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Knight-Swift takes second swing at FMCSA driver-record exemption

Company claims it took on $2.2 million in redundant costs. Credit: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

Knight-Swift Transportation [NYSE: KNX] is appealing to federal regulators that it be exempt from having to provide certain record-keeping requirements for its drivers citing onerous and unnecessary costs.

A letter from Knight-Swift attorneys recently made public by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) explains that Knight Transportation’s first attempt at the exemption, in a request filed in October 2016 before its 2017 merger with Swift Transportation, went without a response after the agency confirmed it had been received.

“Consequently, their application languished for over three years without an answer from FMCSA,” wrote Sean Scapellato, a partner with the law firm Cobb Dill Hammett.

“Now, Knight-Swift are harmed for reasons beyond their control and not of their making. Without exemption relief from agency record-keeping requirements…the costs are staggering and continue to escalate” due to computer system limitations at the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), he said. Knight-Swift is based in Phoenix.


Knight Transportation’s initial request seeking a two-year exemption from federal rules explained that the company’s process for ensuring its newly hired drivers were medically examined and certified goes above and beyond the FMCSA’s requirements, rendering them redundant.

“Our commitment to safety means that we have historically chosen to bear the cost of re-certifying drivers during the hiring process,” the company wrote in 2016. “However, the added costs of obtaining duplicate MVR [motor vehicle records] challenges the resources we have devoted to this area.” It warned that if not granted the exemption, “our fleet’s safety and individual driver’s safety will surely not be served,” it stated.

In data included in its second exemption request, Knight’s MVR and associated staffing costs amounted to roughly $215,000 in 2016, when the company listed 4,694 drivers. The costs for the combined Knight-Swift in 2019, now with close to 18,000 drivers, has ballooned to close to approximately $2.2 million, according to company.

Scapellato also pointed out that Knight-Swift is the subject of an ongoing non-ratable safety review, contending that an FMCSA safety investigator questioned the company on how it could prove that their drivers have been medically certified. “The answer to this query is clearly set out in the 2016 exemption application” and that the investigator should know that Arizona’s DMV is not yet compliant due to the computer issues, he said.


Knight-Swift is seeking an expedited review of the revised exemption, which the company wants in place until the Arizona DMV’s computer system is compliant with federal regulations.

Comments on the exemption are due 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register, scheduled for December 23. 

25 Comments

  1. Micah

    I worked for Swift very unsafe company . They encourage drivers to cheat their electronic logs And they literally work the dog s!@# out of them i worked over 100 hours a week and hardly made over 1000.00 dollars a week . I later got hurt because of a faulty preloaded reefer trailer . my middle finger was cut off and had to be sown back on . The company left me in the state I was injured they came and got my truck ever stole my tools. The company is a JOKE! and is only in business because they work there people slaves . Even there dispatchers live in the trucks at the brundidge parking lot!

  2. Denise

    I was a driver for knight transportation in California and was made to undergo a sleep apnea test as part of the prehire process which i had to pay for. I found out later that it was illegal for them to reguire i pay for that (300.00 bucks). I was told at the time if i refused to pay for it i would not be hire and i had to go through thier dr. I was never given the money back and was only told that the issue was sent to thier legal team. What a joke. They under paid me and took money from my checks every week. I went to school through thier program and it is set up that everyone ..i mean everyone will pass.. even the horrible drivers, which i had a few in my class, some should never be on the road, the dmv came to the school and passed them..its a joke.

  3. zeke

    you no. if it where really about safety they would do this. no more sleeper trucks. everything drop and hook . drop yard to drop yard to pick up or delievery. truck drivers pick up the load at the port. or place of manufacture. drive it 4 hours to a drop yard. drop it and pick up an empty or something going back the same way. fuel at the drop points bring your lunch. your only in the truck 8 hours a day. just like a regular yob. no more truck stops. no more idling trucks. no more weight stations.its all done at the drop yards. no more federal motor carrier safety bull shit. that would do more for safety than any other single effort in the business.

