Episode Highlights

Brandon Wiseman

Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to This Weekend Trucking. I’m Caroline. Today’s guest is someone we’ve been looking forward to having on the show for quite a while. Brandon Wiseman, transportation attorney and president of Truck Safe Consulting. Brandon has spent his career helping carriers big and small, stay compliant, build solid safety, score, and protect themselves in the event of accidents or audits.

Caroline: Brandon, thanks so much for having the time to, come on our show.

Brandon: Hey Caroline, appreciate the opportunity. Looking forward to it.

Caroline: We talked to a lot of one truck or a couple of truck owner operators, what is the first thing that they should think of and have in place when it comes to compliance?

Brandon: Yeah, I guess it kind of depends. I mean, as an owner operator there are a couple different ways you could structure yourself. Either you are operating under your own DOT number or you’re leasing onto a larger carrier and operating under theirs. A little bit different dynamic, uh, between those two options when it comes to safety and compliance.

Brandon: If you’re operating under your own DOT number, I would [00:01:00] say the first thing you need to do is to. Make sure you are up to speed on the rule sets that you are subject to From a safety and compliance standpoint, I find too many small carriers, uh, run themselves into trouble just by virtue of the fact that they haven’t educated themselves on the rules that they’re subject to in the first place.

Brandon: So if you don’t know the rules that you’re playing by then it makes it difficult to, uh. To comply with those rules. So education plays a big role in that. And, um, there’s lots of different resources available to you if you’re in that situation to bring yourself up to speed quickly on these rules. And then once you have a handle on them, um, then obviously you need to make sure that you’ve got the foundational things in place to comply with those rules, obviously.

Caroline: So do you, are you talking to smaller carriers on a regular basis? People that have between one and 10 trucks.

Brandon: We do, um, you know, probably most prominently through our YouTube channel, we’ve got several tens of thousands of viewers on our truck Safe YouTube channel, and we push out a lot of [00:02:00] that type of educational content. To help them have a resource to break down these rules, which can be complex in some situations.

Brandon: And so that’s the primary, vehicle through which we do that. But we also regularly consult with smaller fleets in addition to mega fleets. We kinda work with fleets of all types and sizes on these issues.

Caroline: What are some of the most common questions you get on your YouTube channel?

Brandon: frankly, the most common comments we get on our YouTube channel are usually something ridiculous that, uh, yeah, classic YouTube comments section. But I would say the most common legitimate questions we get, Probably hours of service related Um, and that’s not surprising because hours of service, as it turns out typically is the most common violations that we see during roadside inspections.

Brandon: So we get a lot of questions about helping them understand those rules, particularly around areas like personal conveyance and split sleeper and those areas that are kind of, you know, gray when you look at the regulations themselves. So I would say that’s probably most common.

Caroline: Are there some good rules [00:03:00] of thumb that you. Use to help explain those. ’cause the numbers, like you said, there’s some gray areas, right? It’s sometimes hard to interpret it and make sure that you’re following it. Exactly.

Brandon: on personal con. Personal conveyance specifically. I know you’ve had others, including some of my team members on your show, and I think you’ve talked about personal conveyance in the past. But you know, my first piece of advice, to anybody looking at personal conveyance is to figure out whether you even need to legitimately use that or not.

Brandon: ‘ cause there’s a lot of drivers out there that don’t need to even be using it. They’ve got plenty of. Hours available to them under their standard hours of service rule set. And so if you don’t need to use it, my advice is to just turn it off and not use it because then you’re just, you know, running yourself into trouble potentially if you’re using it when you don’t need to be.

Brandon: If you do need to use it legitimately, then you need to. If you’re a large carrier, you need to put some controls in place to make sure drivers aren’t taking advantage of it, and that they know when to use it legitimately. And even if you’re a small carrier, it’s best to limit yourself [00:04:00] to the extent possible.

Brandon: First, it kind of goes back to that education piece. You need to make sure you understand, uh, the personal conveyance guidance. There is guidance available from the F-M-C-S-A on when exactly you can use it and when you can’t. And what I found is that many of the personal conveyance. Violations we see happen.

Brandon: Roadside are just stemming from drivers, you know, hearing from through the grapevine that we can use it in this situation and turns out you can’t. So just reading through that guidance, if you just Google F-M-C-S-A personal conveyance guidance, it’ll pop up and they list out examples of. Appropriate uses and inappropriate uses, and make sure you’re staying within those guidelines.

Brandon: And then you’ll be good for 99% of the cases there is. still 1% of the cases where it doesn’t fit quite neatly within that guidance that you could run yourself into trouble. And that’s where we try and push out the educational content on our YouTube channel to help clear up some of those gray areas.

Caroline: What are some of the most common compliance mistakes that you are working on with carriers that always again and again, are coming back to bite them.

Brandon: I would say personal conveyance rate is [00:05:00] up there pretty high. In fact, I think the FMC SSA’s own data bears that out. If you look at their most common violations during roadside inspections and in audits, personal conveyance is usually top five. Along with, um, I think the most common violation discovered in both of those contexts is drivers operating.

