FMCSA Revives 17-Year-Old Rule That Would Test New Carriers Before They Haul

When would FMCSA require new carriers to pass a safety exam?

FMCSA is targeting November 2026 for a supplemental advance notice of proposed rulemaking under regulatory identification number 2126-AB17, the New Entrant Safety Assurance Process. The rulemaking would consider requiring new applicants to pass a proficiency examination demonstrating knowledge of federal motor carrier safety regulations before being granted new-entrant authority, rather than simply self-certifying on the MCS-150 form and waiting up to 18 months for a safety audit.

The current sequence is the problem. You apply for a USDOT number. You certify on the MCS-150 that you are knowledgeable about the federal motor carrier safety regulations and, where relevant, the hazardous materials regulations. You check the box. You get your new-entrant authority. You start hauling freight. Then, at some point within your first 18 months of operation, FMCSA conducts a safety audit to see how you are actually doing. The real look at whether you understand what you are doing comes after you are already out there doing it.

Why the rule has been dormant since 2009

Congress directed FMCSA to establish minimum requirements for new carriers to ensure they understood the safety rules before operating when it created the agency through the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999. The first version of the new-entrant program took effect in 2003. It established the 18-month audit structure and required applicants to self-certify their knowledge of the safety and hazmat regulations on the MCS-150A form, rather than testing them.

FMCSA tightened the program with a final rule in December 2008, which raised the standard for passing the new-entrant safety audit and strengthened the monitoring that triggers expedited action when violations show up. But that 2008 rule also eliminated the requirement for applicants to self-certify to pre-operational knowledge of the federal safety standards, and it did not add a proficiency exam in its place.

In January 2009, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety filed a petition for reconsideration, arguing that FMCSA's rule failed to establish the proficiency exam contemplated in the 1999 law, a test to determine whether new-entrant motor carriers possess the knowledge and capability to comply with applicable federal motor carrier safety requirements and conduct safe operations. FMCSA responded by issuing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in August 2009, asking the industry for comment on whether it should require new applicants to pass a safety examination. Then, for practical purposes, it stopped. The proposal never progressed. The target dates came and went, projected for 2023, then 2024, then May 2026, and now November 2026.

What gaps the current process allows

The current sequence makes specific violations possible, all of them legal under the process as it exists today. A person decides to start a trucking company. They have driven a truck, but they have never run one as a business, and they have never been responsible for a federal compliance program. They apply for their authority, check the box certifying they are knowledgeable about the safety regulations, and are approved. What they do not actually know is that federal rules require them to have a drug and alcohol testing program in place, with random testing, from the day they operate. They run for four months without one because nobody tested whether they knew it was required. During those four months, their driver is subject to no testing at all.

Operating without a drug and alcohol testing program is one of the violations that causes a new entrant to automatically fail the safety audit, which tells you how seriously the agency treats it, and yet under the current order a carrier can rack up months of it before the audit ever happens.

A new carrier does not understand the hours-of-service (HOS) rules well enough to build a compliant schedule, because their knowledge of those rules was never verified, only self-certified. They dispatch a driver on a run that cannot legally be completed within the available hours. The driver, new to the operation and wanting the work, drives fatigued to make the delivery. The knowledge gap that put that driver on the road tired existed on day one, but the process is not designed to catch it until well into the operation, if a crash does not surface it first.

Or consider the driver-qualification file. Federal rules require carriers to verify that a driver holds a valid commercial driver's license (CDL), is medically certified, and is not disqualified, and to keep documentation proving it. A new carrier that does not know these requirements might put a driver behind the wheel without confirming any of it. Using a driver without a valid CDL, or a disqualified driver, is another automatic-fail item on the new-entrant audit. Again, the danger is real and immediate, and again, the current process checks for it only after the carrier has already been operating.

None of these scenarios require a bad actor. They describe a well-intentioned person who simply did not know what they did not know, operating a heavy vehicle in mixed traffic while they learned.

Why critics say the process is backwards

A carrier's first 18 months are, statistically, among its most dangerous. The operator is new to compliance, new to the safety regulations, often new to running a business at all, and is learning the rules in real time while already responsible for equipment and, frequently, drivers. The safety audit that is supposed to catch problems comes during or after that window, which means the learning-by-doing happens on public roads with real consequences before anyone from the agency has meaningfully verified that the carrier knows what it is required to know.

