DOT issues further allowances for fuel haulers in states hit by Colonial Pipeline attack
Federal regulators extended overweight-load and hours-of-service relief across roughly a dozen East Coast states after a ransomware attack shut down the fuel artery running from Texas to New Jersey.
The U.S. Department of Transportation issued further regulatory allowances on May 11, 2021, for fuel haulers in states affected by the ransomware attack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline, according to Transport Topics. The pipeline, which runs more than 5,500 miles from Texas to New Jersey, had halted operations after the cyberattack, disrupting the supply of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel across much of the East Coast.
Under the DOT action, states with presidential disaster declarations issued within the prior 120 days were permitted to allow overweight fuel loads on interstate highways, per Transport Topics' reporting. Maryland's 120-day window was set to expire June 4 and Virginia's September 7, meaning the length of relief varied by state depending on when each declaration had been made.
The DOT move came two days after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's separate emergency declaration on May 9, which granted hours-of-service relief to truckers supporting the petroleum supply chain across 19 jurisdictions: Alabama, Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia, according to the same reporting.
A second federal action, and state-level moves
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration also acted, issuing a temporary enforcement stay on pipeline operator qualification rules for emergency personnel on May 12, per Transport Topics. States moved on their own tracks as well: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a state of emergency on May 11 allowing the Florida Department of Transportation to waive size and weight restrictions for divisible loads supporting emergency relief efforts. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed an emergency order suspending the state's fuel taxes, letting fuel haulers bypass weigh stations, and prohibiting price gouging on fuel.
Why the relief was needed
The combined federal and state actions were aimed at the same bottleneck: getting fuel trucks moving faster and carrying more weight to offset the pipeline shutdown, without haulers running afoul of weight limits or hours-of-service rules that would otherwise slow deliveries. The available reporting frames the moves as a direct response to the pipeline's "network issues" following the attack, rather than a broader regulatory change.
What remained unclear
The retrieved reporting does not specify exactly when Colonial Pipeline itself resumed full operations, nor does it detail how many additional states beyond the ten covered by the DOT weight-limit allowance (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia) might later be added if the emergency persisted.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Transport Topics. It restores a story originally published on this site in May 2021; figures are as reported at the time.