The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s second of three listening sessions dedicated to developing a knowledge test of for motor carrier, broker and freight-forwarder New Entrants was held last week in Louisville, Ky., at the Mid-America Trucking Show.
Much of the commentary reflected prior CCJ reporting on the subject, though some new ideas were aired.
Owner-operator Michael Totwin expressed approval for the test, saying that “yes, we do need that. But we need testing so the little guy can get it” and urging the agency to keep the process simple.
In such thoughts he echoed David Owen of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, who offered some specific suggestions relative not only to the test but to how it could be administered. “One of our main considerations, and something that gets overlooked,” he said, is that “full-truckload long-haul carriers are all small-town rural-based people.”
FMCSA might make it easy on such constituencies by partnering with state and local DMVs and license-testing sites to administer the test.
Two, Owen said, while he’s “big on keeping the costs down — don’t get it so fancy that it costs a lot of money – you could fund this by adding a fee to the applicant. When he applies for his authority, that fee could go directly to the testing site.” He suggested $100, potentially, though he wasn’t firm on that number and urged FMCSA to research hard costs.
Third: Business education could be facilitated not as a matter of the test but as structured follow-on engagement, likewise via structured tutorials on the FMCSA website that tie questions to applicable regulations.
