ATA Files Lawsuit to Challenge FMCSA’s New Hours Rule

American Trucking Associations has asked a federal appeals court to throw out the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s recently published hours-of-service rule and is likely to challenge specifically the rule’s 34-hour restart provision.

The lawsuit, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Feb. 14, asked the court to block implementation of the hours rule, which it said used flawed assumptions and analysis and is “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law.”

In its lawsuit, ATA did not disclose specifically what provisions of the rule it would challenge.

ATA will make its “statement of issues” in a legal filing by March 15, said Richard Pianka, ATA’s deputy chief counsel.

However, ATA Chairman Dan England told Transport Topics that one of ATA’s legal challenges would include the rule’s requirement that, before starting a new workweek, a driver must take a 34-hour rest that must include two rest breaks, each from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.

“That’s the one that we’ve looked at and are most upset about,” said England, who is chairman of C.R. England Trucking Co., a Salt Lake City truckload carrier.

England said the rule’s restart provision would reduce the productivity of C.R. England’s 1,200-truck dedicated fleet by about 10% or more, requiring additional hours to complete the runs in dedicated lanes.

“It will also be significant in our other fleets, but it’s most significant in our dedicated fleet,” England added.

“It’s a sad state of affairs that we have to sue the FMCSA to try and retain our ability to be as productive as we have been,” England said. “We’re leading this economy out of a recession and doing it very well with a safety performance that’s been great.”

England said ATA also is concerned about a provision in the rule that would require truck drivers to take a 30-minute break before completing eight hours of driving.

Henry Jasny, general counsel of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, declined comment on the ATA lawsuit. The group had challenged the prior hours rule in federal court.

Jasny said his clients have not yet reached a decision on whether to challenge the current rule.

FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro, speaking at a Feb. 15 round table of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals in Washington D.C., declined to comment on ATA’s lawsuit but defended the agency’s hours-of-service proposal, saying the changes would reduce fatigue-related crashes.

“It’s a very good rule, well-written and documented,” she said.

Asked if the legal challenge would push back implementation, she said, “No. We’ll let the process work its way through.”

The agency has said the restart provision would affect only about 15% of trucking industry drivers.

But ATA President and CEO Bill Graves attacked the agency’s research and cost-benefit analysis as flawed.

“FMCSA’s own analyses show that, even when they overstate the safety benefits of these changes, the costs created by their rule still outweigh those benefits,” Graves said in a Feb. 13 statement. “We need this issue to be resolved in a credible manner, taking into account the undisputed crash reduction since 2004, so we can focus limited government and industry resources on safety initiatives that will have a far greater impact on highway safety.”

FMCSA’s Ferro steadfastly has defended the rule, saying that research indicates it has the potential to help drivers overcome cumulative sleep deprivation.

The agency has estimated that the rule will cost about $470 million annually while yielding benefits of about $630 million, producing a net benefit of $160 million a year.

But in his statement, Graves noted that the hours rules that have been in place since 2004 have contributed to an “unprecedented improvement in highway safety.”

“The law is clear about what steps FMCSA must undertake to change the rules, and we cannot allow this rulemaking, which was fueled by changed assumptions and analyses that do not meet the required legal standards, to remain unchallenged,” Graves said.

In addition to the restart provision, the new hours rule, announced in late December and set to take effect in July 2013, reduces total driver allowable hours to 70 from 82 per week.

The agency retained the 11 hours of driving provision, ultimately not moving forward with its prior expressed preference to reduce the daily limit to 10 hours.

The rule also limits the maximum driving window to 14 consecutive hours after drivers come on duty but allows drivers to work on tasks other than driving during the 14-hour window.

The fight in the federal courts over the hours-of-service rule dates back to 2003, when Annette Sandberg, then acting administrator of FMCSA, introduced a “final” hours-of-service rule that extended allowable driving hours to the current 11 from 10 but cut drivers’ overall workday to 14 from 15 hours.

That rule and a nearly identical hours rule issued in 2005 were both rejected by a federal appeals court. In 2008, another rule was challenged in court by Public Citizen, the Teamsters union and the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.

In October 2009, the parties in the lawsuit agreed to give FMCSA another chance to issue a proposed hours rule.

That settlement, however, ended Feb. 8, when a federal judge dismissed the case following the publication in December of the new mandate for all interstate carriers.

The current proposed rule originally was to have been finished by July 26 but had been delayed twice.