An effort is under way to change the International Registration Plan, the system through which interstate motor carriers fulfill their vehicle registration obligations, to make the plan more flexible for the industry and simpler for states and industry alike.


The American Trucking Associations' State Laws Newsletter reports that for many carriers, the change would also involve lower costs.

The effort goes by the name of the Full Reciprocity Plan, although an earlier version of the idea, which has been around for years, was the Dallas Plan, says ATA.

Here's how ATA explains it: Under IRP as it is now, a carrier renewing registration declares to its base jurisdiction which states and provinces it plans to travel in during the coming year and pays apportioned fees to those jurisdictions on the basis of where the fleet's vehicles traveled the preceding year. Only the declared jurisdictions appear on the registration cab cards. If the carrier's plans change during the year, and it needs to travel into additional jurisdictions, it must either add those to its registration or buy trip permits. Either one can be expensive, and both can delay vehicle movements.

The Full Reciprocity Plan - FRP for short - would eliminate the complexity by automatically making IRP registration a registration for all IRP member states and provinces. IRP fees would be calculated the same way they are now. A carrier would pay on the basis of where its vehicles traveled in the preceding year. It would pay fees only to the jurisdictions it actually traveled in, but it would be registered everywhere. (The International Fuel Tax Agreement works much this way already.)

Adoption of the FRP would require a significant amendment to the IRP, which requires the approval of three-quarters of the IRP member jurisdictions, ATA reports. That may occur in about a year's time.