Tag Archives: Dangerous Goods

DG Advisory Council tries to make sense of lithium battery provisions

Why would anyone choose to spend three days in Washington a few days after the city was shut down for the Storm of the Decade? That’s what 70 or so DG experts asked ourselves, before we got down to the serious business of the Dangerous Goods Advisory Council January quarterly meeting in Alexandria last week.

IATA DGR Update: Everything you know about lithium battery shipping may change

Shippers are still coming to grips with the recent International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) addendum, which among other changes, established the first-ever state-of-charge limitation on air transport of lithium batteries. Then, on Saturday, January 16th, the International Air transport Association (IATA) released an addendum to 57th edition of the Dangerous Goods Regulations, commonly referred to as

DG Digest: FMCSA lowers truckers’ substance test rates, will hold FAST sessions; FRA begins PTC data collection

December 24: FMCSA cuts random truckers’ testing rate for substance abuse to 25%. Good news for truck drivers and carriers—the United States Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has cut the random testing rate for substance abuse in half, from 50% to 25%. This should produce a nice savings for carriers,

USDOT/FMCSA announces delay to new Medical Exam Report and Certificate compliance date

Today the United States Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) formally made the anticipated announcement of which rumor had circulated in the regulatory community for the last several days.  FMCSA offered a “grace period” of 120 days regarding mandatory use of the new Medical Examination Report (MER) (Federal Form MCSA-5875) and

New FMCSA Medical Examination Forms Released

On Monday December 7th, 2015, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) posted example copies of the revised Medical Examination Report Form (MCSA-5875) and Medical Examiner’s Certificate (MCSA-5876) on the FMCSA website. See below: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/medical/driver-medical-requirements/medical-applications-and-forms The FMCSA mandated use of the new forms in a Final Rule amending the FMCSR published in the Federal Register

2018 Rail PTC Extension rolls through Congress

Congress acted to avert confusion and delay on the nation’s rail infrastructure on Wednesday October 28th, 2015 by passing an extension to what had been a looming December 31st, 2015 deadline for railroads to fully implement Positive Train Control, or PTC, control systems on their networks. PTC is a control system that uses Global Positioning

Congressional politics threaten PTC extension bill

Just when American railroads were perhaps starting to breathe a bit easier about the December 31st, 2015 Positive Train Control (PTC) deadline account the seeming agreement in the House of Representatives about extending the deadline to 2018 under a pending bill HR 3651,  new political roadblocks to passage appear to be arising.  On Wednesday October

Congress advances bill to delay Railroad PTC Mandate

The US House of Representatives has introduced legislation to delay until 2018 the current deadline for US railroads to implement Positive Train Control (PTC) systems on their tracks.  As discussed in a previous blog on the subject,  the nation’s railroads have jointly stated the physical impossibility of completing such an inter-operative system by the end

ICAO to launch new aircraft tracking website

On September 22, 2015, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) announced the addition of a new portion of their website devoted to a centralized collection of aircraft tracking information.  The new information section of ICAO’s public website was created in response to recommendations from ICAO Member States in February of this year at the High

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