In the tenth item of the colonists' bill of particulars against King George III, they accused him of having "erected a multitude of New Offices," and having "sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people..." Many in today's trucking industry feel similarly besieged. Strictly speaking, there may not be swarms of officers – unless you count the legions of state troopers doing federally funded roadside inspections under 50 different sets of enforcement priorities, or unless you are a small motor carrier suddenly faced with a weeks-long "intervention" after a spike in your scores under the Safety Measurement System (SMS).
But swarms of new rules and quasi-rules are constantly being hatched in the Southeast DC hive of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).1 The 15 "significant" rulemaking dockets reported by FMCSA as pending in April 2015 are only the beginning. Any practitioner before this agency can regale you with tales of regulatory improvisation and off-the-books rulemaking aimed at disfavored carriers. To many observers in the industry, both the rules and the quasi-rules seemingly reflect an agency that views the industries it regulates as adversaries, and that is enamored of prescriptive, top-down, command-and-control approaches to regulation.
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