Brandon: A CDL sized vehicle without possessing A CDL. they either don’t have it in the first instance because they didn’t realize they needed one. You’ll find this a lot when you’ve got like, um, you know, non-traditional truck drivers like, uh, landscapers and construction companies and those types that are using vehicles as a tool of their normal business.

Brandon: And they end up, you know, maybe they’re normally driving like a pickup truck, but then they put up. Pretty big trailer on the back to pull their mowers or whatever they’re pulling. And it turns out that that weight combination exceeds the weight threshold that you need a CDL. And so you end up operating a combination that requires a CDL and you don’t have one.

Brandon: So that’s, one of the most prominent violations we see roadside. So again, I’m gonna [00:06:00] keep harping on this, but that goes back to education and making sure you understand. What it is that requires a CDL in the first instance. Um, those are pretty serious violations. It’s what the DOT considers a red flag violation operating a combination that requires a CDL without one.

Brandon: And those will come back to bite you pretty quickly if you don’t have that under control. So I would say those two things. Personal conveyance and then just not having the right license. CDL drivers end up with a downgraded CDL for a variety of reasons. Most common culprits will be that they haven’t updated their med card information with their licensing state. Uh, other common contributors would be them failing to pay child support. If they have to pay child support and then they don’t pay it, then their state will downgrade their license.

Brandon: And sometimes They’re not checking their mail so they don’t get notice of that fact. And then they’re out there operating without a valid CDL, that type of stuff, you know, ticky tack stuff, balloons into something pretty serious. And if you’re not keeping on top of that, that can really sink you if you’re the carrier that’s employing those drivers.

Caroline: Is [00:07:00] there a place where a carrier should be going to check the CDLs of their drivers every month or so? Is there sort of a database where they can look up those

Brandon: Well, the DOT for, you know, F-M-C-S-A for its part, and states require motor carriers to be running motor vehicle reports at least once every year. Mvs and those mvs will tell you if you’ve got a valid license or not. The problem of course, is that, let’s say I check. Driver. John doe’s license status today and he loses it tomorrow, and he doesn’t tell me about it.

Brandon: Then there’s the possibility that he’s driving for nearly a full year with a downgraded license, and so

Caroline: There’s a whole lot of child support payments that happen in a year.

Brandon: Yeah, exactly. Or they miss a court date or something like that and they lose it because of that. But you know, the solution to that is a solution that’s not technically required by the regulations, but it’s one that a lot of motor carriers have voluntarily adopted, and it’s a thing called continuous license monitoring.

Brandon: So there are several vendors nowadays that offer this type of service. they’ve got [00:08:00] integrations with every state licensing agency in the US and for a subscription fee that the motor carrier pays per driver per month, the system will automatically notify them of any, downgraded license or negative.

Brandon: Effect on a license, usually pretty soon after that thing happens. in some states it’s instantaneous. Other states it takes a couple days, but point is it’s a lot better than waiting an entire year to find that out. It will notify you pretty quickly whether a driver has lost their license or been downgraded or something like that.

Caroline: In a worst case scenario, no one likes to think about getting into an accident, but it happens even to the best of drivers. It can happen to the no fault of their own. What kind of documentation and reporting do you need to have? In line and ready to go in case one of your vehicles is in a crash.

Brandon: Yeah. Uh, several different things. You know, first thing that comes to mind is that there are certain types of accidents that the DOT considers pretty serious. They’re called DOT Recordable accidents, and they essentially come in three [00:09:00] varieties. It would be any accident involving a fatality. If anybody dies, it would be a DOT recordable accident.

Brandon: Then the next category would be any involving bodily injury to any person that requires immediate medical attention away from the scene. So if anybody gets. Taken away by an ambulance or something like that. And then the last category would be accidents, where there is disabling damage to any of the vehicles that require it to be towed away from the scene.

Brandon: So nurse hears and tow is what you’ll hear a lot of folks in the industry talk about. Those three categories of accidents in particular are the ones that motor carriers need to pay real close attention to because there are some regulatory obligations that stem from them. First up, they gotta be on what’s called an accident register.

Brandon: So you as the motor carrier whose accident was involved in that accident, regardless of whether it was your fault or not, need to make sure that you document. You’ve gotta have certain data points about that accident and keep it on an accident register. And then, um, the other big paperwork component of DOT recordable accidents would be like drug and alcohol testing.

Brandon: If it’s a CDL driver who’s involved in that accident, [00:10:00] operating A CDL, sized vehicle. There are requirements that they have post-accident drug and alcohol tests within certain timeframes. Um, so for drugs, you have 32 hours from the time of that accident to get that driver drug tested. And, uh, for alcohol you’ve only got eight hours to get that alcohol test.

Brandon: And that tends to cause some trouble, particularly for bad accidents where the driver’s detained at the scene for a long period of time. Stuff like that. So missing, uh, required drug and alcohol. Test after an accident can cause some pretty serious trouble for that fleet. So that’s something you want to have in order.

Brandon: And then obviously the normal things that, that folks would probably think of, you know, making sure that, you kind of document the scene of the accident. I’m not a litigator, so I don’t get involved in the litigation aspects of accidents all that often, but I understand the basics of it. You wanna make sure you have.

