OMB Approves Revised FMCSA Hazmat Permit ICR

The OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced yesterday that it had approved the revised information collection request (ICR) renewal of the DOT’s Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration (FMCSA) for their hazardous materials safety permit program. This information collection requires motor carriers to provide estimates of their anticipated annual shipments of hazardous materials (HM), complete application forms, provide shipment estimates, and communication records to the FMSCA.

As I noted in my blog post about the 60-day ICR notice publication FMCSA more than doubled their estimate of the burden hours associated with this document due to the increased numbers of trucks permitted to handle the hazardous material loads covered under the requirements of 49 USC 5109.

Since the safety permit program referred to in this ICR is a carrier permit program and not a vehicle permit program, FMCSA must estimate the number of vehicles covered under the requirements of this ICR based upon information in the Motor Carrier Management Information System. The previous ICR submission showed an estimate of 15,000 trucks making 280 hazmat shipments per year against this submission’s estimate of 41,500 trucks making 280 hazmat shipments per year. That is almost a three-fold increase in the rate of hazmat shipments in just three years.

There were three public comments (here, here and here) on the 60-day ICR notice that FMCSA responded to in their 30-day ICR notice. One comment was effectively not related to the ICR and the other two addressed the additional burden associated with advanced load tracking techniques that are not required under this program.