07.19.2007
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| Feds, states trip up driver over hazmat background checks
Feds, states trip up driver over hazmat background checks 7/18/07 Quote:
Ed Thompson has driven truck for more than 30 years and has held a hazmat endorsement for more than a decade.
Thompson, an OOIDA member from Salem, OR, used to drive fuel tankers for Texaco during the early 1990s “back when there was a Texaco,” he said.
After becoming an owner-operator, Thompson continued to renew his hazmat endorsement to keep his business more marketable.
On March 3, 2006, he received a letter from the Transportation Security Administration concerning a background check he initiated to keep his hazardous materials endorsement.
The agency determined that Thompson posed “no security threat,” the letter stated. A similar letter from the Oregon Department of Transportation verified the findings and said Thompson’s HME “remained valid until your next renewal,” scheduled for July 2011.
One year later, however, Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles sent another letter telling him his hazmat endorsement would expire within 30 days unless he initiated a second background check.
“I haven’t shot anybody since they did this – nothing on my record has changed,” Thompson said. “The thing that makes you mad is that they’re targeting the wrong people.”
TSA workers told Thompson that some drivers actually were required by their states to update their hazmat endorsements every two years.
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