Brandon: You know, document the scene. If you can take photographs, great. Obviously, if you’re a driver, you wanna be in quick communication with your motor carrier. That’s important so that they can direct you to these things. So, [00:11:00] you know, obviously if you’ve just been involved in a bad accident, you’re running on adrenaline.

Brandon: At that point, you don’t want to have to be thinking clearly at that point. So first things first, get in contact with your carrier. They can walk you through these steps, the drug and alcohol, the documenting, the scene, the, you know, talking, communicating with law enforcement on the scene, that type of stuff.

Brandon: There’s lots of things to think through. Best not to have to do it if you’re the one that’s involved in the accident.

Caroline: Yeah, let’s swim upstream a little bit from. The worst case scenario, what are some of the top things that carriers should be doing to avoid accidents? What are some of the major causes of accidents and how they can avoid them?

Brandon: Yeah, I mean F-M-C-S-A periodically reports out on trends that are causing. Significant accidents for large trucks and buses, and it’s the common suspects that have been the case for many years. It’s speeding. It’s distraction becoming more and more prevalent over the years.

Brandon: And fatigue. So those three things, are routine contributors to serious accidents. So getting [00:12:00] control of those things, it turns out, goes a long way to driving the accident rate down if you’re a motor carrier, uh, in distraction in particular. Um, we are living in an age where our trucks are becoming more and more connected in various ways.

Brandon: ELDs, telematics. You know, GPS, all of these things are vying for your driver’s attention. And if you’re a carrier, combating that is, is important because if you don’t, then that will inevitably lead to distraction and inevitably lead to bad accidents. So making sure you have some kind of a distracted driving policy in place and making sure that you are.

Brandon: Actually enforcing that policy and taking pretty swift action if you have drivers that are, getting written up for distracted driving and that type of stuff is crucially important. I can’t overstate the importance of that type of thing, but, you know, on, on the other things. Speeding. What else can you say other than.

Brandon: Don’t speed and make sure you have effective progressive disciplinary policies in place. If you’re a carrier and you have drivers [00:13:00] who are repeat offenders for speeding and, fatigue, you know, hours of service. Staying within those hours of service limits is important. But beyond that we find a lot of motor carriers are not as sympathetic as they should be to drivers who are legitimately fatigued, even if they happen to be within their allotted hours.

Brandon: I mean, it’s a fact of life that sometimes you show up to work and the night before, maybe your kids were up, who knows what it is. You didn’t get enough sleep, and so you shouldn’t be out there operating an 80,000 pound truck, in that condition. So fleets putting aside hours of service, you need to be open to drivers, being able to come to you and say, Hey, listen, I shouldn’t be in the truck today.

Brandon: I’m too fatigued. And then making sure that you don’t put them in the truck after that becomes obvious.

Caroline: It occurs to me that those three things might sometimes come into conflict with each other because I’ve heard from drivers before that. Trying to follow the hours of service to the letter of the law sometimes means that I have a very limited window to make this [00:14:00] delivery or to get as far as I can in the least amount of time, and to just maximize the number of miles that I drive, and that this whole structure around it is actually sometimes incentivizing people to be unsafe.

Caroline: What do you think about that?

Brandon: I’ve heard that. I don’t know that the data bears that out. F-M-C-S-A, when they publish their hours of service rules, any rules for that matter, they have to be supported by sufficient evidence to back up what it is that they’re doing, what it is that they’re trying to control via rule making. And so if you look at the data that the F-M-C-S-A has in its hours of service rules dating back to the 1930s at this point.

Brandon: I think you’ll find that, the controls that are in place now are supported by evidence that they actually reduce fatigue rather than contribute to it. Now to your point though, I think it is true that not so much the hours of service rules themselves, but the motor carriers attempts to maximize efficiency via those rules.

Brandon: Through aggressive dispatching is probably a contributor to, to fatigue. [00:15:00] Trying to get, you know, every last inch out of those drivers within the rule set. They are subject to. I have no doubt that leads to, fatigue or not necessarily fatigue, but other problems like, um, you hear a lot about, drivers not being able to find available parking because they’re run up to the last minute and then now they’re up against their hours, they gotta stop. But where do they stop? We have a truck parking shortage in the us And so if you’re a motor carrier or a driver, you need to take those things into consideration ahead of time and you need to plan for that because that’s the reality of the situation that we’re given.

Brandon: And so, yeah, that’s, uh, that’s something you gotta contend with, but hopefully you’re not with a carrier that’s, um, you know. Coercing you to run right up against your hours In fact, a lot of drivers don’t know this and a lot of carriers don’t know this, but, uh, it’s a pretty egregious violation for not just motor carriers, but also for shippers and for brokers to coerce drivers to violate the hours of service rules.

Brandon: There are particular regulations that make it illegal for anybody, carriers, brokers, shippers to [00:16:00] coerce drivers into violating their hours. And so. If that’s happening to you and you’re a driver, then there are mechanisms for you to address that. There’s a complaint hotline that the F-M-C-S-A has set up that you can file a complaint against whoever that is, that’s coercing you to do that, and I recommend you take advantage of that if that’s your situation.

