Department of Transportation issued an alert regarding another round of fraudulent letters sent to current and potential DOT contractors requesting banking account information in order to be eligible for contract offerings. DOT says it does not require any confidential information to verify registration. For more information, go to this site.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to work with the U.S. Border Patrol in the “Texas Hold ‘Em” initiative to revoke the commercial driver licenses of truckers who knowingly smuggle illegal weapons, drugs or humans across the Texas-Mexico border.

The American Transportation Research Institute said the latest version of its idling regulations compendium and cab card for drivers includes new idling regulations in Florida, Maine and South Carolina. The compendium and cab card are available on ATRI’s website.

Mustafa Redzic, owner of Bosna Truck Driving School in Missouri, was sentenced June 16 in federal court to 75 months imprisonment and 36 months supervised release for his involvement in a scheme involving fraudulent commercial drivers’ license testing. The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General’s Office says in early 2004, Redzic and state driver’s license examiner Tony Parr devised a scheme whereby Redzic would send customers to Parr’s testing facility for abbreviated CDL tests. More than 600 student drivers were licensed under the scheme in a 15-month period.

Q How does a small broker or carrier protect itself against vicarious liability when tendering freight to an outside carrier?

A Vicarious liability remains one of the most troubling issues facing intermediaries in transportation. When small undercapitalized motor carriers with only $1 million in insurance are involved in crashes that cause significant injuries, plaintiffs lawyers often try to reach deep pockets up the supply chain by naming the intermediary or the shipper as a party defendant. These attorneys rely on vicarious liability and state law theories such as negligent hiring, assumption of duty, joint venture or agent/principal theories.

The case law is mixed at best, and judges tend to let the issue go to the jury unless they can find as a matter of law that there is no issue of fact upon which a reasonable man could find for the plaintiff.