Editorial: A Big Step for Sensible Regulation

This Editorial appears in the Dec. 12 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

It appears likely the status quo on federal spending will continue through April 28, with the House passing a continuing resolution. If approved by the Senate and signed by President Obama, it keeps familiar budgetary patterns intact until a new Congress and a new president can get to work after Jan. 20.

In it is an order requiring the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to maintain the current version of the 34-hour restart provision of the truck driver hours-of-service rule. This means FMCSA will not be allowed anytime soon to switch back to the version of restart in force from July 2013 through December 2014 — a rule widely disliked within the industry.

It’s a win for American Trucking Associations and its president Chris Spear.

He said in October during the federation’s annual Management Conference & Exhibition that ATA was working hard to deliver a victory on the hours-of-service rule fix by this month. “I’m confident that everyone’s hard work will pay off,” he said to the membership then.

And it did. The House passed it 326-96.

“The entire industry will now be able to comply with this rule, thanks to a common-sense approach championed by a bipartisan group of legislators,” he said Dec. 7.

If signed into law, and if President Trump and Congress make this truly permanent next year, drivers, dispatchers and other fleet managers will breathe a sigh of relief.

Keeping the current version of restart maintains a federal presence in regulating hours of service. No one is saying that shouldn’t be the case.

Indeed, the current version even has a 34-hour restart provision. No one is trying to get rid of that.

The problem with the 2013-2014 version is that it was far too specific on what 34 hours had to look like. It had to include 1 a.m.-to-5 a.m. rest periods on consecutive days. The effect was to force an armada of trucks onto the nation’s highways around 5:30 a.m. or 6 a.m. at the beginning of rush hour.

Didn’t matter if that was consistent with making a timely delivery. If a driver used restart, that had to be the case. Restart usage also was capped, unwisely, at once a week in 2013-2014.

Keeping restart in its current form means logistics professionals can behave like adults and work out plans, based on years of accumulated experience, where there is 34 hours of rest for the driver — soon to be monitored by electronic logging devices that never blink — and prompt delivery for customers without absurd contortions to schedules dictated by an inflexible rule.

Bravo.