Freight fraud is estimated to cost the trucking industry $800 million each year. A bill in the House and Senate would empower the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to address the problem.
The Household Goods Shipping Consumer Protection Act would restore FMCSA’s authority to issue civil penalties against bad actors. The legislation also would require brokers, freight forwarders and carriers to provide a valid business address to FMCSA before acquiring operating authority.
Although the name is a little misleading, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said the bill is an important step in addressing the growing problem of freight fraud.
“It covers household goods, obviously, but it also deals with FMCSA’s authority and requirements more broadly to include anyone who the agency has authority over,” Bryce Mongeon, OOIDA’s director of legislative affairs, told Land Line Now. “It’s a really important first step to get after those people and make it more difficult to get into the industry to perpetrate this fraud in the first place and then on the back end to finally levy some penalties when they’ve been found to have done so.”
Last week, the bipartisan bill was reintroduced in the House by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., and Rep. Mike Ezell, R-Miss. As of Thursday, Feb. 6, HR880 already had 11 co-sponsors.
An identical bill, S337, was introduced by Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.
The effort is supported by OOIDA, the American Trucking Associations and the Transportation Intermediaries Association.
OOIDA is encouraging truck drivers to go to its Fighting For Truckers website. There, truckers can find out more about the bills and write directly to their lawmakers.
“This isn’t the silver bullet that’s going to fix all of the freight problems we’ve been seeing, but it’s a really important first step that’s going to crack down on some of this,” Mongeon said. LL
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