    1. Wade

      I agree. Swift and Knight both have been able to sneak out of a lot of things over the years. They have cost a lot of drivers a lot. Let them live by the same rules the rest of us do if they go under oh well so be it

  4. ioan anghel

    Some of the worst drivers on the road. More that 50% of their drivers were involvedcin some kind of accidents, of course they are trying to get an exempt from dmw records

  5. Bigdee

    I guess the evil technology is starting to so itself I think the the government is moving to fast with this hope they can move fast when the next natural disaster hit because they act like it’s a state of emergency to force technology on the trucking industry

  6. Karen

    I dont know about cost matters but I am self certifying drive times of 00:00. They are actually calculating in the seconds line so it may be I have 38 seconds of drive time. But when I self certify all I see are zeros. So what kind of self certify program is that? I am stating I drove none and they are calling it some. It also is punishing me for leaving to my nearest rest area following work which is in opposition to the whole premise of safety. Also my employer can edit my time. I also cant access records for my new employer which is my records regarding federal driving records. So if I apply at knight I cant give them my data. I have no access. My federal record belongs to my employer? Dumb.

    1. Robert Haenggi

      You can obtain your federal record at FMCSA.gov. Link https://www.psp.fmcsa.dot.gov/psp/Public

      Your ELD sounds terrible. My company’s ELD has a Personal Conveyance option that lets us drive to the nearest rest stop after a delivery without burning the Drive line.

      ELD should also have the means to e-mail logs. DOT has us do it at the scales sometimes. Maybe you can e-mail your logs to yourself?

      Regardless, these are all issues/questions to bring up with a prospective carrier before signing on to drive for them.

  7. Stacy Sprouse

    No you big companies wanted all these rule and regulations you got them deal with it . As a driver been on the road 25 yrs with not one accident I did not get exempt from the damm eld . So actually I hope your asses go out of business swift driver are one of the worst on the road .

    1. Robert Haenggi

      Regardless of what we think of Swift drivers, the FMCSA’s carrier crash statistics speak for themselves. These are available at the FMCSA.gov website and you can type any carriers’ name and look at the number of fatalities and crashes per year. The number of drivers is also listed, so you can calculate the ratio of crashes/driver. Comparing Swift to several other national carriers, we can see whether they are as bad as the lore.

      After comparing Swift to Schneider and Werner, the ratios are about the same. Some a little better, some a little worse.

      On the financial side, we can all look at these publicly traded companies’ Balance Sheets and determine if anyone looks like they’re going out of business. Don’t hold your breath with Knight/Swift.

      1. Ann

        Yes, I agree and recently discovering crashes are at an ALL time high, how did THAT happen with the millions of regulations?
        All these o/o beholden only to themselves, without a Corporation overseeing them…are renegades from other countries with Uncle Didhu hu, brother Ahmed etc. riding in the truck too cuz the SBA gave them Grant money $35,000 to buy a “”business” and another $10,000 for a vehicle!!
        No wonder they run at night only….lol..joke is on the DOT scardy cats, won’t peek into any trucks after sundown….

    2. kevin

      sorry stacy,swifts safety record has gotten much much better since kevin knight took over swift.i agree at one time they were number 1 on dots list.over the years theyve slowly gotten better.to this day im sorry to tell you they are not even in the top 10 on dot list

    3. John Manz

      I agree these big companies mainly swift and its other family companies have destroyed the trucking industry in comparison to when I first started in the 80,s we had freedom as drivers we also had comaradery among each other and it was our American heritage and a way of life that we enjoyed now it’s very UNAMERICAN and foreigners have taken it over because of swift undermining and undercutting the smaller guy who brought trucking the heritage,pride and hard work ethics that America was built on.swift is nothing but corporate greed who lobbied for more regulation to hurt its competitors the trucking industry is ruined by this greed and now let them eat there on crap it is not worth being a over regulated unappreciated underpaid told when you can and can’t drive and when you can and can’t sleep and if you deviate from these rules they charge you with a crime and take your hard earned dollars that’s trucking now it wasn’t like that before but now you have immigrants that come three Canada that the industry can use to take anybody’s place that disagrees with insane corruption that these mega trucking companies have created this is a sad day for American heritage that we had

Comments are closed.

John Gallagher

Based in Washington, D.C., John specializes in regulation and legislation affecting all sectors of freight transportation. He has covered rail, trucking and maritime issues since 1993 for a variety of publications based in the U.S. and the U.K. John began business reporting in 1993 at Broadcasting & Cable Magazine. He graduated from Florida State University majoring in English and business.