Trucking Compliance Services for Dallas-Fort Worth Carriers

Who this page is for

The Texas Company Census lists 13,271 active carriers with a physical address in the cities of Dallas or Fort Worth alone, 4,378 of them interstate; carriers in Arlington, Irving, Grand Prairie and other suburbs are not included in that count. This page is for:

• Intermodal drayage carriers serving the BNSF Alliance and Union Pacific South Dallas terminals.
• Regional fleets running I-35 and I-45 to Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Oklahoma.
• Local delivery and construction fleets that stay in Texas and run under intrastate rules.
• Growing carriers moving from a handful of trucks to 20 or more, where an owner can no longer review every log personally.

Texas and federal rules: the short version

Trucks over 26,000 pounds that stay inside Texas run under Texas intrastate rules and need TxDMV registration; any trip that crosses into Oklahoma, Arkansas or Louisiana is under the federal rules for that run, so dispatch has to know which applies before the driver leaves. Our Texas compliance guide explains the intrastate hours, age and registration rules with sources, and our Texas Motor Carrier Safety Profile breaks inspection results down by fleet size.

The DFW freight picture, and why it matters for compliance

The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) reports that approximately 4.2 million trucks move in and out of the BNSF Railway Alliance Intermodal Facility each year, a figure it expects to almost double by 2035. The AllianceTexas Smart Port project, awarded an $80 million federal INFRA grant, includes a connector bridge from the inland port to State Highway 170 intended to take trucks off I-35W. NCTCOG also describes the International Inland Port of Dallas as a 7,500-acre area in South Dallas containing Union Pacific's intermodal facility and warehousing, and notes that the AllianceTexas Inland Port connects to the I-35 and I-45 National Highway Freight Network corridors.

For a carrier, the compliance meaning is concrete. Dense intermodal work means many short trips, frequent terminal waits and many yard moves, which is exactly where on-duty time is under-recorded, unassigned ELD driving piles up, and pre-trip inspections get rushed. Our guides to unassigned driving time and yard moves versus personal conveyance cover the two most common logging errors in that kind of work.

City truck-route rules in Dallas and Fort Worth

• Dallas truck routes. Dallas City Code sections 28-71 to 28-73, as printed in the code supplement pages the City Secretary publishes (dated 2003 and 2010), limit truck-tractors, semitrailers, pole trailers and trailers to designated truck routes. A truck may leave a route only to reach a terminal or a pickup or delivery point, by the shortest practical path.
• Dallas overnight residential restriction. Between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., a semitrailer, pole trailer or trailer may not leave a truck route onto streets next to single-family or duplex homes. Drivers off a route must carry a log, delivery slips or other proof of origin and destination for police.
• Fort Worth through trucks. Fort Worth City Code (section 22-114 and following) requires trucks with no local origin or destination to stay on designated routes such as I-20, I-30, I-35W, I-820, SH 121, SH 183 and SH 360. Local trucks must use a truck route wherever one can be used, and off-route drivers need proof of their last stop and next destination.

These rules turn into practical compliance items: dispatch has to route around them, and drivers need delivery paperwork in the cab whenever they leave a truck route. They also show up as citations on driver records.

Compliance problems DFW fleets run into

• Short-haul assumptions. Drivers on local runs using the short-haul log exception without meeting its radius and release-time conditions.
• Two rulebooks in one fleet. Intrastate and interstate trips mixed without dispatch tracking which applies.
• Yard moves and unassigned time. Common in intermodal and distribution work.
• Brake adjustment and lighting. Texas's most frequent inspection findings.
• Growth outpacing files. Driver files and annual reviews that slipped while the fleet doubled; see our growing fleet page.

What DFW carriers get

There is no Dallas-Fort Worth office to visit, and the work does not need one: you share read-only ELD access and documents through a secure folder, and we review, fix and report on a set schedule. For intermodal and distribution fleets we look first at yard moves, terminal waits and short-haul use in the logs.

• Daily HOS and ELD log auditing with unassigned driving cleanup.
• Driver qualification files built and kept current, with annual reviews and MVRs.
• DOT audit preparation for DPS compliance reviews, and new entrant audit support for new authorities.
• CSA score improvement, including DataQs challenges.
• A fractional safety department for fleets that want the safety function handled.

Client results reported on our Results page, with each client's context: SBS Trucking Services' Vehicle Maintenance BASIC moved from 93% to 65% in six months; Sandhu Trucking Services' HOS BASIC moved from 85% to 71% over five months; and Tamana Truck Lines' monthly HOS violations were reduced to near zero for extended periods. These are client-reported results, not guarantees.

About Fleet Regulators

Outsourced safety department, Austin, Texas

Fleet Regulators was founded by Rhythm Gandhi (The Safety Gal) and supports motor carriers remotely in all 50 states with DOT audit preparation, HOS log auditing, driver qualification files, and CSA score work. More about Rhythm and the team.