Truck drivers’ trade group the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) is applauding a report by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)’s Truck Leasing Task Force which calls for an end to certain truck lease-purchase agreements.
However, the future of those recommendations is somewhat cloudy, since the task force released its final report in the waning days of the Biden Administration, and the new Trump Administration likely has different priorities, according to an analysis by transportation law firm Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary.
The Truck Leasing Task Force (TLTF) was authorized in 2023 by a provision in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and was charged with examining those lease-purchase programs involving a motor carrier or the motor carrier’s affiliate, but not third-party lease-purchase programs. The group issued its final report to Congress, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) on January 16, just four days before the new White House Administration began.
According to Scopelitis, the TLTF report recommended that Congress should ban motor carrier-affiliated lease-purchase programs. And if Congress decides not to ban such lease-purchase programs, the TLTF recommended significant Congressional and agency oversight of the programs by FMCSA, the DOL, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Under the approach of the new Trump Administration, such actions now seem unlikely. “Many of the TLTF’s recommendation would require legislation by Congress or regulations by FMCSA to implement. Given the prescriptive nature of the recommendations, e.g., if allowing carrier lease-purchase programs, the drivers should be classified as a W-2 employee, it is unclear how much appetite there will be for further economic regulation of the industry,” the Scopelitis report said.
Still, on Wednesday OOIDA reiterated its support for the report’s conclusion that truck lease-purchase agreements should be prohibited. OOIDA said it has voiced similar concerns for decades, and cited the Task Force’s findings that truck lease-purchase agreements—where carriers control drivers’ work, compensation, and debts—fail more than 90% of the time, leaving hundreds of thousands of drivers financially devastated.
“Many people are drawn to trucking under the belief that hard work guarantees success,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a release. “But predatory lease-purchase agreements prey on that trust, leaving drivers financially and emotionally broken.”
OOIDA pointed to a number of ways that the report could still have an impact, through its recommendations to mitigate—if not ban outright—the harm of those programs. Such steps could include: mandatory disclosures of contract terms, success rates, and expected take-home pay; whistleblower protections for drivers reporting abuse; and state and local enforcement measures, alongside grants for driver training.
