FMCSA Preps 20 Trucking Policy Changes, Many Deregulatory

Federal officials are giving regulations a spring cleaning, either proposing or implementing 20 policy changes for commercial vehicle operations.

Eleven of the 20 advance notices from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) are deregulatory, tackling issues such as obsolete terminology, outmoded practices and regulatory burdens on the industry, according to documents slated to be published in the Federal Register on May 30.

One proposed rule would rescind a requirement that rear impact guards maintain a visible certification. The notice states that the “requirement has proven problematic for motor carriers when the label or marking becomes illegible or wears off during the service life of the trailer or guard.” Another proposed rule strikes the requirement that all trucks be “equipped with at least one spare fuse for each type and size of fuse needed.”

Some of the changes focus on regulatory clutter. As an example, one proposed rule would eliminate a mandate that truckers self-report violations to their home state. The notice indicates that “states have been fulfilling this task exclusively using electronic reporting requirements since 2024,” making this regulation unnecessary.

Others are more practically minded. A requirement that truckers carry “liquid-burning flares” in their vehicles would be struck under one proposal, given that “FMCSA believes [these] are no longer used.” Similarly, FMCSA wants to remove a rule that requires trucks to carry an operator’s manual for their ELD, noting that because “drivers are required to understand the operation of the ELD … there is no readily apparent benefit to continuing” that policy.

Not all of these notices are for proposed rules. One is a final rule repealing routing mandates on for-hire motor carriers, which FMCSA wants to eliminate because the mandates “exceed FMCSA’s statutory authority.”

Several of the notices carve out exceptions to the regulations based on petitions from outside groups. In one case, FMCSA wants to add a caveat to a prohibition on “gravity and syphon feeds for auxiliary pumps with a fuel tank capacity of less than 5 gallons mounted on the trailer chassis frame or trailer bed.” This was based on a petition from the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association.