We've seen quite a few changes in trucking regulations already this year. Some rules have been postponed, others removed, a couple added, and a big one is still on the way. Here's a look at the 5 regulations that could affect your trucking business the most.

The DOT is proposing a new rule that could affect your company’s drug testing procedures. The proposal is to add four commonly abused opioids to the driver drug testing panel in urine tests. The drugs are generally taken as pain pills.

The ELD mandate coming up in December, and one of the benefits that some ELD providers are trying to sell is being able to use the data from the ELD to file your IFTA fuel taxes faster. We asked our compliance experts, Gary and Jenell, how that would work.

The 2013 version of the 34-hour restart rule required drivers to be off-duty for two periods from 1AM to 5AM before they could go back to work, and they restart could only be used once per week.[More]

One of the executive orders that President Donald Trump issued early on in his presidency stated that for every new regulation added to the books, two existing regulations had to be taken off. There have been some questions as to how that order will apply to rules that have already been published but are not yet in effect.

For months the trucking industry has been prepping itself for new regulations from the FMCSA that would’ve done away with MC numbers and all other docket numbers. Instead of using MC numbers, carriers were going to be identified solely by their DOT number. In order to do that, everyone was going to have to start using something called the Unified Registration System (URS).

Keeping up with trip sheets and hours-of-service logs can suck up a lot of your time. All that paperwork can feel redundant, too, so what if you just use your HOS logs to file your IFTA taxes instead?

There’s good news when it comes for hours-of-service (HOS) rules, at least for the time being. President Obama signed a short-term funding bill last week that allows truckers to keep using the 34-hour restart without restrictions as a way to reset their on-duty hours once they ran out of available time.

The Department of Transportation is establishing a central database called the Commercial Driver’s License Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse. Carriers will be required to register their employees and report test results to the clearinghouse, which will contain all of the relevant drug and alcohol testing information for commercial drivers.

Back in May, we asked small carriers and owner-operators if they had made the switch over to electronic logbooks. Most said that they’d wait until they’re forced to switch in December 2017, while others said that they were shopping around. But when it comes times to get one, how do you know the ELD you’re buying will be compliant?