UCR Fees to Decrease in 2024
Does this story sound familiar? Last year, we wrote about how the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) had plans to reduce Unified Carrier Register (UCR) fees for 2023. Now, it looks like they are going to do it again.
Details
The UCR, a system where fees are collected from and given to 41 member states, has collected too much money in the last few years. It seems the well of surplus cash was deeper than they had anticipated, and as such for 2024 fees are going to go even lower.
The announcement was posted to the Federal Register, and contains six pages of legalese that is typical in regulations. Here is a rundown of prices per vehicle depending on fleet size:
- 0-2 vehicles: $41 to $37
- 3-5: $121 to $111
- 6-20: $242 to $221
- 21-100: $844 to $769
- 101-1000: $4,024 to $3,670
- 1001+: $39,289 to $35,836
On average, the FMCSA is expecting fleets to experience a 9% cut in the UCR fee, which is a far cry from the over 30% cuts of last year, but will still be nice for fleets to experience regardless.
The only downside to this change in fees is that industry experts expect UCR fees to return to rising year-over-year in 2025 and beyond. Considering how the fees had dropped and will drop by approximately 36% total in the two years mentioned (2023 and 2024),we estimate that it will take a decade before the fees return to 2022 levels.
Conclusion
The FMCSA is accepting comments on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking if you want to give your opinions on the matter, but it is expected that most fleets will be happy to save money, even if it is an amount as small as $4.
It is possible that the UCR system may increase the amount of money that it can hold in the future without being considered overfunded, but to do that would take extensive amount of paperwork from the federal Department of Transportation, so unless the need eventually calls for it, reducing the fee for future years is the typical course of action.
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