Critics of the current model point out that the self-certification it replaced with, and later the elimination of even that, sets a low bar. Checking a box that you are knowledgeable about the regulations is not the same as demonstrating it. There is also a fraud angle that has grown sharper since 2009. In an environment where chameleon carriers, stolen authority, and fly-by-night operations have become genuine enforcement problems, a knowledge requirement at the front door is one more filter that a purely paperwork-based entry process does not provide.

The counterarguments carriers and small-business advocates raise

Some have argued the test would not establish practical knowledge of the systems that produce real compliance, would not ensure that everyone in the operation understood their responsibilities, and ultimately would not do the thing it is meant to do, which is prevent crashes. A test at the entrance can become a box to clear rather than a genuine competency gate, and if it does, it adds a barrier without adding safety.

Then there is the small-business concern, which FMCSA is required to weigh and specifically sought comment on. New entrants are overwhelmingly very small operations, frequently a single owner-operator getting authority for the first time. An added exam requirement, depending on how it is structured, could function as a barrier to entry for exactly the small operators the industry says it wants to support, and it raises questions about cost, access, testing logistics, and whether it disproportionately burdens people already stretched thin at startup. A poorly designed requirement could keep out good operators while doing little to stop the bad actors who are willing to game any system.

The strongest objection, and why it does not settle the question

Much of what the new-entrant safety audit reviews cannot exist until a carrier is actually running freight. You cannot audit a carrier's hours-of-service records, its drug and alcohol testing results, its vehicle maintenance history, its driver logs, or its inspection and crash record before it has operated, because none of that data exists yet. The audit examines evidence of how a carrier has actually behaved, and by definition that evidence is generated only through operation. From that, skeptics conclude that the current sequence is not backwards at all, but the only order that is even possible, since you have to run freight to produce the records that prove whether you run it safely.

That argument is correct on its own terms. You genuinely cannot performance-audit an operation that has not operated. But it does not actually resolve the question, because it answers a different one than the rulemaking is asking. The proposal on the table is not to move the existing performance audit to before operation. That would be impossible, and nobody is seriously suggesting it. The proposal is to add a knowledge or competency check at the front end, and then let the performance audit continue to do its job after operation begins.

Those are two different things measuring two different qualities. A proficiency exam does not ask "have you maintained your vehicles properly," which requires operational history to answer. It asks "do you know what the maintenance requirements are, and what your obligations will be." That is a question a carrier can and arguably should be able to answer before it ever turns a wheel, the same way a driver has to pass a written knowledge test before being handed the keys for a road test.

What happens next in the rulemaking process

The November 2026 target is for a supplemental advance notice of proposed rulemaking, not a final rule. That means FMCSA will publish questions, seek comment, and begin the formal process of deciding whether to require the exam and what form it would take. The agency describes the purpose plainly: the rulemaking would consider methods for ensuring a new applicant carrier is knowledgeable about the applicable safety requirements before being granted new-entrant authority. That single word, "before," is what makes this potentially significant.

The agency says it is considering whether to implement a proficiency examination as part of a revised process, along with other alternatives. In plain terms, FMCSA is asking whether new carriers should have to pass a test demonstrating they understand the federal safety rules before they are allowed to operate, rather than simply certifying on a form that they do.

If the process shifts, the likely result is not that the current performance audit disappears. The likely result is that new entrants face two gates instead of one: a knowledge check before authority is granted, and a performance audit after they have generated operational records. The first would filter out carriers who do not know the rules. The second would continue to catch carriers who know the rules but do not follow them. Both would remain necessary, because they measure different things.

What new entrants should watch for this fall

Carriers planning to apply for new-entrant authority in the next 12 to 18 months should monitor the Federal Register in November 2026 for the supplemental advance notice. The notice will describe what FMCSA is considering, what alternatives are on the table, and how the agency is weighing the small-business impact. It will also open a comment period, and small fleets and owner-operators should use it. The agency is required to consider public input, and the design of any proficiency exam, if one is implemented, will depend heavily on what carriers and safety advocates tell FMCSA during that window.

For now, the current process remains in place. You still certify on the MCS-150 that you are knowledgeable about the safety regulations. You still get your new-entrant authority before the audit. And you still have up to 18 months before FMCSA conducts the safety audit that determines whether you pass. But the agency is now formally revisiting whether that sequence should change, and the November 2026 notice will be the first procedural step in that direction in 17 years.