The Role of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

What is The Role of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration?

Often overlooked by consumers, many Federal and state regulatory agencies are the ones responsible for ensuring that companies provide honest and reliable service. For the auto transport industry, much of that task falls with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, also known as the FMCSA (www.fmcsa.dot.gov).

First established by the Department of Transportation on January 1st, 2000, the FMCSA was the direct result of the passing of the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999. The reason that it was created was that the Department of Transportation wanted to make sure that they were able to prevent deaths and accidents as much as possible that were due to commercial carriers.

The FMCSA's Goals

The goals of the FMCSA is to improve the safety and communication standards of commercial motor carriers. In order to do so, they have created a list of regulations and safety standards that have to be adhered to, as well as to make certain requirements for information transparency for the consumer's benefit.

The Benefits the FMCSA Provides

The FMCSA has been able to keep the commercial motor carriers in check and to ensure that the safety of the consumer is always at the forefront. Since the organization was formed in 2000, it resulted in a major shift in the auto transportation industry.

After it was formed, it became much more difficult for auto transport carriers to transport vehicles. They now had to face major requirements, such as restrictions on who could be driving, vehicle insurance, background checks on drivers, and other data that has to be much more transparent. Because of all of these factors, your vehicle is being better protected from start to finish.

Some of the changes that have been made are:

• Improved security features on carrier transport trucks, which has resulted in less damage to transported vehicles.
• Restrictions on how long a driver can transport a vehicle without rest.
• Required transparency by auto transport companies in the prices that are offered to consumers.

While all of these benefits might seem to benefit just the consumer, they also benefit the carriers as well. The FMCSA has forced many of them to become more efficient in all aspects of their business and to thus, improve their services and their costs. The honesty that it has created amongst the competitors in the industry has benefited everyone involved.

Now, all auto transport brokers and carriers have to be officially licensed through the FMCSA, as well as have to have a bond as a safety measure for the customer. The minimum amount that the bond can be is $75,000, done so in order to protect the customer against fraud, incompetence, etc...

For auto transport brokers, they have to have a minimum of 3 years of related experience and to obtain certain certifications in order to acquire a broker license, which is reviewed every five years.

A-1 Auto Transport has adhered to all of the requirements of the FMCSA and has proven to be highly reliable and efficient!