Trucking Companies’ Safety Promise to You

In order for interstate trucking companies to operate trucks, they must obtain operating authority with the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). The USDOT, and specifically the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), governs all interstate trucking operations nationwide.

The FMCSA has hundreds of specific rules and regulations in place to make motor carrier operations safe. In fact, the stated goal of the FMCSA regulations is to reduce the number of injuries and deaths caused by truck-related accidents.

What promises do trucking companies make to you?

The federal government recognizes that operating heavy tractor-trailers is a dangerous business. In exchange for allowing interstate trucking companies to make money operating trucks, the federal government requires that company to guarantee that it will operate according to the safety rules put in place by federal law.

These guarantees are akin to a social contract: A promise to the government and to YOU, as a member of the motoring public, that a trucking company will play by the safety rules. But what promises do they make? And how do they make them?

Every trucking company that applies for USDOT authority must sign, under penalty of perjury, an OP-1 form certifying that they have certain safety systems in place.

For trucking companies that applied for USDOT operating authority before 2015, they executed a more comprehensive safety certification that promises that the company has procedures in place to ensure compliance with driver qualification, hours of service, drug and alcohol testing, vehicle condition, and hazardous materials requirements.

These safety certifications represent a promise to the federal government and a promise to you that they will play by the rules. When these companies do not follow the rules or remain willfully ignorant of their obligations, they break their promise.

When trucking companies break these promises

There are hundreds of small, usually underfunded trucking companies that do not make safety a priority. These trucking companies ignore the promises they made to the federal government and the public in general by routinely hiring unqualified truck drivers that have no business being behind the wheel of a big rig. Those unqualified drivers share the road with all of us for millions of miles every year.

Unfortunately, we have seen some abysmal trucking companies over the years that either decide they’re above the safety rules or don’t bother to learn the rules in the first place.

On more occasions than you’d believe, trucking companies and other commercial transportation companies hire drivers without so much as checking their driving history or their criminal record, both of which are required by the federal safety regulations. Other companies claim to fulfill their driver training obligations, but don’t actually have any paperwork documenting whether any training was actually provided to a particular driver.

Exhibit 1: A trucking company president pleads the Fifth Amendment

In one deposition, I asked a trucking company president about the safety systems he had in place at his company. For more than three hours, he testified about the non-existent or woefully inadequate safety systems employed by his company.

None of the systems he had in place complied with the federal safety regulations. After hours of telling me about his horrendous safety program, I showed him his signed safety certification. I think the deposition was the first time he actually read the safety promises he and his company made.

The company president recognized that he had failed to keep a single one of the promises he had made (under penalty of perjury). He and his attorneys recognized that his conduct was so egregious that he could not answer any more questions without exposing himself criminally.

He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Unfortunately, it was too late for our client that was catastrophically injured as a result of his reckless safety program. Unsafe trucking companies like the one involved in that case hurt the reputations of all trucking companies and drivers, most of whom are honest and hardworking people trying to provide for their family.

We hold trucking companies accountable when they break promises

As highway safety advocates, it is our job to hold irresponsible trucking companies responsible for negligent or reckless actions. By continuing to hold these companies accountable, we hope that other companies will heed the lessons and strengthen their own safety systems – making the roads safer for all of us.

If you have additional questions about trucking safety or trucking litigation, please feel free to contact us at (312) 578-9501. You can also message us below.