In a posting in the Federal Register yesterday, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced that it is delaying the planned elimination of registrant-only USDOT numbers.
According to the Truck Renting and Leasing Assn. (TRALA), registrant-only USDOT numbers are used to identify “registered owners of CMVs that are not motor carriers but lease their trucks to motor carriers.” Among this group are leasing companies.
FMCSA announced on Aug. 9, 2010, that it planned to discontinue use of the numbers as of Sept. 1, 2011, because they were “being used differently from what the agency intended and thus the practice of issuing registrant-only numbers to entities that are not motor carriers is having an adverse affect on the agency’s ability to track motor carriers’ safety violations.”
After receiving comments, including those from TRALA, FMCSA has pushed back the date of elimination date to Sept. 1, 2012.
According to TRALA, the elimination of the registrant-only USDOT number would result in leasing companies facing time-consuming administrative burdens to contest violations incorrectly assigned to their USDOT number due to the “misidentification of some rental trucks by law enforcement under current CMV marking regulations.”
