FMCSA Proposes Lower UCR Fees

In today’s Federal Register, a notice of proposed rulemaking from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposes new, lower fees for the Unified Carrier Registration Agreement, effective for both the 2018 calendar year and for 2019 and future years. 

UCR Fees have not changed since 2010. However, the UCR program has begun to collect more money than the federal law allows. In that situation, the statute calls on the UCR board of directors to recommend that FMCSA set lower fees in order to both refund to industry the excess revenues already collected, and ensure that overcollections do not continue. 

Earlier this year, the UCR board made its fee recommendation to FMCSA, and the agency has now responded. What’s in the Register today is only a proposal, but we believe it is very likely that what’s being proposed will in fact take effect without change on November 1. 

For 2018, the UCR fees will drop approximately 9.1 percent, taking care of both prior and future UCR overcollections. In 2019, the fees will rebound to a level about 4.55 percent lower than this year’s. The UCR fees have been imposed at a range, depending on the size of a carrier’s fleet, from $76 to $73,346. For 2018, the range will likely be $69 for the smallest fleets, to $66,597 for the largest. For 2019 and after, the range is proposed to be $73 to $69,971. 

As announced in Tuesday’s Dispatch, the UCR board of directors has delayed the beginning of the 2018 UCR registration until November 1 this year, a month later than the usual date. No UCR registrations for 2018 will be accepted before November 1.