WASHINGTON The American Trucking Associations wants to do away with the two-year-old Unified Carrier Registration Agreement, saying the program is unfair, awkward and an undependable means of raising money for highway safety.

The Unified Carrier Registration Agreement was devised and implemented to replace the old Single State Registration System. (See Jan. 1, May 15, July 1, Sept. 1 and 15, 2007, and March 15, 2009 Bus & Motorcoach News.)

Its primary advantage was to be that it extended multi-state vehicle registration coverage to private fleets, like those operated by Walmart and other companies that operate their own commercial vehicles that werent previously covered by the Single State Registration System.

Because the universe of vehicles covered by the agreement was to be substantially larger than that of the system it replaced, fees for companies previously covered by the Single State Registration System was expected to be reduced.

The new system has been fraught with problems from the get-go. Its adoption by Congress was delayed even as the Single State Registration System expired, meaning states had no revenue from either system for months and months.

And, in a twist that no one seemingly foresaw or at least warned might happen, few states were prepared to track down the thousands and thousands of companies covered by the new agreement but that didnt voluntarily step forward, register and begin paying fees.

As a result, the Unified Carrier Registration Agreement board voted earlier this year to recommend that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration increase UCRA fees by more than 115 percent on a per-vehicle basis.

The ATA and others were outraged. They wanted the states to step up their enforcement efforts and go after scofflaws that werent paying the fees rather than increase fees for those who readily complied.

The issue for states is how much effort can they put into going after noncompliant carriers that fail to pay $39?

So, the ATA has proposed that the Unified Carrier Registration Agreement be scrapped and replaced.

"Although UCRA has not been in effect for long, it has amply demonstrated in its short life that it will never be a satisfactory generator of revenue for the states, but instead (be) a continuing focus of controversy and uncertainty over such collections, both as to timing and adequacy," said ATA President Bill Graves in a letter to the executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and state officials involved in the program.

Graves went on to say that UCRA enforcement "will always be burdensome" to states and collections will suffer as a result. "As the UCRA is set up, the temptation will always be for the states simply to ask USDOT to raise the level of fees on compliant carriers rather than to increase their efforts to collect from the noncompliant," he added.

Meanwhile, the morass created by the current system has gotten deeper.

In early April, the UCRA board recommendation that fees be doubled was submitted to the FMCSA. The FMCSA was expected to begin a formal rulemaking to set the fees but, instead, sent back a long list of questions, requesting additional details and justifications for the boards recommendation.

One well-placed member of the UCRA board thinks it will take more than a month for the board to get answers back to FMCSA, and the federal rulemaking will not begin before July at the earliest.

States cant bill for or collect any UCRA fees for 2010 until FMCSA finishes its rulemaking, which easily could be after the first of the year. Nor is it certain the FMCSA will follow the boards recommendation on the level of the fees to be charged.

As an alternative, the ATAs Graves has proposed that the FMCSA Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, known as MCSAP, be expanded to replace the UCRA.

However, there are those who arent convinced a revamped MCSAP is the right answer. They note that states generally pay little attention to the FMCSA and its under-funded programs.

In any event, the ATA has made getting rid of UCRA one of its priorities for inclusion in the federal highway and public transportation reauthorization bill currently being developed by Congress.