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For decades, the trucking industry’s use of independent owner-operators has been a delicate, but successful, dance between the business and personal needs of motor carriers and contractors. Now, the contractor model’s future is in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The actions taken by a motor carrier in the hours immediately following a truck-involved crash can be critical to the potential legal outcome of the incident, regardless of whether it is a serious accident or a simple fender bender, trucking attorneys said.

Although federal regulators are studying a possible change in the way motor carrier safety is measured, the Compliance Safety Accountability program is likely to remain in place, a trucking attorney told a group of industry executives.

While the Biden administration has set an overarching outlook for changes to motor carrier regulations, the timing on when those changes may actually arrive is far from certain, trucking legal experts said during a recent industry conference.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has released a report from its medical review board on plans to tighten federal driver vision standards, but at the same time streamline the process to get qualified monocular drivers on the road quicker.

A Nassau County, Fla., jury on Aug. 20 issued a total of $1 billion in monetary damages against two motor carriers that were declared negligent for their role in a pair of 2017 crashes on the same night and near the same location.

The board of directors for the Unified Carrier Registration Plan has approved an aggressive three-pronged strategy to identify and contact unregistered motor carriers.

Six months after a critical DOT inspector general audit, federal regulators are asking an estimated 14,000 medical examiners to submit the missing results of truck driver exams they conducted during the seven months the National Registry was offline.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has announced plans to update regulations for transportation of household goods to reduce costs for movers and mitigate the growing problem of fraud in consumer moves.

The California Trucking Association is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a state independent contractor law — known as AB 5 — that it argues should be exempt from enforcement for motor carriers based on federal pre-emption.