Hours of Service rule for truck drivers being reviewed
Wayne Forrest and David Hannon -- Purchasing, 2/3/2005 7:00:00 AM
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Ad-ministration (FMCSA) of the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced in January that it was publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Hours of Service (HOS) rule and that "over the next 45 days, FMCSA will seek input from truck drivers, motor carriers, law enforcement officials, safety advocates and others on the HOS regulations." The review will focus on the new rule's impact on driver health and safety.
In July 2004, the D.C. Court of Appeals vacated the revised HOS rules saying that the regulations were arbitrary because the agency had not evaluated their impact on driver health and ordered the DOT to revise them. However, in the meantime, the new HOS regulations remained in effect under an indefinite stay of the court decision.
The rules increase daily driving time from 10 hours to 11, while daily on-duty time decreases from 15 nonconsecutive hours to 14 hours of consecutive time. The regulations also stipulate that 10 hours off-duty time must be taken each day, compared with the mandatory eight hours under the previous rules.
Truckers' cumulative on-duty time of 60 hours in seven days or 70 hours in eight days would remain the same under the new HOS regulations. The only revision is that a driver would be allowed to restart his or her weekly time limit after being off-duty for 34 hours. This restart would be allowed anytime after the start of a new workweek.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA) in September submitted a brief to the D.C. Court of Appeals, asserting that reverting to the previous HOS rules "would cause chaos and diminish highway safety."
The benefits of the current HOS rules, such as extended mandatory off-duty periods, would be lost, argues the ATA, saying the revised HOS regulations are "demonstrably safer" from a fatigue-reduction standpoint. Various other industry groups have shown support for the regulations.
Gary L. Whicker, senior vice president of engineering services for J.B. Hunt Transport, says the company has spent some $3 million to convert to new HOS rules, as, among other adjustments, truckers now follow a fixed schedule of driving during the day and resting at night. The company also tries for window appointments—as much as four hours in some cases—rather than fixed delivery times, for more schedule flexibility.
"Compliance is the key, and the FMCSA will surely have to address electronic on-board recording devices as a method of increasing compliance with any rule," says Whicker. "It is worth noting that we have seen a definite increase in the number of inspections, so there is no indication in lax enforcement by the government."
Public safety groups—which include Public Citizen and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety—assert that the new rules "failed to make important safety improvements," citing as an example the elimination of the sleeper-berth exception, which allows drivers to "take their required rest in two segments instead of a single block, thereby assuring that these drivers will be driving in a perpetual state of exhaustion."
They also advocate the use of electronic on-board recorders to monitor long-haul driving hours to reduce what the groups describe as "widespread noncompliance with driving limits."
Thomas Albrecht, a trucking analyst for BB&T Capital Markets, released a report in late 2004 that said the number of hours driven per week declined as a result of the hours of service regulations, despite increased demand for trucking services at that time. He estimated most trucking fleets have experienced at least a 2-4% drop in driver and tractor productivity largely due to the new rules.
Albrecht forecasts driver-truck productivity to drop at least 3-5% and 5-8% of drivers interviewed by BB&T Capital Markets said they expected to leave trucking solely because of the changes, which will add to the driver shortage problem facing the trucking industry, as will the drop in the number of men age 20 to 44, the prime age for truck driver recruits.
Watch Purchasing.com for updates on the Hours of Service issue.
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