Derek Barrs, the leader of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, on Thursday announced plans to radically change something at the core of big problem areas for trucking in 2025: Self-certification of service providers.
Today, ELD providers, training providers, and even medical offices all self-certify that they're following the rules when getting onto FMCSA-registered lists of service providers.
Barrs, speaking to a crowd at the Transportation Club of Jacksonville, said FMCSA will "work toward a regulatory process" to help the agency "get away from self-certification." For the remainder of his term as FMCSA Administrator, Bars pledged "we will do away with anything that has to do with self-certification at FMCSA."
Instead, Barrs said the agency would work on a "vetting process" to make sure that ELDs, training providers and the medical examiners all comply before entering the market.
Barrs gave as an example the Training Provider Registry, talking about the agency's recent purge of 3,000 CDL schools on the list. While that purge looks like it mostly targeted inactive schools, according to Overdrive reporting, Barrs said there's much more to come.
"You wanna be an Entry Level Driver Training provider? You just sign up," Barrs said. "That’s pretty much it. There's no oversight for that per se."
[Related: FMCSA training provide purge: 'Crackdown' or cleanup?]
Now FMCSA is "working dilligently to go through all the number of driver training schools," he said, asking "who are you? Do you have the right qualifications? Do you actually have a principal place of business? Do you actually have curriculum? Do you actually have a truck?"
Barrs then confirmed Overdrive reporting that the agency now has "3,300 investigators" doing in-person audits at "1,600 driver training locations just to say 'are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing?'"
That line got applause from the crowd in Jacksonville.
"If we have people operating schools in this country that are just pushing people through, it's my job make sure you’re out of business," he said. "We have no place for that."
Barrs said driver training is "where the rubber meets the road" and the "number one" priority was making sure only qualified drivers get on the road.
Similarly, FMCSA recently took action to vet ELDs after reports of widespread ELD "editing" from overseas firms.
"We have folks oversees who are going into ELDs and changing logs giving drivers new BOLs, giving a whole new sets of hours when that driver actually should be resting," said Barrs.
[Related: Are inspectors missing an easy way to catch HOS cheats and non-compliant ELDs?]
To stop that, Barrs said FMCSA would now vet all new ELDs. In fact, the agency has blocked the registration of 200 new ELDs in the last two months and revoked 70 existing ELDs. Barrs didn't specify the timeframe for the 70 ELDs removed, but Overdrive has tracked the removal of a few dozen over the course of the second Trump administration.
In both cases, Barrs said FMCSA "can't stop there." FMCSA will work on new rulemakings and with Congress to crack down on freight fraud, cargo theft, and other problems around trucking.
Dale Prax co-hosted the talk with Barrs. Prax, FMCSA's self-described "worst critic" and a Marine Corps veteran, said for years FMCSA has been in "recon mode," observing problems within trucking but not acting. Now, he added, the agency's entered "war fighting mode," where bad actors actually get taken out.
On the certified medical examiners front, Barrs said he had less to report. Additionally, on issues like English language proficiency enforcement and the agency's non-domiciled CDL rule, Barrs said FMCSA would continue to twist the screws on states, making sure carriers who hire unqualified drivers pay the price, and drivers placed out-of-service stay OOS.
To view the whole talk, check the video below:
