Congress Can Deliver The Hours

A truck-driving California congressman suggested that if officials at the Department of Transportation can’t pull the trigger on new hours-of-service regulations, Congress should do it for them.

Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) said at a meeting of the Agricultural Transporters Conference that a legislative solution might be the answer to the long-awaited reform.

Haulers of agricultural goods are especially concerned about the fate of the rules since their business involves an annual harvest-time rush to deliver time-sensitive goods.

Hours-of-service reform “is something that should have been settled. The only reason it hasn’t is that you haven’t made a big enough deal out of it,” Pombo told members of the conference, who were in Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Va., for their first Legislative & Leadership Conference and annual meeting June 14 and 15. The agricultural haulers are a managed conference of American Trucking Associations.

Pombo, who has a commercial driver license and whose family business owns a feed lot and nine trucks in his home state, said he thought a regulatory solution would be difficult to come by since the current administration seems more intent on not angering special interests.

Transportation lawyer James Flint, who also spoke at the conference, agreed about the cause of the gridlock at DOT.

“Hours of service? They won’t do anything about that,” Flint said. “They can’t make a decision between competing interests.”

“As a result,” said Pombo, “it appears that a legislative solution is our best bet.”

Pombo acknowledged that a bill focused on reforming the rules that govern a truck driver’s hours behind the wheel would be difficult to pass. He said slipping it in an appropriations bill when Congress is trying to end its session would be a better tact.

JoAnn White, safety management coordinator for Frankie Arrants Trucking, which hauls timber out of Jamesville, N.C., said she did not think it would come to that.

White, like most of the conference’s members, was anxious to see ATA’s final position on hours of service,which was to be debated days later at the trucking association’s June leadership meeting.

“We just want to get our proposal finalized so it can go on to the next stages,” said White, who is on ATA’s committee dealing with the issue.

Fred A. Gowan of Teresi Trucking in Lodi, Calif., said it might be helpful to “let DOT know that if they’re not going to do something, then we can pursue a legislative solution.”

Many states give special exemptions from the federal hours of service to agricultural carriers during harvest time. Fletcher Hall, executive director of ATC, said making sure that flexibility is retained is paramount to ag haulers.

“There has to be consideration given to the realistic world demands that are made by the products being transported, and in the case of agricultural products, those concerns obviously affect the shipper, the trucker, the producer and the consumer,” said Hall. “We have to protect those exemptions based on necessity, so we don’t affect the quality or price of agricultural products for the consumer.”

Ed Rocha, president of Ed Rocha Transportation in Modesta, Calif., said the coolness and lack of rain in his region will mean the peak seasons for many crops could overlap, and the crops would all have to hauled at the same time.

Keith A. Klindworth, chief of the marketing and transportation analysis group of the Department of Agriculture, told the audience that recent surveys of shippers and receivers showed they were very satisfied with the performance of truckers.

“Until you get these users excited about the issues you know about, it’s difficult to see how you can really make progress,” he said. “That’s where your association can make the case that if you don’t deal with problems like hours of service and other issues, shippers won’t get the type of service they’re getting now in the future, nor will rates stay as low.”

Klindworth said the U.S. agriculture industry is the primary user of transportation services in the country and that its top transportation mode is trucking, which hauls 45% of the total ton-miles.

He said due to bioengineering of products and decreased governmental control over prices, agricultural shippers will need the versatility trucking can provide even more in the future.

“They need a flexible transportation system that meets their capacity needs, and many people doubt our rail system can provide that capacity, and there are similar problems with waterway capacity,” said Klindworth.