Trucking news and briefs for Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024:
FMCSA's proposed 25% increase to UCR Plan fees for 2025 are to make up for a shortfall in revenues after two consecutive years of decreased fees.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is proposing to increase registration fees that participating states collect from motor carriers, brokers, freight forwarders and leasing companies for the Unified Carrier Registration (UCR) Plan and Agreement for the 2025 registration year and subsequent years.
The fees for the 2025 registration year would be increased above the fees for the 2024 registration year by an average of 25% overall, with varying increases between $9 and $9,000 per entity, depending on the applicable fee bracket. The proposal is based upon a recommendation from the UCR Plan.
The UCR Plan provides fee adjustment recommendations to the Secretary of Transportation when revenue collections result in a shortfall or surplus from the amount authorized by statute. The fee adjustments are required by federal statute.
The proposed increase for 2025 follows UCR decreases for the last two registration years. The fees for the 2023 registration year were decreased by an average of 31.2% from the 2022 fees, and the fees for the 2024 registration year were decreased by an average of 8.9% from the 2023 fees.
Both fee adjustment recommendations submitted by the UCR Plan, and particularly the 2023 recommendation (for 2024 registration year fees), anticipated a need to increase fees in or around the 2025 fee registration year because the funds from excess collections that required the 2 years of fee reductions, would be largely utilized.
