Industry concerns over regulators’ seemingly quick work to produce a rule to raise the minimum amount of liability insurance trucking companies must have could be much ado about nothing, says the American Trucking Associations’ chief of advocacy, Dave Osiecki.
The “rule proposal” — the proceedings of which have been reported on CCJ since April — that cleared the White House this week isn’t even a rule, Osiecki says, but is a “pre-rule.”
It will be published as an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and will solely be a set of questions for trucking companies and other industry stakeholders. The ANPRM is part of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s data gathering process for the potential rulemaking, Osiecki says.
The ANPRM likely will be published in the coming weeks, but it will not have a number nor any language that will change federal regulations, he says.
“[ATA] talked to the head of the regulatory office over at FMCSA several weeks ago and we clarified that” the ANPRM will not have a number, Osiecki said in an exclusive interview with CCJ. “It’s really just intended to gather information.”
FMCSA released a report in April concluding that an increase to the current $750,000 was necessary, saying that the number would be closer to $2 million if it were indexed to inflation.