Caroline: Yeah, that’s great advice. We’ll look up that hotline and put information about that in the description. Can I ask you about speed limiters? All right. What are your thoughts on speed limiters?

Brandon: Uh. I know a lot of drivers and a lot of carriers don’t like ’em, but I know some carriers do like ’em, particularly the large carriers like them because they’ve been using ’em for a long time and so I can understand that they would kind of on level the playing field, if you will, but I also understand the counter arguments as to the problems that it can cause.

Brandon: If I am a, we’ve already got this problem with trucks out on the road with passenger Cars zooming around them and the need to occasionally speed up to get past another slow truck, it causes some problems. So I get it. So I don’t know that I feel strongly one [00:17:00] way or the other. I know that the F-M-C-S-A and NITSA have been pursuing a mandatory speed limiter requirement going back for almost a decade.

Brandon: Uh, I think probably at a decade at this point. 2016, I think is when they first published a proposed rule on this requirement, but. Because it’s gotten such blowback in the comments that have been filed to that rulemaking, it just hasn’t progressed anywhere since then. We’ve had some supplemental notices of proposed rulemaking over the years and it’s just been kicked down the road, and I think it will continue to be kicked down the road for the foreseeable future.

Brandon: So I don’t anticipate there being a mandatory speed limiter rule, uh, in the near future. If I had a crystal ball.

Caroline: Do you think that is because it’s politically unpopular, or is it because it’s just a really complicated issue

Brandon: I think both. Uh, as with most things in trucking, has a lot of interest groups involved in the various things, and it’s rare that you’ll get an issue where the interest groups are aligned. So you know the common suspects, you got the [00:18:00] American Trucking Associations representing the interest of.

Brandon: Primarily large trucking companies on one side usually. of the other side. You’ve got either the owner operator, independent driver association, or you’ve got the safety advocates out there. So these are pretty strong interest groups that are vying for their various positions and they’ve got the ear of Congress and they’ve got the ear of the lawmakers.

Brandon: So yeah, it always ends up. Like that with virtually every kinda rulemaking that the F-M-C-S-A tries to push forward with is that you’ll have those various interest groups fighting, about these things and then it slows down the process for sure. but you know, that’s a good thing. I mean, that’s how our federal rulemaking process is intended to work.

Brandon: It’s a notice and comment period. We wanna make sure that we are weighing all of the various concerns that. Different interest groups have, and then making the best decision based on the feedback that we get from the public. So that’s always my recommendation to anybody that’s always complaining about federal rules.

Brandon: This is my comment section in my YouTube channel mostly, mostly people [00:19:00] complaining about federal rules. My question to you is, are you taking advantage of that process and submitting your comments when they open these things up for public comment? And you’ll hear a lot of people say, well, my voice doesn’t matter.

Brandon: Yeah. But if you get. A hundred of like-minded folks submitting the same thing in the docket. I could tell you it does influence the rulemaking, and we see this with things like speed limiters, which has been kicked down the road because of the blowback it’s gotten in the docket. So be sure to take advantage of that opportunity.

Caroline: Do you have a kind of framework that you use with carriers to say, all right, these are the things that you should be checking. Daily, weekly, monthly, annually. And how do you think that translates to a smaller carrier with fewer trucks than the carriers that you are normally interacting with?

Brandon: Yeah, I mean certainly the federal rules and state rules, mostly they have different cadences for different aspects of compliance, so that’s something we regularly advise on. For example, the driver qualification has a lot of different deadlines and stuff like that [00:20:00] thing, you know, periodic things you gotta do to make sure your drivers are and remain qualified throughout their tenure with you.

Brandon: So, for example, we’ve got a driver qualification checklist that lists out all the things you gotta do at the start when you’re first hiring them. And then here’s the things you gotta do on an annual cadence and that type of stuff. So yeah, there’s a lot of that. Trucking. And so, and that’s one of the things that we try and tackle with our content that we push out in our various forums.

Brandon: So yeah, we do quite a bit of counseling on that particular topic.

Caroline: What are some of the big mistakes that you see people making with DQ files?

Brandon: Yeah. Hiring drivers who shouldn’t be hired is the biggest one. I mean, that seems obvious, but you know, just because they meet the letter of the law, you know, because, uh, I’m looking at this from not only as a DOT consultant, but also as a lawyer who has seen how these things play out. If you hire a driver who’s, you know, got. Tons of violations on their record, even though they may be qualified technically under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations. The question is, is it wise for you to hire them? Is it a reasonable thing to do? Knowing what you know, [00:21:00] having run a motor vehicle report on that candidate that is before you about their driving history, about their crash history?

Brandon: Do you really wanna find yourself six months down the line after they’ve killed somebody? Having to explain to a jury or to a judge why it is you thought it was reasonable to hire them despite what you saw on their motor vehicle report. So that’s something you gotta take into consideration if you’re a fleet, is these rules that establish things like running mvs and getting an application and getting the med guard.

Brandon: Those are the floor that is the base. Bare minimum that is expected of you, but when you end up in litigation from highway accidents involving your drivers. That’s not the only question that’s gonna be asked of the jury. Did you follow the law? Hopefully your answer to that is yes, but that’s not the only question.

