Shoals music community the loss of a beloved and legendary lead guitarist. In fact, you hear his work every week on Overdrive Radio. I’m talking about the ol’ Snakeman himself, Travis Wammack. Once dubbed the player of “the fastest guitar in the South” by Rolling Stone, Wammack was more famous within production circles for his historic work at Fame Studios, and for the singers and songs he helped catapult into national prominence. He could shred with the best of them.
But as a session musician, he also possessed the ability to subsume his instrument for sake of the song, as in his subtle guitar accents in Clarence Carter’s 1970 classic "Patches.”
In a social media post announcing Wammack’s passing, Fame Studios remarked: “It’s with heavy hearts that we share the passing of Travis Wammack, guitarist, producer, hitmaker, innovator ... and forever a member of the FAME family. Travis wasn’t just part of the FAME Gang; he helped define the sound. His guitar work carried a fire and finesse that could shake the walls or whisper straight to your soul. From explosive riffs to tasteful textures, he had that rare gift. You knew it was Travis within the first few notes.”
In his later years, working independently, the Snakeman would go on to collaborate with indie artists, including a grizzled 57-year-old, completely unknown trucker with a shoebox of unpublished original songs. They’d met in the back of an Alabama transmission shop. On the strength of Wammack’s work as a producer, that trucker would eventually land a record deal and enjoy distribution in chain truck stops nationwide, becoming known as, well, Long Haul Paul.
He will always be remembered for his kindness and mischievous sense of humor. Godspeed, Snakeman. You were the best.
No doubt Wammack will be missed, though his legacy clearly lives on in Paul’s and so many other artists’ work. And right here on Overdrive Radio, of course.
As mentioned in the podcast:
**Arkansas' HB 1745 -- now Act 604 since passage.
**Dalilah Law potential ramifications for states, CDL holders.
**DOT/FMCSA press conference week prior to Barrs' talk.
**Lawsuit challenging non-domiciled CDL rule.
