FMCSA Releases Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Broker & Forwarder Financial Responsibility
Print this Article | Send to Colleague
On Sept. 27, 2018, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published in the Federal Register an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on several aspects of the broker and freight forwarder financial responsibility. FMCSA announced that it is initiating a rulemaking pertaining to the implementation of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). MAP-21 raised the financial security amount for brokers to $75,000 and, for the first time, established financial security requirements for freight forwarders.
In this ANPRM, the Agency is considering eight separate areas: group surety bonds/trust funds, assets readily available, immediate suspension of broker/freight forwarder operating authority, surety or trust responsibilities in cases of broker/freight forwarder financial failure or insolvency, enforcement authority, entities eligible to provide trust funds for form BMC-85 trust fund filings, Form BMC-84 and BMC-85 trust fund revisions, and household goods (HHG). The Agency seeks comments and data in response to this ANPRM.
This ANPRM was largely in part to a Petition for Rulemaking filed by TIA in 2014, asking the Agency to examine and act on several provisions enacted in MAP-21. In filing the Petition for Rulemaking in 2014, TIA sought to ensure that legitimate brokers and freight forwarders were protected from fraudulent trust fund providers while looking out for motor carriers and ensuring they paid for legitimate claims. This is a massive safety issue in the industry and one that needs to be addressed.
The TIA Services Board of Directors will be carefully crafting comments to the ANPRM that ensures that brokers and freight forwarders are not shut down immediately for receiving invalid claims, while ensuring that the provisions in MAP-21 are fairly and swiftly implemented.
To view the entire ANPRM, click HERE.
If you have any questions, please contact TIA Advocacy at advocacy@tianet.org or 703-299-5700.
