FMCSA Fertilizer Transportation Temporary Waiver
On May 26, 2026, FMCSA granted a three-month waiver from certain hours-of-service rules for trucks hauling fertilizer, issued in coordination with USDA and in response to a petition from The Fertilizer Institute. The stated trigger is an "urgent fertilizer supply shortfall" hitting during the critical spring application window. It's effective May 26 and expires August 26, 2026.
Two items are waived:
- 49 CFR 395.3 — the standard hours-of-service driving limits.
- 49 CFR 395.8(a)(1)(i) — the ELD (electronic logging device) mandate.
Drivers hauling straight or blended fertilizer for commercial farming/ag purposes get relief from the HOS clock and the ELD requirement. Everything else in the FMCSRs stays fully in force.
FMCSA had to make a statutory finding under TEA-21 (Pub. L. 105-178, § 4007) that the waiver achieves a level of safety equivalent to or greater than baseline. To get there, they bolted on a substantial set of conditions:
- 16-hour hard cap on driving in any 24-hour period — and this cap applies even if the driver is also leaning on the existing § 395.1(k) ag exemption. This is the key practical limit; it's not an open-ended "drive as long as you want" waiver.
- Mandatory rest: 6 consecutive hours in a sleeper berth (or 8 hours off if no sleeper) per 24-hour period.
- Immediate-rest provision: if a driver says they need rest, the carrier must let them stop and take at least 10 consecutive hours off.
- 10-hour break required when waiver operations (or a mix of waiver + normal ops) hit 14 hours, before returning to normal operations.
- Paper RODS required for non-ELD drivers, kept for 6 months and available to FMCSA/law enforcement.
- Valid CDL required; no drivers or carriers under an out-of-service order are eligible.
- Crash notification to FMCSA within 5 business days for any crash involving a driver operating under the waiver.
Important carve-outs
- No hazmat. The waiver explicitly does not cover transportation of hazardous materials as defined in 49 CFR 383.5 (anything requiring placarding under 49 CFR part 172 subpart F, or select agents/toxins under 42 CFR part 73). For fertilizer clients this matters — anhydrous ammonia and other placarded fertilizer products are excluded. This is a dry/blended-product waiver, not a UAN-tanker or NH3 waiver.
- It does not touch Part 382 (drug/alcohol testing), Part 383 (CDL), Part 387 (insurance/financial responsibility), the hazmat regs (Parts 100–180), or size and weight limits (23 CFR 658, 23 U.S.C. 127). It's narrow.
- Carriers still need any USDA/state Department of Agriculture authority and documentation to move the product.
Covered states: 35 states, including Illinois, plus AL, AR, CA, DE, FL, GA, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MD, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, WA, WV, WI, and WY.
The preemption angle: Under 49 U.S.C. 31315(d) and 49 CFR 381.600, while the waiver is in effect no state may enforce a conflicting law against a covered driver/carrier in interstate commerce. States can also voluntarily extend the same relief to intrastate commerce — which is the lever to watch in Springfield. If your clients want the relief to apply to purely in-state Illinois fertilizer hauls, that's a decision for IDOT/ICC-side state action, not something the federal waiver does on its own.