FMCSA Release Proposal for New Carrier Safety Fitness Determination

Late last week, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published its long-awaited and contentious proposal "designed to enhance the Agency’s ability to identify non-compliant motor carriers" labeled the Safety Fitness Determination (SFD). FMCSA says the new program is needed to inspect a greater number of carriers annually. FMCSA estimates the new program will be able to assess the "safety fitness" of 75,000 carriers each month instead of the current 15,000 each year. As well, FMCSA notes this will remove the ability for unsafe carriers to continue to operate. According to FMCSA, "If your company does not have 11 or more inspections with violations in two or more BASICs and/or an investigation with violations cited in the past month, you would not be impacted by this proposed rule."

The criteria used under the proposal to determine an "unfit" carrier would include: 

1. "The carrier’s performance in relation to a fixed failure threshold established in the rule for five of the agency’s Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs);

2. Investigation results; or

3. A combination of on-road safety data and investigation information."