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Independent Contractor<br />
News<br />
we deserve. Eighty percent of the truck port<br />
drivers [here in LA] are owner-operators like<br />
myself. If the rates for the loads are coming<br />
down, it does not make sense for us to keep running<br />
our trucks businesswise. Today the mission<br />
is for us to just unite across the board as truckers<br />
and say ‘no’ to cheap freight.”<br />
Marz said his message to brokers is to “stop<br />
being greedy,” but he also acknowledges that<br />
customers can deal directly with carriers instead<br />
of utilizing brokers, which would allow many<br />
owner-operators to eliminate another step in the<br />
logistics of the supply chain.<br />
The group offered T-shirts commemorating<br />
the event for free in exchange for donations that<br />
will be used to help pay the fines of other drivers<br />
who have received citations during other nonrelated<br />
freight-rate protests in the area.<br />
OOIDA urges Congress to<br />
require transparency for<br />
brokers<br />
As small trucking business<br />
protests continue for the seventh<br />
consecutive day in Washington<br />
D.C., OOIDA (Owner<br />
Operator Independent Driver<br />
Association) has stepped into<br />
the fray.<br />
The organization sent a<br />
letter to Congress on May 6,<br />
asking that brokers be prohibited<br />
from demanding that carriers<br />
waive their rights under<br />
FMCSR 371.3, which guarantees<br />
access to the full record to<br />
every party that participates in<br />
a brokered transaction. The full<br />
record shows how much the<br />
broker was paid for the haul<br />
and any additional services<br />
provided as well as payment to<br />
the trucker.<br />
The OOIDA letter also<br />
asked that the regulation be<br />
amended to require the broker<br />
to provide the information at<br />
the completion of the load. In its current form,<br />
the regulation states that the recipient must ask<br />
for the information. Brokers have instituted<br />
rules, such as mandating that the records can<br />
only be inspected at their office location during<br />
normal business hours, a requirement that effectively<br />
prohibits over-the-road truckers from ever<br />
seeing the information.<br />
OOIDA had announced that it sent a letter<br />
to its 160,000 members on May 1, the day the<br />
protest began, warning about dealing with unscrupulous<br />
brokers and urging owner-operators<br />
to report issues to the FMCSA’s National Consumer<br />
Complaint Database, for which a link was<br />
provided (https://nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov/nccdb/<br />
home.aspx).<br />
The organization has been criticized by some<br />
of the Washington protesters for, in their view,<br />
not doing enough to support the demonstration.<br />
However, OOIDA’s position on broker transparency<br />
is not a new one. Given the attention generated<br />
by the ongoing protest in the nation’s capital,<br />
the timing of OOIDA’s letter to Congress<br />
could generate a more favorable response.<br />
iStock Photo<br />
In a May 6 letter, the Owner Operator<br />
Independent Driver Association asked Congress<br />
to ensure that drivers have access to all records<br />
pertaining to each transaction through a broker.<br />
12 Independent Contractor 2020 Hundreds of Jobs www.TheTrucker.com/jobs
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