With President-elect Donald Trump’s transportation secretary and EPA administrator nominees now public, the trucking industry’s attention is turning to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Whoever heads the agency in the next administration will have regulatory power over closely-watched trucking safety rules on speed limiters, autonomous vehicles and other key issues.
Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association EVP Lewie Pugh noted former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, was a supporter of the group’s anti-electric logging device push while in Congress.
“We feel like he has a little bit of institutional knowledge in our issues,” Pugh said. “But I mean, [for] most of our stuff, we work more hand-in-hand with FMCSA. So who the administrator is going to be will be the big thing.”
The FMCSA has experienced turnover under Republican and Democratic administrations. The top job, subject to Senate confirmation, has been vacant since Administrator Robin Hutcheson left in January to open an advisory firm.
Vinn White is the agency’s acting leader as deputy administrator, a role he took over from Sue Lawless, who is now the agency’s chief safety officer and executive director.
In Trump’s first term, he nominated Raymond Martinez, who was confirmed by the Senate and served from early 2018 to late 2019. Jim Mullen and Wiley Deck, both now trucking industry lobbyists, were Trump’s other FMCSA leaders before Meera Joshi took the helm of the agency under President Joe Biden in January 2021.
OOIDA and the American Trucking Associations hope the next administrator is a partner who comes into the job with an understanding of the industry’s issues.
The industry depends on the federal agency to safely serve its role as a critical link in the supply chain, said Ed Gilroy, ATA chief advocacy and public affairs officer, in a statement to Trucking Dive earlier this year.
“The FMCSA administrator is vital to the success of that effort, which is why the candidates for this position must value stakeholder input and the importance of real-world data, not rhetoric, when formulating decisions,” Gilroy said.
