Editorial: Racing to the Finish
The year is not coasting to a quiet conclusion. We chronicle the tumult for trucking in 2015 in this issue, and the omnibus spending bill heading for approval looks like it will have a couple more shovelfuls of news for the industry — with maybe even more to come.
After the approval of the highway funding bill, an anti-coercion rule for drivers and an electronic logging device mandate, now comes omnibus, which sets fiscal 2016 spending at $1.1 trillion for the entire federal government. In addition, the bill affirms the suspension of the 2013 hours-of-service restart restrictions but passes on a 33-foot nationwide length maximum for pup trailers.
Recent months have been frenzied in Washington, but the pace probably won’t last. In presidential election years, such as 2016, politics usually trumps, errr, beats governing.
We are pleased that Congress has set a substantial burden of proof on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for reinstituting the 2013-2014 version of restart.
This segment of HOS was a highly meddlesome piece of regulation that micromanaged a driver’s schedule. Before the howls of indignation roll in, let us say that we are in favor of an HOS rule, and even one including restart.
The 34-hour restart that existed prior to July 2013, for example, was just fine. That will be staying around for a while now, it seems, and we applaud that development and urge all drivers and carriers to comply scrupulously with that version of restart.
We would have liked to have seen the 17.9% increase in trucking productivity that would have come with the move to 33-foot trailers from 28-footers, but now it’s time to look at tax laws.
House and Senate tax writers have been pushing a package of retroactive tax extensions so rules on business taxes that have been in effect will remain there. The chief financial officers with whom we speak value tax stability highly and loathe last-minute scrambles to incorporate changes. We will keep you posted.
It has been a busy, notable year. We will have to find a new topic for our attention now that there finally is a multiyear transportation act.
We also got to see autonomous driver assistance in heavy-duty trucks, made possible by radar, infrared cameras, more cameras that replace mirrors and computer chips that quickly make decisions after analyzing data.
The industry already has a lot to do for 2016, and then there will be unanticipated surprises we can’t even imagine now.
