June 5, 2001

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) today announced that M Y Enterprises Inc., which also does business as University Storage and Moving of Forestville, Md., a for-hire motor carrier that primarily hauls household goods, was fined $1,800 for hours-of-service violations and $9,500 for transporting individual household goods shipments across state lines without proper operating authority.

The motor carrier also received an unsatisfactory safety rating because of these violations. This means that, under federal regulations, University Storage and Moving has 60 days to comply with federal motor carrier safety regulations or face shut down and loss of operating authority.

The violations were discovered during a joint safety and commercial investigation conducted by FMCSA's Washington, D.C., division office and its household goods enforcement team.

Drivers are required to comply with a federal hours-of-service regulation that stipulates they must maintain accurate logs of their driving and on-duty activities, and University drivers were not doing this. Regulations permit drivers to be behind the wheel for 10 hours and then require rest for eight; these regulations also require that drivers not drive after being on duty for more than 70 hours in eight consecutive days.

To transport individual shipments of household goods in interstate transportation, carriers must be registered with FMCSA under common carrier of household goods authority.

Consumers may file household goods or other commercial motor carrier complaints on FMCSA's nationwide complaint hotline at 1-888-368-7238 (1-888 DOT-SAFT). To further protect consumers, a commercial complaint form is now available on The Safety Violation and the Consumer household Goods Commercial Complaint Website Hotline at http://nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov.

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