Brandon: The question is gonna be, did you act reasonably under the circumstances? And, um, things like that. Hiring drivers with a bad driving history are gonna make it difficult for you to argue that you acted reasonably under those [00:22:00] circumstances, and it’s gonna lead to trouble probably in that. highway accident litigation.

Brandon: So that’s something you definitely gotta consider. Those are the types of things, by the way, that your insurers are considering. This is why insurance rates are skyrocketing, and this is why your particular insurance premiums may be escalating even if you are following the law, quote unquote. Are you.

Brandon: Acting in a risky way by hiring unsafe drivers. Those are the types of things that they’re looking at because they’re looking at this from the highway accident perspective, which maybe you weren’t so much so.

Caroline: Right. Why do you think that? What’s driving carriers to hire drivers that are maybe on paper qualified but not a smart hiring decision?

Brandon: Yeah, a couple things. I mean, number one, maybe they just don’t. Appreciate the exposure they’re creating for themselves by doing that. I find that with a lot of smaller carriers, they’re not looking at the long game. They’re just looking to put butts in the seat, and as long as they, you know, hopefully they’re at least following the regulatory requirements. [00:23:00] If they’re doing that, they’re ahead of a lot of the motor carriers that are not even doing that much, but even those that are following the law, I mean, great for them, but maybe they just don’t have that long game perspective to think, okay, maybe I should be not just.

Brandon: Checking these boxes that I’ve got, the MVRI should actually put eyes on the substance of the MVR because the rules don’t get that detailed, right. They don’t, they don’t tell you what are, you know, there are certain egregious things that would disqualify a driver if they’ve had, you know, if they’ve had a vehicular manslaughter violation.

Brandon: In their past, but there’s nothing that says, Hey, if they’ve got 10 speeding violations in the last three months, they’re disqualified under the rules. That’s not a thing. And so if I’m a carrier that’s just doing the bare minimum I’m gonna push that driver through. ’cause I’ve run the MVR.

Brandon: They don’t have vehicular manslaughter, they’ve got a valid license, so they’re technically good to go, but a carrier that’s playing the long game here will actually look at the substance of that NVR, which is kind of the point anyway, and say, Hey, this Trevor’s got a big speeding problem, obviously, [00:24:00] and if other carriers in his past haven’t been able to get control of that, what makes me think I’m gonna be able to get control of it?

Brandon: So that’s one thing is just maybe not understanding the real implications or the exposure that they are creating for themselves. I had another one that I’m spacing at this point. So I’ll leave it at that for now.

Caroline: This, maybe this will jog your memory. Thinking about these two different types of business owners or decision makers that are deciding to hire drivers, there may be competing mechanisms and I’m curious to see Which one you think is strongest? So on the one hand, I think owner operators, people who have driven for a long time, that starting their business, they grow it, they hire a couple of drivers on one way that they hire is looking just family, friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, you know, whoever is around them.

Caroline: And just by convenience and probably. Some measure of trust, right? You wanna be able to trust the people that are, hauling around your most important business assets. Maybe you [00:25:00] favor people that you know, even if they might not have the most qualified driving record

Brandon: I think that’s probably right.

Caroline: Ha on the other hand, maybe they are. So close to the vehicles and the driving that they actually might be a much better judge of who will be a good driver. Do you see those two forces

Brandon: I do see those. I do, and you see this also kind of a related issue particularly for smaller fleets is, you know, sometimes they’ll have drivers who are wearing multiple hats for them. Maybe it’s their mechanic that also happens to jump in the truck. Here and there, and they’re doing that outta convenience.

Brandon: and I get it to some extent, and to your point, it’s a lot easier if you’ve got folks around you within your circle of influence that you can get. Particularly with, I’m not even gonna say the words because I know the comments I’ll get in the YouTube comments, stuff like that.

Brandon: But driver shortage, because. People swear there’s not a driver shortage, but then you hear others who say there is. But the point is if I’ve got the choice between folks that I know and that I trust and that who I have [00:26:00] more of an influence over versus somebody who doesn’t know me from Adam, then I’m gonna go with the person that I know and trust because chances of me, you know, locking them in number one.

Brandon: And, number two, them doing a better job for me are much greater. now obviously the bigger you get as the carrier, the less of a thing that is gonna be for you, right? You’re gonna have to turn to An unknown driver pool. Whether you do that by recruiting on your own or by leveraging a driver leasing company or something like that, you’re inevitably, as you grow, gonna have to turn to that driver pool.

Brandon: And that’s where it becomes particularly crucial that you have these checks in place to avoid that issue of the unknown.

Caroline: Yeah. And then on the other hand, people who are hiring drivers. I don’t know if in bigger companies, the people who are hiring drivers are truck drivers themselves, but do you get a more qualified person if you are hiring someone to do a job that you have done before?

Brandon: I don’t know. I mean, that’s another. Very controversial thing, right? Because you hear this not only about the [00:27:00] recruiting position, you’ll hear some folks say that should be a former driver, but you also hear this all the way up to the head of the F-M-C-S-A. This is another common comment we get in our YouTube.

