The Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) recently released a major policy white paper outlining a comprehensive set of reforms to modernize the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and strengthen commercial motor vehicle safety oversight across the United States.
The growing list of organizations supporting TCA’s efforts includes the American Trucking Associations, National Tank Truck Carriers, the National Motor Freight Traffic Association, the Trucking Association Executives Council, the National Industrial Transportation League, the National Association of Publicly Funded Truck Driving Schools, the Institute for Safer Trucking and the Intermodal Association of North America.
The 24-point paper, entitled “Proposals for Comprehensive Reform: Prioritizing Investments in FMCSA’s Core Safety Mission,” highlights what TCA sees as a growing mismatch between FMCSA’s expanding responsibilities and its limited staffing, outdated systems and fragmented oversight tools.
The recommendations serve as a wake-up call for Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to “realign FMCSA’s resources, modernize its registration and vetting systems, update its safety fitness framework and streamline its statutory portfolio to focus on crash prevention.”
“The FMCSA is responsible for overseeing one of the largest and most diverse regulated populations in the federal government — yet it remains one of the smallest agencies within the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT),” said TCA President Jim Mullen.
“This imbalance compromises safety, weakens oversight and leaves the motoring public at risk,” Mullen noted. “These recommendations offer a path toward a more modern, data-driven and accountable safety system, and Congress must ensure FMCSA has the resources to fulfill its mission.”
With that mission in mind, TCA’s recommendations are comprehensive when considering issues facing the industry. At the top of the list of priorities are staffing, funding and targeting the focus of the agency’s responsibilities, including the vetting of commercial carriers.
Staffing
It’s no surprise that TCA recommends increased staffing as a top priority when it comes to reforms for the FMCSA. As Mullen noted, the agency is among the smallest in the USDOT in terms of manpower and budget but is charged with regulating one of the largest populations of entities overseen by the Department.
As TCA points out, the FMCSA is critically under-resourced and suffers from overly complex statutory constraints, increased oversight responsibilities and unfunded functions, non-safety related functions, and inadequate oversight and enforcement resourcing.
In short, the FMCSA is charged with performing functions above and beyond its principal safety mission but is not provided the resources to do so.
A look at the staffing levels at the FMCSA proves TCA’s concerns valid. FMCSA employs only 300 investigators — a minute number, considering that the agency oversees safety requirements of 700,000 commercial carriers and millions of drivers and vehicles.
TCA recommends a modest increase in the number of investigators (+600) to handle the existing workload, a number that still falls short of what function demands.
Likewise, TCA recommends the employment of investigators specialized in areas such as hazardous materials, complex investigations, entry-level drivers and registration investigations. Among others. Specialization will allow for more in-depth investigation into specific types of incidents and lead to development of rules and regulations that might otherwise be overlooked.
Funding
The FMCSA’s budget of $1 billion is among the smallest of any agency within the USDOT — and 60% of that relatively small budget goes to grant programs. This leaves just $400 million to focus on functions that directly impact safety.
The FMCSA has been assigned a growing mix of responsibilities, not all of which are tightly tied to its central crash-prevention mission of vetting carriers, overseeing drivers and vehicles, targeting unsafe operations, and reducing fatalities and serious injuries.
The agency’s workforce is spread across too many fronts, TCA states. This results in , not allowing enough investigators, attorneys and other staff members to focus on safety programs that address the timely needs of the industry it oversees. This situation leads the TCA into another recommendation, narrowing FMCSA’s responsibilities.
Targeted focus
TCA’s recommendation is clear and simple: Congress should adopt a general rule that any new statutory duty imposed on FMCSA be tied directly to crash reduction and core CMV safety oversight. The FMCSA is expected to focus on responsibilities that far exceed its core mission of protecting the safety of the nation’s highways.
In 2022, more than 165,000 people were injured or killed in accidents involving commercial trucks and buses, and 70% of those casualties were drivers and passengers in other vehicles. The safety of the roadways is of paramount concern, and with the large numbers of lives at stake, the FMCSA is one of few agencies focused on the issue. If FMCSA were as well funded as the Federal Aviation Administration (with a budget of $27 billion and 46,000 employees), perhaps that number of highway casualties could be reduced. After all, while the FMCSA was busy in 2022, the FAA investigated commercial airline incidents that resulted in no deaths during the same period. The FAA is proof that manpower and money do result in oversight and rulemaking that have results when it comes to safety.
Vetting of carriers
Among the most important safety reforms proposed by TCA is increased vetting of new registrants for commercial carrier registration. “Implementation of meaningful vetting processes is key to identifying pre-operational safety status of applicant motor carriers,” TCA states.
TCA further recommends that this vetting process be funded by the carriers themselves. Charging of filing fees would allow for the hiring of personnel and employment of technology to operate the vetting process.
Currently, vetting carriers is more of an administrative duty than a genuine safety gatekeeping system, TCA notes. Vetting carriers for safety BEFORE their vehicles and drivers hit the road would be a major step forward as under current regulations, a new carrier can be in operation up to a year before being looked at by the FMCSA.
“New entrant oversight should likewise be restructured so that provisional authority is conditioned on meaningful review, including onsite examination and enforceable knowledge requirements,” TCA states regarding the vetting of new carriers
In other words, vetting of carriers can’t done from behind a desk. Field work is necessary to gain a meaningful overview of a carrier’s operation. Data on a computer screen is not enough to make decisions when the safety of the nation’s highways is at hand.
Reform needed
While staffing, funding and vetting of carriers are seen as priorities under TCA recommendations, the call for reforms does not stop there. Other key recommendations include strengthened oversight of CDL licensing, ELDT providers and third-party testers, and improved crash causation analysis and data integrity.
“This is a moment for Congress to act,” Mullen said. “A stronger, more efficient and more accountable FMCSA is essential not only for public safety, but also for the stability of the nation’s supply chain.
“TCA stands ready to work with Congress and USDOT, and we strongly urge Congress to provide the resources necessary to support FMCSA’s critical mission,” he concluded.
To download a copy of the white paper, click here.
This article first appeared in the September/October 2026 print edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.
Since retiring from a career as an outdoor recreation professional from the State of Arkansas, Kris Rutherford has worked as a freelance writer and, with his wife, owns and publishes a small Northeast Texas newspaper, The Roxton Progress. Kris has worked as a ghostwriter and editor and has authored seven books of his own. He became interested in the trucking industry as a child in the 1970s when his family traveled the interstates twice a year between their home in Maine and their native Texas. He has been a classic country music enthusiast since the age of nine when he developed a special interest in trucking songs.
