Tue Jun 2, 2026 № 03 · Compliance Tech Vol I · Issue 03
Freight/Signal
 
 
 
Indiana · California What to adopt, what to ignore, what to comply with. A Logixtecs Publication

Good Tuesday, operators. Two weeks into MOTUS, the registration system you're now legally required to use is still broken — and FMCSA just quietly admitted it through the back door of a parallel exemption. Here's what's failing, what the agency conceded, and what to do this week if you're stuck.

— Freight/Signal Editorial

In today's issue

—The ELD purge cuts 14 more — 2 deadlines on the calendar
—MOTUS, two weeks in: what FMCSA already conceded
—The fertilizer HOS waiver now covers 35 states
The Market
On-highway diesel
$5.523
▼ 7.3¢ WoW
Reefer L:T ratio
15.0
▲ tight
Flatbed spot
$3.05/mi
— flat
Reefer report
FL corrects, CA surges
seasonal handoff

The Call. Diesel dropped to $5.523/gal — second consecutive week down, off 7.3¢ from $5.596 on May 18. For carriers running ag corridors under the new HOS waiver, the fuel pullback helps margin on the extra runs. On the reefer side, DAT's 5/31 Reefer Report flagged Florida correcting while California surges — the seasonal handoff is here.

Indicative figures. Public sources (EIA, DAT). Not a substitute for paid intelligence.

The Cold Open

Two weeks after MOTUS replaced FMCSA's decades-old registration tech, the most useful public resource for working in it isn't .gov — it's motusbugs.com, a crowdsourced bug board built by design consultancy Don Norman Associates. The agency mailed 2.2 million launch letters; 400,000 came back undeliverable. Then it quietly granted itself a six-month exemption on the parallel medical-cert rollout — admitting through the back door that the tech overhaul isn't ready. Your MCS-150 update is still due. The system is still broken.

Three Signals
Signal 1 Carrier Compliance

The ELD purge keeps cutting — 14 devices in May, deadlines incoming.

What: FMCSA revoked Safe ELD (iOS + Android) and MYLOGS on May 7, and 12 more devices on May 20 — 888 ELD, DRAGON, ACTION, Mondo HOS, FIRST and FIRST V2.0, MTL, USPower, Sam Freight, DSGELOGS, COBRA, GT USA ELOGS. That's 67 ELDs purged since January 2025. Why it matters: drivers caught using a revoked device after the deadline get cited under 395.8(a)(1) and placed Out-of-Service. Do: check your device against the revoked list this week. Safe ELD / MYLOGS deadline is July 7; the 12-device deadline is July 20.

Source: FMCSA, Overdrive.

Signal 2 Executive Compliance

The enforcement posture is sharpening while the systems are failing.

What: DOT withheld $73 million from New York for failing to revoke illegally-issued trucking licenses, and FMCSA tightened identity verification on the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse — both in the same week MOTUS rolled out broken. Why it matters: the agency is being more aggressive with states and carriers while its own tools are failing — same agency, opposite directions. The gap is where penalties accumulate. Do: if you hire from NY's CDL pool, confirm a clean Clearinghouse pre-employment query before dispatch — the new ID flow may add friction without warning.

Source: FMCSA on NY, FMCSA on Clearinghouse.

Signal 3 Carrier

FMCSA's fertilizer HOS waiver now covers 35 states.

What: FMCSA's emergency declaration for fertilizer hauls — effective May 26 through August 26 — covers 35 states, lets drivers run up to a 16-hour day, and lets them swap ELDs for paper duty status records while transporting fertilizer for ag use. Trigger: a fertilizer supply shortfall at spring planting. Why it matters: more than half the country is now operating fertilizer corridors under relaxed HOS — a real capacity unlock if you haul ag inputs. Do: confirm with your safety officer whether you're using the waiver, and that your paper logs are defensible if you do — the relief is for fertilizer hauls specifically, not the whole trip.

Source: Landline Media.

The Deep Dive

MOTUS, two weeks in.

Strip the press releases off MOTUS and you find a federal IT project that shipped on a deadline its software couldn't meet. The platform replaced FMCSA's decades-old registration network on May 14 at 8:00 PM Eastern — Login.gov–backed, fraud-resistant, single sign-in for every interaction with the agency. The Secretary's launch statement framed it as the end of "loose, fraud-prone applications." 2.2 million launch letters went out. 400,000 came back undeliverable.

Week one: spinning wheels, "unauthorized access" JSON errors on routine MCS-150 updates, login failures during the exact window the filings were due. Design consultancy Don Norman Associates stood up motusbugs.com as a public bug board within two weeks of launch — a six-column Kanban (Reported → Confirmed → Working → Fixed → Open → Submitted to FMCSA), structured issue cards, upvotes — — it's collecting submissions faster than FMCSA's published response cadence. FreightWaves' May 30 piece carried the line that defined the week: "It is one of the worst software releases I've ever witnessed."

The tell that the agency knows is in a different doorway. On April 11, FMCSA quietly issued a 180-day exemption letting CDL holders and carriers use paper medical certs for up to 60 days after issuance — because the parallel NRII (National Registry II) rollout, which is supposed to electronically transmit medical certifications from examiners to state DL agencies, isn't ready either. The exemption runs through October 11. FMCSA has stated it does not plan to grant additional nationwide waivers after that. Translation: the parallel system needed for the registration overhaul to work won't be functional for at least five more months, and the agency is pre-committing to no extensions.

What this means for an operator this week: the gap between FMCSA's enforcement posture and its own system reliability is widening. The agency is withholding $73M from New York while its login flow drops your MCS-150 mid-submission. The hedge is documentation — timestamp every failed attempt, save screenshots, version-stamp your paper backups, and file through a compliance service provider with API access if you have one (most are bypassing the public web form's failures).

Read the full deep dive →

Tool of the Week
motusbugs.com WATCH

Type: Crowdsourced bug board · Effort: Zero (read-only) · Risk: Zero

motusbugs.com is exactly what it says: a public Kanban of MOTUS bugs and the workarounds that are holding. Not affiliated with FMCSA — it's run by design consultancy Don Norman Associates. The most useful thing on the internet for working with MOTUS right now because it's the only place where what's broken is documented in operator-readable form, with category tags, status workflow, and upvotes that surface the bugs hitting carriers hardest. You don't "adopt" it because there's nothing to install — you bookmark it. Before you spend an hour fighting a MOTUS error, check the board for a known workaround. Reporting your own helps the queue; submissions are forwarded to FMCSA.

The thing to watch for: the moment FMCSA publishes its own status page, this resource becomes redundant. Until then, it's the canonical reference.

Source: motusbugs.com.

Rule Watch
Jul 7
Safe ELD / MYLOGS deadline — OOS after
 35 days
Jul 20
12-device ELD deadline — OOS after
 48 days
Aug 26
Fertilizer HOS waiver expires (35 states)
 85 days
Oct 11
NRII paper-cert exemption — no further nationwide waivers planned
 131 days

Countdowns from ship date (Jun 2). ● ≤7d · ● 8–30d · ● 30+d

Question of the Week

Hit reply with the worst MOTUS error you've hit this week — screenshot if you've got one. Best entries (with permission) become Signal 1 next Tuesday. If you're working with a compliance service provider, tell me which workarounds are actually holding.

Off the Dock

Issues land Tuesday at 6 a.m. Central. If this one was useful, forward it to someone running freight ops.

— Freight/Signal · [email protected]

A Logixtecs Publication · Established 2026

Indiana · California · Vol 1 · Issue 03

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