Legislation introduced December 18 by House Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Michigan) aims to pin a 10% fine on any freight broker that contracts a carrier with three or more violations on its record over a five-year period.
- The bill aims to increase broker liability for carrier selection and crash outcomes.
- It empowers the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to investigate brokers after a contracted carrier's crash and impose operating requirements on any who "acted with egregious disregard for safety in contracting the company that was involved" in the crash, according to the bill's text.
- H.R. 6884 was referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, with no cosponsors.
The legislation takes its name from two Michigan residents who died after a 2022 crash with a truck operated by a carrier with several violations on its record, according to Moolenaar. The "Patrick and Barbara Kowalski Freight Brokers Safety Act" aims to hold brokers accountable when they contract trucking companies with such histories.
About the post-crash investigative and enforcement authority provisions in the bill, Rep. Moolenaar said the Kowalskis' tragedy was "preventable," and "this legislation ensures all freight industry contractors take safety seriously."
Moolenaar's bill would create an "economic incentive" for brokers to prioritize safety. That's a 10% surcharge on any contract with a trucking company that's netted three or more violations in five years, or if one of the carrier's drivers has such a history.
The bill directs the Secretary of Transportation use the 10% "civil penalty" collected to fund "projects or infrastructure ... that increase roadway safety," according to the legislative text.
If enacted, enforced and implemented, money collected could be substantial, as most any carrier of significant size has three or more violations on its public record, accessible in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's CSA Safety Measurement System. Furthermore, that public record only includes a three-year history, not the longer, five-year history the bill specifies to trigger the 10% fines.
Chris Burroughs, head of the Transportation Intermediaries Association, called H.R. 6884 "well-intentioned," yet he felt it could ultimately undermine the highway safety it seeks to improve.
"It would place freight brokers in an untenable position," Burroughs said, "effectively requiring them to police the motor carrier industry and significantly increasing exposure to litigation nationwide."
The bill nonetheless comes amid a huge uptick in broker use of carrier-vetting platforms that offer a window on motor carrier compliance history, the rise of the platforms a response to fraud in the freight markets. Brokers who use vetting systems today often decline to contract carriers with no inspection history in the public record, fearing fraudulent entities in the business of double brokering freight. Under the terms of the new legislation, intermediaries are in some ways incentivized to broker to such a carrier.
While that could be a positive for small carriers and owner-operators with stellar records, it could also hold potential for unintended consequences.
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A spokesperson for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association noted appreciation for the bill's intent, yet said "we have serious questions about whether this proposal would actually hold freight brokers accountable or simply penalize carriers instead."
OOIDA pointed out the bill doesn't distinguish between "serious safety violations and minor infractions, and in practice any surcharge imposed on brokers would likely be passed directly back to carriers," the spokesperson said. "We believe Congress should focus on targeted, transparent solutions that improve safety that do not create unintended consequences for small business truckers.”
TIA's Burroughs emphasized brokers' difficulty in assessing carrier safety in meaningful terms, emphasizing FMCSA's failure to improve on and expand reach of its carrier safety rating program. "More than 92% of carriers remain unrated," he said, and FMCSA "has not conducted compliance reviews for the vast majority of them."
Add to that "longstanding inaccuracies and data inconsistencies" underlying the CSA SMS, he said, and "shifting enforcement and oversight responsibilities to brokers" would be both impractical and likely ineffective, in TIA's view.
[Related: What's happened to broker transparency]
