Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Withdraws FMVSS Label Proposal

The National Propane Gas Association (NPGA) reports January 14, 2016 that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced its withdrawal of a proposed regulation to require the display of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) certification labels on all commercial motor vehicles (CMVs). The objective of the proposal was to clearly demonstrate the CMVs compliance with FMVSS at the time of production. The burden of compliance, however, would fall on motor carriers to identify and contact CMV manufacturers to obtain unaltered and unobstructed certification labels.

The proposal did not address several issues raised by NPGA, including CMVs produced by currently out-of-business manufacturers. NPGA also argued that the drain on motor carriers’ time and financial resources in order to obtain certification labels would not improve the vehicular or driver safety. Moreover, NPGA emphasized the potential implications for residential and commercial propane customers if CMVs were pulled from service, temporarily or permanently, in order to obtain certification labels from the original manufacturer. NPGA presented several modifications to the proposal, if FMCSA intended to pursue the issue, such as narrowing application of the proposal to new CMVs produced after a future date.

After review of all comments, FMCSA decided to entirely withdraw the proposal. The arguments by NPGA were among several reasons directly sited in the agency’s justification for the withdrawal.