Trump administration wants to cut FMCSA workforce by 7%
WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's detailed budget request for fiscal year 2026 reveals plans to reduce the agency's workforce by approximately 7% while the agency requests a slight increase in funding.
Published this week by the U.S. Department of Transportation to help appropriators in Congress establish next year's funding bills, the request cuts FMCSA's overall workforce by 89 'full-time equivalent' positions – a measure that accounts for part-time positions – while seeking a funding increase of roughly 2%, to $927 million, over last year's enacted budget of $909 million.
Adding another $135 million in advance appropriations from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, FMCSA's budget estimate for FY26 increases to over $1 billion.
'This budget provides the necessary resources for FMCSA's dedicated workforce to uphold our safety mandate effectively and efficiently, focusing on core responsibilities, modernizing critical systems, and applying common sense principles to regulatory oversight,' according to the budget's overview.
Most of the workforce cuts are slated to occur at FMCSA's headquarters in Washington. Remaining unchanged, according to the proposal, are the 852 positions within FMCSA's Office of Safety, which accounts for over 75% of the agency's 1,118 full-time-equivalent workforce.
The Office of Safety manages all FMCSA field staff and is responsible for carrying out safety programs aimed at preventing crashes, fatalities and injuries involving commercial truck drivers.
The budget request also gives a breakdown of FMCSA plans and priorities for the upcoming year, with many of those important to truck drivers being overseen by the agency's Office of Research and Registration. Among them, as outlined by FMCSA:
Fraud prevention: Refining the identity proofing and business verification services, ensuring they are well integrated with the new FMCSA Registration System.
FMCSA Customer Contact Center: Continue expansion under the direction of the FMCSA Customer Service Division to provide one-stop and one-phone-number customer support to the trucking industry. The division will continue to provide an increasing level of customer service and support to the more than 30,000 weekly customer engagements.
Broker and Freight Forwarder Financial Responsibility Rule: Continue to develop the policies and procedures to oversee the implementation of the Broker and Freight Forwarder Financial Responsibility Rule – to be overseen by the Broker Transparency Rule – that takes effect in calendar year 2025 and 2026.
Modernized registration system: The Registration Division will oversee the deployment and sustainment of the new modernized federal registration system, called Motus, in calendar year 2025 and beyond. The division will also be developing the policies and procedures for the new registration fraud team.
Vetting expansion: The Vetting Division will experience a significant increase in workload upon the deployment of the new registration system. The new system will screen all applications for reincarnation behavior (attempting to avoid sanctions by obtaining a new DOT number under a different company name), flagging more applications for vetting than today. The division will continue the expansion of the vetting operations to ensure every application type is properly vetted and applicants are fit, willing and able to comply with FMCSA policies and regulations.
Crash data analytics: Expand the collection of crash data elements reported by states and merge this collection with other data sources to identify the factors involved in large truck crashes. The division will analyze crash data by carrier type, size, commodity and age of new-entrant drivers to develop varying intervention strategies.
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Click for more FreightWaves articles by John Gallagher.
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