Sec. 20. (a) This section applies whenever there is filed with the department any schedule stating a new individual or joint rate, fare, charge, or classification for the transportation of passengers or household goods by a common carrier or carriers by motor vehicle, or by a carrier or carriers in conjunction with a common carrier or carriers by railroad or water in intrastate commerce, or any rule or practice affecting the rate, fare, or charge, or the value of the service.

(b) Upon complaint of any interested party or upon its own initiative at once and if it so orders, without answer or other formal pleading by the interested carrier or carriers but upon reasonable notice, the department may enter upon a hearing concerning the lawfulness of a rate, fare, or charge, or a rule or practice. Pending the hearing and the decision on the hearing, the department, by filing with the schedule and delivering to the carrier or carriers affected by the hearing a statement in writing of its reasons for the suspension, may from time to time suspend the operation of the schedule and defer the use of the rate, fare, charge, or classification, or the rule, regulation, or practice, but not for a longer period than one hundred eighty (180) days beyond the time when it would otherwise go into effect. After hearing, whether completed before or after the rate, fare, charge, classification, rule or practice goes into effect, the department may make the order with reference thereto as would be proper in a proceeding instituted after it has become effective.

(c) If the proceeding has not been concluded and an order made within the period of suspension, the proposed change of rate, fare, or charge, or classification, rule or practice, goes into effect at the end of the period.

(d) At any hearing involving a change in a rate, fare, charge, or classification or in a rule or practice, the burden of proof is on the carrier to show that the proposed rate, fare, charge, classification, rule or practice is just and reasonable.

As added by P.L.99-1989, SEC.13. Amended by P.L.110-1995, SEC.16.