Brandon: Comments is the people working at F-M-C-S-A should be former drivers, and I get it to some extent, and I disagree with it to some extent. I don’t think it takes a former driver to be able to look at data that suggests these things are causing accidents and to be able to. Talk with drivers through the rule making process and their interest groups and to be able to formulate a rule based on your view of the data and your conversations with the people that it will impact.

Brandon: I don’t think it takes a former driver to be able to do that. I think somebody who’s not a former driver could effectively do that. Same thing holds true, I think with recruiters. I think if a recruiter is trained well enough in The exposure that they can create for the company by putting somebody who’s not a good, safe driver, uh, in the truck.

Brandon: And then also the things that make it a good driver. If they are trained up well in [00:28:00] that type of stuff, then I think you could be an effective recruiter without being a former driver.

Caroline: Yeah. That’s also a comment that we’ve gotten before in our channel as well, that the head of the F-M-C-S-A should be A former driver. You could say though that, you know, it could be any driver, right? Because the drivers on the road are more than truck drivers. It’s not just truck drivers that the rules affect, right?

Caroline: It’s society as a whole. So that’s an interesting point. And at the same time, you want the lived experience of being a truck driver and having that profession to be represented in the regulatory agencies.

Brandon: And I think that’s the point a lot of ’em miss, is that they either don’t realize that there is that participation and that they can be involved in it personally if they wanted to. And that ostensibly the folks at the highest levels of the F-M-C-S-A are supposed to be considering all of that.

Brandon: Now maybe they’re jaded and they think that they just ignore all of that stuff and. If that’s true, then I get their point, but, uh, it’s not been my experience. My experience is that you get enough drivers or their interest groups commenting on a particular [00:29:00] rule about, Hey, this is how this issue is going to affect us in the real world.

Brandon: That more often than not, you will see F-M-C-S-A. Make exception to that, when they end up publishing the final rule, they will consider the concern and you will see them bake that into the final rule. They will take it into consideration. So I think that representation is there more so than a lot of folks understand.

Caroline: Wow. Some optimism about public institutions. It’s so refreshing.

Brandon: Well, I’ll be the first to say I am no F-M-C-S-A apologist. I routinely criticize them when they are doing things that I think are hurting the industry, and so I don’t want it to come off like that. I certainly see the point, but, uh, I think they deserve a little more credit than my YouTube commenters give them.

Caroline: And YouTube commenters may not be entirely representative of everyone listening to this. So if you wouldn’t normally put a comment on a YouTube, uh, video, do so right now and be represented. Um, I’m also interested to know from people who are listening to this, if you’ve ever participated in one of those processes and what your experience was.

Brandon: In the [00:30:00] rulemaking process? Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah, I mean, routinely one of the things we do, so I’m a partner at a law firm in Indianapolis. One of the things we do for a lot of our motor carriers is to, get a group of motor carriers together that have a.

Brandon: shared concern with a particular rulemaking that is going through the process. And we will submit comments on their behalf because there’s strength in numbers, right? So the more motor carriers you can get together, or drivers for that matter, and to express their concerns through that rulemaking process, through comments, the more likely it is that they’re going to get addressed.

Brandon: And so with us representing. A ton of motor carriers in the country, including many of the nation’s largest. It just makes sense for us to be that voice for them, their shared concerns. And so we do that pretty regularly.

Caroline: There are a couple of big regulatory and compliance implementation changes going into effect in a couple weeks. One of them is the medical certification reporting changes taking effect on June 23rd. What can you [00:31:00] tell us about those?

Brandon: Yeah. June 23rd, 2025. It’s called the Medical Certification Integration Rule. Uh, this actually dates back to 2015, so folks who’ve been around in the industry for that long may remember that back in 2015, this is when the F-M-C-S-A stood up what’s called the National Registry of Medical Examiners. This is the central database where all.

Brandon: Medical examiners who issue drivers med cards have to be registered in this system and they have to be certified in this system. And, since 2015, you know, the thing That caused F-M-C-S-A to want to kind of revamp this medical qualification or certification process to begin with, was leading up to that date.

Brandon: And even still to this day, to some extent, we’ve had some pretty significant issues with fraud when it comes to driver medical certifications. You know, historically drivers. Writing themselves a med card and presenting that as if they had actually been examined by a DOT medical examiner. And that was causing a big problem because obviously we don’t want drivers out on the road operating these large trucks and [00:32:00] buses that are prone to some kind of a medical condition while they’re driving.

Brandon: It’s just a recipe for disaster. So we need a system in place and we need some accountability with that system to make sure folks aren’t trying to get around it some one way or the other. And so they stood up this National Registry in 2015. So now anybody who conducts one of these DOT physicals has to be on the national registry.

Brandon: Um. What was originally planned for in 2015 for CDL drivers specifically was that there was gonna be an electronic transmission of their medical certification information to their state driver’s licensing agency. So it would go, once the doctor would perform the physical, they would upload the results to the National Registry of Medical Examiners, and then the registry would then make that information available directly to that driver’s licensing agency and it would cut out the middleman.

Brandon: For the last 10 years, there have been a lot of technical difficulties as I understand it. With that, implementing that type of an electronic transmission. System, particularly with the state licensing agencies, they just haven’t gotten their act together [00:33:00] to be able to facilitate that type of an electronic transfer.

