FMCSA posts rejection of 10 ELD exemption requests, including OOIDA’s

It’s officially official. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration posted notice of denials of 10 applications for exemption from the electronic logging device mandate, including one filed by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

The notice is scheduled to be published Friday, Dec. 7, in the Federal Register.

Nine of the denials were issued June 16, with another denial issued July 26, according to the notice.

The notice points out that the agency broadly rejected most of the exemption requests because “the Agency could not ensure that the exemption would provide the requisite level of safety.”

In addition to OOIDA, the nine other groups to have their exemption requests denied were:

• Power and Construction Contractors Association;
• Western Equipment Dealers Association;
• Association of Energy Service Companies;
• Cudd Energy Services, Inc.;
• SikhsPAC and North American Punjabi Trucker Association;
• American Disposal Service;
• Towing and Recovery Association of America;
• National Electrical Contractors Association;
• The Agricultural Retailers Association.

FMCSA notified OOIDA on July 2 that its exemption request would be denied, claiming most of the request challenged the basis of the electronic rule itself and did not recognize the “significant difficulty that would be encountered in trying to identify and validate drivers who meet the proposed exemption criteria, especially during roadside inspections.”

OOIDA had requested at least a five-year exemption for motor carriers classified as small businesses, according to the Small Business Administration, and have a proven safety history with no attributable at-fault crashes and who do not have a Carrier Safety Rating of “unsatisfactory.” More than 4,000 comments were submitted as part of the docket for OOIDA’s request.

“We are puzzled and disappointed at the response from the agency,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said at the time. “For months, the FMCSA has been granting exemptions to other organizations, some not even actually in trucking but relying on trucks for their businesses,” Spencer said.