Lease-purchase comment period needs extended, OOIDA says

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association wants truck drivers to have more time to provide information on predatory lease-purchase agreements.

OOIDA, which represents small-business truckers, wrote to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Thursday, Feb. 29, asking for a 30-day extension to the public comment period.

On Feb. 16, FMCSA opened a 30-day comment period to collect lease-purchase agreements. Established by Congress, the Truck Leasing Task Force has been examining the terms, conditions and equitability of common truck leasing arrangements. To get a thorough view of the lease-purchase landscape in trucking, FMCSA wants truckers to submit their lease-purchase agreements for review.

OOIDA told the agency that a 30-day period is insufficient and asked for another month.

“We request the public comment period be extended for 30 days in order to provide the Truck Leasing Task Force as much data as possible,” OOIDA wrote. “This will give drivers and other members of the public sufficient time to collect and submit leasing information.”

In addition, extending the comment period another month will allow truckers attending the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., to participate. The Truck Leasing Task Force plans to hold its next meeting at MATS later this month.

OOIDA supports the establishment of the Truck Leasing Task Force and is hopeful the information provided by truck drivers can help eliminate the predatory nature of many of these agreements. Truck drivers have reported working full pay periods but owing the carrier money at the end of them. Rarely do these arrangements end with the driver owning the truck.

“We feel requesting information from commercial motor vehicle drivers will assist (the task force) in reviewing such leases to identify terms and conditions that may be unfair to drivers,” OOIDA wrote.

How to comment

A complete list of questions and documents sought by FMCSA can be found here. In addition, you can find what steps are needed to ensure that the information is kept private.

If your comments contain commercial or financial information that customarily is treated as private, it is important that you clearly designate the submission as confidential business information. Commenters should mark each page that’s confidential as “PROPIN” to indicate it contains proprietary information.

FMCSA will treat such submissions as confidential under the Freedom of Information Act, and they will not be placed in the public docket for this comment period.

Submissions containing confidential business information should be sent to Brian Dahlin, Chief, Regulatory Analysis Division, Office of Policy, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Ave. S.E., Washington, DC 20590-0001.

The docket for all other comments will go live on Regulations.gov. Those public comments can be submitted here. As of now, comments will be accepted through March 18. LL