FMCSA grants TIA’s petition on training for brokers

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has granted a petition from the Transportation Intermediaries Association regarding training requirements for freight forwarders and brokers.

According to FMCSA’s website, the petition for rulemaking has been closed and a letter notifying TIA that it had been granted was sent on March 11. A notice of approval still has not been published in the Federal Register.

In June 2023, TIA petitioned the agency for a rulemaking to implement and enforce existing provisions related to experience and training requirements for brokers and freight forwarders to enter the marketplace.

The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21^st Century Act, which was signed into law in 2012, included a provision that “a broker or freight forwarder must employ as an officer an individual who has three years of relevant experience or provides the Secretary of Transportation with satisfactory evidence of the individual’s knowledge of related rules, regulations and industry practices.”

In its 2023 petition, TIA told FMCSA that it worked with Congress to get that language included in MAP-21 “because of the rise of reincarnated or chameleon brokers, freight forwarders and motor carriers in the marketplace.”

“Unfortunately, incidents of fraud have only increased over the past decade, culminating in a plague of fraud in 2023,” TIA wrote in the petition. “Today’s marketplace remains filled with fraudulent entities and criminal actors who sully the marketplace at the expense of all regulated entities and ultimately impose an estimated $800 million per year upon American consumers.”

TIA said the increase was caused by a lack of enforcement combined with a global pandemic that disrupted the marketplace.

“The U.S. Congress, through MAP-21, sought to address these concerns through the TIA-supported legislative language, but unfortunately and inexplicably, the agency has failed to implement several key provisions, including the experience or training requirement,” the group wrote. “At the very least, these requirements could help to mitigate rampant fraud by criminals who are entering the marketplace on a regular basis with hundreds of different authorities.”

In order for a broker to obtain operating authority from FMCSA, TIA recommends that the applicant employ either an individual with the relevant experience or someone who has received an FMCSA certificate indicating he or she has completed a course from an accredited school or university. TIA suggested that the course should require 30 to 90 hours of online or in-person work.

“TIA urges the agency to take immediate action regarding this petition,” the group wrote. “The actions requested will strengthen the registration process of brokers and freight forwarders and weed out bad actors. These changes will improve safety throughout the supply chain by barring criminal and otherwise irresponsible actors from the marketplace.”

Another broker petition

FMCSA also granted a petition from the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association regarding broker transparency in March 2023.

OOIDA petitioned the agency in 2020 to:

• Require brokers to automatically provide an electronic copy of each transaction record within 48 hours after the contractual service has been completed
• Prohibit brokers from including any provision that requires carriers to waive their rights to access the transaction records

Regulation CFR 371.3 already requires that brokers keep records of each transaction with a carrier and that each party to the transaction have a right to view these records. OOIDA asked the agency to begin enforcing that regulation and to eliminate any loopholes that allowed brokers to sidestep the rule. The Small Business in Transportation Coalition also petitioned the agency.

Although FMCSA granted the petition in early 2023, it still has not initiated a rulemaking. A notice of proposed rulemaking is projected to be published in October.

“FMCSA remains committed to initiating a rulemaking in 2024 concerning broker transparency,” Cicely Waters, FMCSA’s communication director, told Land Line earlier this year. LL

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