The new task force of trucking experts that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration formed to address predatory truck-leasing tactics deployed by some motor carriers against truckers held its second meeting on Oct. 17.
The nearly daylong virtual meeting explored how the Truck Leasing Task Force (TLTF) will define predatory lease-purchase agreements between carriers and their employee drivers or owner-operators and what regulations could be promulgated to prevent these agreements from causing financial harm in the first place. Also discussed: how to educate victims on ways to seek recompense without incurring further debt.
Atop the agenda for the task force is completing FMCSA Task 23-2 by reviewing and sharing “common” truck leasing agreements and discussing the ways by which “some providers of such agreements create inequity through inappropriate terms or conditions.”
TLTF deliberated on this task at its October 17 meeting and allowed for continued discussion at subsequent meetings. The results of this and other tasks will be compiled and submitted to FMCSA’s Administrator as recommendations in a comprehensive report by Nov. 16, 2024. The agency will review this final report and submit it to the Secretaries of Transportation and Labor as well as to the appropriate congressional committees.
The nine members of TLTF are drawn from motor carriers, owner-operators, labor unions, consumer protection groups, other related businesses, and attorneys:
The work to establish the task force began in 2022, as a cooperative effort of the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor. But the problem that the group is charged with tackling dates to at least the 1960s, said task force member Steve Rush during the first meeting.
The meeting got under way with a presentation by Emma Oppenheim, Senior Fellow for Workers Initiatives of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), that pinpointed the negative results that wrack up for truckers when they are denied the “ability to repay debt that is controlled by the issuer of the debt itself.”
