UCR Board Meeting Sept 20
  Most of this meeting dealt with issues States are experiencing with registering walk-in carriers; problems with incomplete applications received by mail (legible names, positions, ie); accessing the national online system during certain times of the day (some experienced slowness until about 4:30pm); State receipt of revenues collected; electronic data feed to/from FMCSA; and undeliverable mail.

Note that 720,000 mailings to North America motor carriers will be in the mail by early October. Oklahoma reported about 10% of their mailings to carriers returned because of bad addresses. Some states are enclosing the MCS-150 form with the UCR application to motor carriers and see this as an opportunity to clean up DOT database.

Discussion occurred as to how to record “undeliverable mail” on SAFER similar to what FMCSA does on L&I page. No affirmative solution. It was noted that PRISM states have some arrangements with local FMCSA offices to make such notations.

A link to SAFER will be posted on the UCR home page. There is currently a UCR link on the SAFER page (www.safer.fmcsa.dot.gov) to verify UCR registrations.

Enforcement by states was also briefly discussed. Many are agreeing to use this opportunity as an education avenue if carrier is stopped for roadside inspection. However, registration for 2007 is still a must!!

Three States still do not have authority under state law to participate in UCR -- Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin – but the UCR issue is a priority in next legislative session. Wisconsin is directing its carriers to the IN system awaiting passage of state budget.

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As one can imagine, INDIANA (IN) has been swamped with calls and emails with various questions from state reps and industry reps. Carriers (or their agents) are starting to use the IN system more and more every day. Here are some learning experiences you should know:

ANSWERS TO REPETITIVE QUESTIONS:
(1) Every carrier operating in interstate commerce must register in 2007 regardless of based in a participating state or non-participating state.

(2) Company has trailers not used for cargo but for storage that travel across state lines. Yes – they still have to register these trailers because they are “commercial motor vehicles”.

(3) If you attempt to register a carrier using DOT number and it doesn’t populate, the DOT number you have entered is either (1) inactive, (2) registrant (3) intrastate assignment.

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Clarification of E-CHECKS: it’s nothing special but simply a personal check out of a checkbook. The IN system asks for the routing and account number.

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USING CREDIT CARDS: Please do not make up bogus addresses when entering credit card information – the system will catch any such errors and reject the registration and cause carrier further problems. Hard to believe but some carriers/agents actually did this!!

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Registration of CANADIAN carriers: it’s taking longer than anticipated to resolve the issue with the Canadian banks. Currently the IN system accepts only US addresses -- there is no option to put in a Canadian address. The only way a Canadian company can currently use the online system is to also have a US address. IN staff is still working on Canadian provinces and hopes to have an answer on October 4.

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TRAINING PACKAGE for State personnel and permit agents is in progress and will address a lot of nuts and bolts type questions. There is an official Qs and As currently receiving enhancements. These presentations will be posted on the UCR home page when finalized.

If you have specific questions of interest to the industry after reviewing these summaries or using the IN online system, please send an email to me and we'll get your questions into this training document.

Note that the Qs and As are official answers within the purview of the UCR board and governing legislation. Any question with a legal component will be referred to respective State and their state counsel for legal opinion.

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Future telephonic UCR board meetings are scheduled for Oct 4, Nov 1, and Dec 6. In person meeting scheduled for Jan 14-15 in Clearwater, FL.
 
*** Questions about this info? Contact Linda Norman at 703-821-0000 or linda@donnormanassociates.com ***