Brandon: So for a decade now, we’ve had this interim process where CDL drivers had a, you know, they get their med card and they have to physically take their med card to their state licensing agency in most states and associate that with their driving record. And then the motor carrier that employs them has to run that MVR to make sure that they did that and that their medical information is on their driving record.

Brandon: Well that’s created its own problems. And, uh, and so we’re coming up on, you know, you said June 23rd, 2025. This will be the final implementation of what was originally envisioned back in 2015, which is that full electronic process. So as of June 23rd, 2025, CDL drivers, when they get a new. DOT physical, their results will be electronically transmitted to the registry and then to their state driver’s licensing agency.

Brandon: They won’t have to go and take their physical med cards to their licensing agency anymore, that will just get transmitted digitally. And also, CDL driver specifically will no longer have to carry their [00:34:00] physical med card or give a copy to their motor carrier. In fact, uh. Medical examiners going forward are no longer even required to give out physical med cards effective June 23rd.

Brandon: F-M-C-S-A has told them that if a driver requests one, they’re supposed to give one, but as a matter of course, they’re not gonna hand out the physical med cards anymore. So that’s what’s changing.

Caroline: Is there anything that carriers or drivers should be aware of other than they just don’t have to handle that paperwork anymore?

Brandon: Yeah, they probably need to, given the technical problems we’ve had for the last decade, I don’t have much faith that this is gonna play out very smoothly, from a technology standpoint. So what I would recommend. Is that you give yourself more lead time than you would normally, particularly if you have a med card that’s expiring near June 23rd.

Brandon: There’s gonna be some growing pains with this new process, inevitably for the foreseeable future. So get in early and get it taken care of well ahead of time so that you can give some. Time on the back end to get that all processed. Otherwise, you run the risk of, you know, go and get your new med card, and then the transmission process doesn’t work smoothly [00:35:00] and your old one expires in that interim gap and now your license hasn’t been updated to reflect that new med card.

Brandon: Now, nobody’s gonna be able to accept your physical med card anymore as proof of your physical qualifications. It’s only your driving record, again, if you’re a CDL driver specifically. And so that’s the risk you run if you wait too long.

Caroline: How far in advance can I do it? It’s something that I have to do every year. Can I do it 90 days in advance?

Brandon: You could do it as far in advance as you want. It doesn’t really behoove you to do it very far in advance. I’d recommend you go at least you know, a couple weeks, two to three weeks in advance.

Caroline: And then the other big compliance implementation that’s going into effect next week is English language proficiency. What are your thoughts on that implementation? It’s been sort of dormant, hasn’t been an out of service violation in a long time, and now it’s going to be.

Brandon: Yeah. Uh, June 25th, 2025 is when the CVSA has indicated that law enforcement agencies across the US are supposed to be placing drivers outta service if they don’t. Meet the English language [00:36:00] proficiency requirement and, um, you know, folks may be interested to know that there’s an enforcement policy that kind of guides this, that the F-M-C-S-A published a couple weeks ago from when we’re recording this, it essentially sets out a two part test.

Brandon: So if an officer stops you roadside and they have trouble communicating with you in English, then they’re gonna initiate this two part test. First part’s going to be an interview where they ask you a series of questions in English and you have to respond in English. If you pass that part, you move on to part two, which is a traffic sign recognition test, where they show you a series of road signs and you have to be able to explain their meaning in English.

Brandon: If you fail either part of the test, then you’re gonna be placed outta service. And where I think the real unknown here is, well, two things. Number one, this English language proficiency rule is an inherently subjective rule. What one officer thinks is proficient, another officer may not think is proficient.

Brandon: And so I think that’s gonna be the wild card, is how, how is this gonna play out from a subjectivity perspective? And then also the other wild card is [00:37:00] what do we do if a driver’s placed outta service by one officer for an English language proficiency violation? What can we do to get that driver back in service?

Brandon: is it, can they go back in service the next day? If they maybe took a quick class online, I mean, what makes them. Not outta service anymore. It’s easy enough when you’ve got a not subjective rule that you’ve been placed outta service for. If my tire’s flat and I get placed outta service for that, well, I fix the tire and I’m back in service.

Brandon: But if somebody’s told me that my English isn’t, I’m not proficient in English enough. What makes me proficient such that I can get back to work, that’s the thing that I don’t know how it’s gonna play out precisely. And so. You know, we’re just gonna have to wait and see because the risk you run, if you put them back in service too quickly, the risk you run is that they’re gonna get cited again.

Brandon: And this time it’s gonna be jumping in outta service order. and that’s a serious violation that carries a lot of points on your CSA scores of your carrier. So those two things I think are gonna be problematic, and we’re just gonna have to wait and see how they play out.

Caroline: What about for the driver? Does it do anything to their CDL [00:38:00] if they get one of these violations?

Brandon: Um, it’s not gonna, they’re still gonna have a valid CDL after that violation, but it is gonna land on their pre-employment screening program, their PSP report as a driver fitness violation, and. They’re still gonna be placed outta service and they still have that concern on the backend. what is sufficient evidence that they fix the issue such that they could be placed back in service either by that same carrier that they were employed by, or by a new motor carrier that they go work for.

