Alex Lockie
Derek Barrs, the leader of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, on Thursday announced plans to radically change something at the core of big problem areas for trucking in 2025: Self-certification of service providers.
Today, ELD providers, training providers, and even medical offices all self-certify that they’re following the rules when getting onto FMCSA-registered lists of service providers.
Barrs, speaking to a crowd at the Transportation Club of Jacksonville, said FMCSA will “work toward a regulatory process” to help the agency “get away from self-certification.” For the remainder of his term as FMCSA Administrator, Bars pledged “we will do away with anything that has to do with self-certification at FMCSA.”
Instead, Barrs said the agency would work on a “vetting process” to make sure that ELDs, training providers and the medical examiners all comply before entering the market.
Barrs gave as an example the Training Provider Registry, talking about the agency’s recent purge of 3,000 CDL schools on the list. While that purge looks like it mostly targeted inactive schools, according to Overdrive reporting, Barrs said there’s much more to come.
“You wanna be an Entry Level Driver Training provider? You just sign up,” Barrs said. “That’s pretty much it. There’s no oversight for that per se.”
Now FMCSA is “working dilligently to go through all the number of driver training schools,” he said, asking “who are you? Do you have the right qualifications? Do you actually have a principal place of business? Do you actually have curriculum? Do you actually have a truck?”
Barrs then confirmed Overdrive reporting that the agency now has “3,300 investigators” doing in-person audits at “1,600 driver training locations just to say ‘are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing?'”
That line got applause from the crowd in Jacksonville.
“If we have people operating schools in this country that are just pushing people through, it’s my job make sure you’re out of business,” he said. “We have no place for that.”
Barrs said driver training is “where the rubber meets the road” and the “number one” priority was making sure only qualified drivers get on the road.
Similarly, FMCSA recently took action to vet ELDs after reports of widespread ELD “editing” from overseas firms.
“We have folks oversees who are going into ELDs and changing logs giving drivers new BOLs, giving a whole new sets of hours when that driver actually should be resting,” said Barrs.
To stop that, Barrs said FMCSA would now vet all new ELDs. In fact, the agency has blocked the registration of 200 new ELDs in the last two months and revoked 70 existing ELDs. Barrs didn’t specify the timeframe for the 70 ELDs removed, but Overdrive has tracked the removal of a few dozen over the course of the second Trump administration.
In both cases, Barrs said FMCSA “can’t stop there.” FMCSA will work on new rulemakings and with Congress to crack down on freight fraud, cargo theft, and other problems around trucking.
Dale Prax co-hosted the talk with Barrs. Prax, FMCSA’s self-described “worst critic” and a Marine Corps veteran, said for years FMCSA has been in “recon mode,” observing problems within trucking but not acting. Now, he added, the agency’s entered “war fighting mode,” where bad actors actually get taken out.
On the certified medical examiners front, Barrs said he had less to report. Additionally, on issues like English language proficiency enforcement and the agency’s non-domiciled CDL rule, Barrs said FMCSA would continue to twist the screws on states, making sure carriers who hire unqualified drivers pay the price, and drivers placed out-of-service stay OOS.
FMCSA has issued a Regional Emergency Declaration providing temporary hours-of-service (HOS) relief for certain motor carriers and drivers due to severe winter storms and extreme cold impacting multiple states.
This waiver supports urgent winter emergency response while maintaining overall safety. Apply relief only to qualifying emergency operations and be sure to review the full waiver which can be found here.
Who Is Covered
Motor carriers and drivers providing direct assistance to emergency relief efforts in the affected states.
States Affected
AL, AR, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MD, MA, MI, MS, MN, MO, MT, NE, NH, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WV, WI, WY
What Relief Is Granted
Temporary relief from:
- 49 CFR § 395.3 – Property-carrying vehicle driving limits
- 49 CFR § 395.5 – Passenger-carrying vehicle driving limits
Relief applies regardless of trip origin, as long as the operation supports emergency relief in the affected states.
What Counts as Direct Assistance
Transportation or services supporting the immediate restoration of essential supplies or services during the emergency.
Does NOT include
- Routine commercial deliveries
- Mixed loads with nominal emergency supplies
- Long-term recovery or infrastructure repair after the emergency phase
Key Restrictions
- All other FMCSRs remain in effect, including CDL, drug and alcohol testing, insurance, HAZMAT, and size/weight requirements.
- Out-of-service drivers or carriers are NOT eligible until the order is officially lifted.
- When emergency assistance ends, normal HOS rules apply, with required rest breaks before resuming standard operations.
Duration
Effective January 23, 2026, through February 6, 2026, or until the emergency ends, whichever comes first. FMCSA may modify, extend, or terminate the declaration based on conditions
Mark Schremmer
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s soft launch of its new registration system, Motus, is underway.
However, no action is required from motor carriers at this time. Instead, the initial phase – which FMCSA said went live on Monday, Dec. 8 – is limited to transportation service providers, BOC-3 filers and financial responsibility filers. Instructions for those supporting companies can be found here.
“(Those entities) now have limited access to the system to create their user and business profiles,” FMCSA wrote in an email. “This will allow them to prepare to support registrants when the system opens for all users in 2026.”
Starting next year, FMCSA plans to open the new system to all users, including motor carriers.
The agency said it will provide additional instructions about how to access and use the system as the new year approaches.
FMCSA said the goal of Motus is to “streamline processes, enhance fraud prevention and provide a more intuitive, user-friendly experience for supporting companies, motor carriers, brokers and other registrants.”
When Motus launches for all users, it will not include the introduction of safety registration, the elimination of docket numbers or changes to the BOC-3 form filing process, according to the FMCSA website. Rather, those potential changes are under consideration and will be open for public comment in a notice of proposed rulemaking. According to the latest regulatory agenda, FMCSA is projected to unveil that proposal in March 2026.
What about the broker financial responsibility rule?
If you recall, the compliance date for FMCSA’s broker financial responsibility rule was set for early 2025. However, the agency said its new registration wasn’t ready to support the rule, which suspends a broker’s authority if the available financial security falls below $75,000.
That led FMCSA to delay the compliance date until Jan. 16, 2026. FMCSA’s announcement that it is making progress on the new registration system should increase the chances that the rule will take effect on schedule.
