In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, catch the address delivered by, and Q&A with, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration chief Derek Barrs at the annual transportation symposium of the Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association, held last week in Birmingham, Alabama.

Barrs touches on quite a lot, including the last-week-introduced Dalilah Law that might cement the FMCSA’s preferred approach to limiting non-domiciled CDLs for non-citizens but that also casts a wide net on CDL recertifications: https://overdriveonline.com/15818235

His talk came the morning of the very day, Feb. 26, that petitioners challenging that non-domiciled final rule filed a formal request for a stay of the March 16 effective date, pending court review. While Barrs didn't note the new filing or the past court action against the prior rule version, he cast the agency's moves on CDL qualifications as fundamentally necessary.

"We are taking steps from our non-domiciled CDL process to make sure that we strengthen that so that when we issue that, we're not issuing to someone who has not been truly vetted," Barrs said, "and we're not giving driver's licenses to individuals who are only supposed to be in this country for two years but we're allowing them to have CDLs for eight or nine years. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life" -- a reference to evidence uncovered by federal auditors in a variety of states of legal presence and CDL term mismatches.

After the applause died down, Barrs added, "That is a one-size-fits-all."

That's not how the likes of owner-operator Jorge Rivera Lujan and his fellow litigants see it, however. Their challenge to the FMCSA’s non-domiciled CDL final rule noted quite a different dynamic in FMCSA’s safety justification for its rule, which would invalidate Rivera’s CDL eligibility.

A non-domiciled CDL holder for many years now, owner-operator Rivera, unlike many more recent arrivals to the country, has lived virtually his entire life in the U.S. after his undocumented parents brought him to California. He enjoys the protections of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, as listeners heard with our talk with Rivera a few weeks back: https://overdriveonline.com/15816105

He and fellow litigants asked the court to stay the rule pending review, generally arguing the agency paints the situation of non-domiciled CDL holders today with too broad a brush, Rivera a principal example.

Hear much more from Barrs about the agency's perspective in the podcast, likewise potential upcoming rulemakings around electronic-logging-device and training-provider certification, "chameleon carrier" enforcement and more.

As mentioned in the podcast:

**Long Haul Paul pays tribute to Travis "The Snakeman" Wammack, forever memorialied in none other than the them of Overdrive Radio.

****Arkansas' HB 1745: https://overdriveonline.com/15742569

**Dalilah Law: https://overdriveonline.com/15818340

**DOT/FMCSA press conference week prior to Barrs' talk: https://overdriveonline.com/15817793 **Lawsuit challenging non-domiciled CDL rule: https://overdriveonline.com/15818372