Brandon: Because if that new motor carrier they’re looking to work for, runs their PSP report, they’re gonna see that English language proficiency violation and they’re gonna have to do something about it. And so a lot of motor carriers. Have already had this, and if they don’t, they should start implementing something like this going forward as having some kind of an English language proficiency test as part of their driver onboarding process.

Brandon: You know, just doing a quick test when they’re onboarding a new driver to make sure that they can speak English and read road sufficiently. So, I mean, that’s one thing, for example, that we’ve developed at Truck Safe is a test [00:39:00] like that, that motor carriers can have access to and can implement. So I think that’s a good idea for a lot of motor carriers.

Caroline: You’ve talked a little bit about data driven policy decisions. Do you think that this decision to put in English language proficiency, do you think that there’s good data to support it?

Brandon: this is one area where it goes against what I said earlier, which is that most rules in my experience are supported by quite a bit of data. This one doesn’t seem to be supported by much data at all, from what I can tell. The reason that’s true is pretty transparent, right?

Brandon: This is a very politically charged issue that is coming from the top down. This is not just an issue that the F-M-C-S-A has developed based on its own data, which is typically the case for most of its rules. This is something that was pushed down on them from the president of the United States. It came down through an executive order directing the.

Brandon: Department of Transportation to require F-M-C-S-A to do this. So FMCs a’s hands are tied here now in various press conferences with the Secretary of Transportation, you’ll see him [00:40:00] mention Anecdotal cases of English language proficiency leading the lack of English language proficiency leading to accidents, and that’s certainly true.

Brandon: We have anecdotal, instances of this occurring. Most notable case that comes to my mind was, this was around 2020, I think there was a bad accident in Florida. This was the first ever billion dollar jury verdict, awarded against a couple of trucking companies in our industry, billion dollars. And one of the drivers that was involved in that case admitted to the fact that he was non-English speaking and that he couldn’t read the road signs, the flashing roadside that would have alerted him to the fact that traffic was stopped ahead.

Brandon: He ended up plowing into that line of cars and killing somebody. So we have anecdotal cases like that, but what we don’t have, from my perspective, is widespread data that supports, a case that the lack of English language proficiency is leading to a significant number of serious accidents across the country.

Brandon: I don’t think that data exists because I don’t think we are capturing that type of data when we are writing up [00:41:00] crash, reports and stuff like that. And so, no, to answer your question, I don’t think this rule, is, supported all that well by a substantial body of evidence. Now, with that said, as you mentioned earlier, this is not a new rule.

Brandon: We’ve had this rule in place, something like it, going back to, The thirties, 1930s. It’s just the thing that’s changing is that, we are gonna make this an out of service violation going forward, which we’ve had in the past, but we’ve come down off of that and now we’re going back to it. And so, yeah, that’s kind of where things stand.

Caroline: Are there any rules or regulations that are absent but that have a lot of data behind them that you would like to see at least explored?

Brandon: The one that always comes to mind, it’s one we’ve kind of already hit on, which it’s a rule that I wished existed in some form or fashion that doesn’t, and that’s some kind of a continuous license monitoring. I. System because of that gap that we have right now, which is the rules now require motor carriers to run the MVR once a year.

Brandon: And if something about that driver’s license changes the day [00:42:00] after you run that MVR, you’re blind to it unless that driver tells you about it and. You know, they’re not incentivized to tell you about a problem with their license after it happens. So I wish we had a requirement that continuous license monitoring or something like it was required.

Brandon: We have that in California. California has a employer poll notice requirement for California fleets and California drivers. That’s, uh, akin to that. So I think that would go a long way to minimizing exposure for motor carriers if we had something like that. That’s really the only one that comes to mind.

Caroline: If you had. An opportunity to give someone one piece of advice to a carrier that would help them manage compliance long term, what would it be?

Brandon: Make sure you’ve got the foundational things in place first and foremost. I get it too often carriers are gung-ho to get the wheels turning and to get things going and making money, and there’s a million different things vying for your attention if you’re a small fleet or a startup fleet. You’ve got the revenue to worry about.

Brandon: Certainly you’ve got the customers to worry about where are we gonna get the freight? You’ve got the [00:43:00] operations to worry about, make compliance a part of those initial foundational things that you put in place. It will save you a lot of headache in the long term if you take. An hour or two to make sure that you’ve got those foundational compliance aspects in place, the policies, the procedures, the technology that you need in place to get those things.

Brandon: And once you’ve got those foundational things in place, then you could start to refine them as your as your money, and as your time allows for as you go along.

Caroline: Is there anything that we haven’t touched on today that you would wanna share?

Brandon: Uh, not necessarily that I wanna share. I know there’s a million different things we could have talked about, but we didn’t. So no, I think we covered a good base of information here.

Caroline: Alright, well we might check in with you in a couple months to see if uh, anything’s changed. And Brandon, thank you so much for joining us on this weekend Trucking. We really appreciate your time.

Brandon: Thanks for having me.

Caroline: Drive safe, everybody.