CHEVY CHASE, Md. — Executives from trucking companies large and small offered detailed accounts to federal officials of the costs their companies would incur if the hours of service regulations proposed by the Department of Transportation took effect.
The revised regulations would be prohibitively expensive, the truckers said during the first of an additional set of public sessions on DOT’s proposal, Sept. 25-26. After concluding its formal round of hearings in July, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration agreed to hold further “roundtable discussions” in which truckers would be asked to present specific and comprehensive data about how their operations would be affected by the new regulations.
American Trucking Associations released a study in late August that put an industrywide $19 billion price tag on the regulatory package — six times greater than what DOT had estimated (8-21, p. 1). Last week, a number of carrier executives got down to specifics about their companies.
Michael Koppenhofer, safety director for Watkins Motor Lines of Lakeland, Fla., said his company would have to spend more than $45 million annually to comply with the safety reform measure.
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