FMCSA Focus: Highlights from ATA’s MCE

From left to right: TVC Director of Safety and Compliance Steve Wilhelms, TVC Chief Sales Officer Nick Hillesheim and TVC Chief Executive Officer Jon Russell

In October, TVC Pro-Driver attended the American Trucking Associations’ 2022 Management Conference & Exhibition. During this year’s conference, Robin Hutcheson, the administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), outlined the agency’s upcoming strategic goals. 

Over the last year, FMCSA has laid out specific safety, economic, equity, and climate goals. The FMCSA is focused on zero roadway fatalities, equity in trucking, and improving driver job satisfaction by studying compensation and detention time.

Though many topics were covered throughout the conference, here are three areas of focus to read up on. 

Driver Recruitment and Retention 
Broadening the driver pool is a main area of focus for the administration. Hutcheson highlighted that health, wellness, and job satisfaction are all directly correlated to safety. She also mentioned that FMCSA is currently working on two studies to improve driver job satisfaction: the first on compensation, followed by driver detention time. 

Truck Parking  
The administration is also focusing on truck parking. The lack of truck parking has been a top-five issue in the American Transportation Research Institute’s annual Top Industry Issues survey since 2015. ATRI’s 18th annual report ranks truck parking as the third most important issue overall, with drivers ranking it number one on their list for the third year in a row. In September, FMCSA announced two grant awards for the expansion of truck parking technology in Florida and Tennessee.  

Large Truck Crash Causation Study 
FMCSA is also updating its Large Truck Crash Causation Study. The study’s overall purpose is to enhance FMCSA’s and state partners’ ability to evaluate crashes involving large trucks and identify emerging trends, monitor crash trends and identify causes and contributing factors, and develop safety improvement policies and programs. 

“We are going in real-time, using law enforcement and inspectors, and we are going to have post interviews of drivers, witnesses, and so forth, and we will do an in-depth examination of the report,” said Jack Van Steenberg, FMCSA’s executive director and chief safety officer. 

As attentive members of the industry, TVC Pro-Driver will continue to stay on top of transportation topics and changes that may impact your company and drivers.