Letters to the Editor: HOS, Owner-Operators, Driver Training, Traffic Jams
These Letters to the Editor appear in the Jan. 14 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Hours of Service
I think everyone is becoming tired of the continued drama from the hours-of-service debacle. Does the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration really believe they can reissue the same rules the courts have thrown out twice and they will now be accepted? Do they think the courts have not reviewed all available statistical evidence? The courts already have indicated in their opinions that the science behind the research presented by FMCSA goes against these same rules.
It’s time to develop rules based on good fatigue research. If the average worker was asked to do what we ask drivers to do, based on the current rules, there would be a labor revolt in this country like nothing we have ever seen before.
Therein lies a lot of our problems with the driver shortage.
The 11 hours of driving time never made sense from a safety standpoint. Time-on-task has always been a factor for increased accidents. The 34-hour restart was a positive idea, not because it had any basis in fatigue or accident management, but because it gave drivers a tool for managing their duty records and not constantly falsifying the logs. If the rule was intended to manage fatigue, it would be considerably longer.
Stop the merry-go-round — we all want to get off.
FMCSA needs to step back, stop being influenced by the trucking companies and issue rules that make sense, remembering that their primary responsibility is safety.
Kenneth Morris
Consultant
Risk Consultants Inc.
Atlanta
I have been reading and hearing about this change and that change in the hours of service for around three years now, and I am getting fatigued just listening to it all.
I have been driving off and on since 1968 and came back to driving big trucks full-time in 1993 because I love what I do.
I get cut off by cars. I see people in their cars driving with their knees while using their laptop computers, doing their bank statements or, in some cases, engaging in X-rated activities while driving or attempting to drive.
These drivers seem to be getting younger all the time: Why don’t the parents against tired drivers take the keys away from their children after they have been up all night playing computer games — or whatever they are doing — instead of planting crosses and name tags alongside the road after the fact for their dead teens?
They should quit complaining about the hard-working men and women who deliver everything from toilet paper to the cars they drive and the food they eat. They don’t want truckers on the road, but they want the products we deliver. They should start looking in their own backyards before throwing rocks at the big trucks.
Joseph Rehder Sr.
A Proud Trucker
Baltimore
Owner-Operators
We already have the perfect model of how to define “independent contractor owner-operator.” It is an owner-operator with his own Department of Transportation authority.
Yes, it’s that simple.
For too many years since deregulation, “owner-operator” was synonymous with “independent,” which Webster’s defines as “free from the influence, control or determination of another or others. Free from the rule of another.” Those who remember the steel-hauler strikes of the 1960s will also remember that the courts held owner-operators leased to trucking companies to be “de facto employees” because they were not free of Webster’s definition of “independent.”
The de facto employee owner-operator had more freedom than an owner-operator leased today to a trucking company. They had provisions in their lease contracts permitting them to trip-lease loads from competitors — something no trucking company using owner-operators today would permit.
The owner-operator leased to a trucking company today is in every way a dependent owner-operator, compared with an authentic independent running on his or her own DOT authority, because they de-pend on the carrier for:
• Public liability insurance, giving the carrier complete control of the equipment.
• Work, provided by the carrier’s dispatch system.
• Sales people, licensing and permitting, accounts receivable, safety and compliance personnel and equipment maintenance.
• All business document identification, including logs.
• Payroll, with the dependent owner-operator never really negotiating his compensation — usually a flat mileage rate very similar to the carrier’s method of compensating company drivers — and relying on the company dispatcher to grant him time off.
A dependent owner-operator is no different from a skilled mechanic or technician possessing $80,000 worth of tools he or she uses while employed by a truck dealership. An owner-operator leased to a trucking company is a skilled blue-collar worker whose “tool box” is his truck and who works for an employer.
An owner-operator with more than one truck leased does not have the final say regarding who drives his other trucks. His driver must apply like any other driver wanting to drive a company truck. Many companies reserve the right to fire the leased owner-operator’s driver without his permission.
Does anyone find any independence here, other than the right to quit? Even company drivers can do that.
Now, let’s look at an authentic independent contractor owner-operator. This businessman:
• Has DOT authority and has started a business — something that is supposed to be one of the major benefits of deregulation because an owner-operator could go into business for himself without going through the very costly and prohibitive regulatory process to get authority
• Provides his own insurance, including public liability.
• Develops and maintains his own compliance system and is audited by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, not an employer.
• Has his name or his company’s name on all his paperwork, including logs. He may list himself in the phonebook or advertise. He is responsible for acquiring all permits and licensing, in his own name.
• Develops his own customer base directly because he is able to serve as many customers as he can handle. He bills them directly, and the customer does not send his receivables through a company accounts receivable.
• Is personally responsible for purchasing and maintaining his own equipment.
Trucking companies that also broker freight to authentic independents are making my points. They call people with their own authority “independents” and still try to use the same term for their leased owner-operators, when the only thing the dependent owner-operator and the independent owner-operator have in common is that they are truck drivers hauling freight for the same trucking company. But the authentic independent can haul for numerous companies, while the dependent has to wait for his dispatcher or agent to find loads.
If this is not all about who controls the owner-operator — which conflicts with the definition of independent — I challenge the trucking management and owners to require or assist all their now-dependent owner-operators to acquire their own authority and become authentic independent contractors. These trucking companies then could work to develop real business-to-business relationships with these now-authentic independents to haul their freight through their brokerage departments.
Name Withheld by Request
Owner-Operator/Consultant
U.S. Southeast
Driver Training
As it stands, we have too much government intervention into CDL drivers’ lives.
The so-called “brains” in government should institute driver programs in high schools to educate young drivers about commercial trucks and their limitations as to stopping, turning and signaling.
Carl Macon
Sales/Brokerage
Newport Beach, Calif.
Traffic Jams
Decrease and eliminate traffic jams by declaring the left-most lane of the expressway is only for emergency vehicles and passing.
This would ensure that emergency vehicles can navigate more easily in high-traffic areas. It also would force drvers who habitually stay in the left lane to move right, except to pass.
A secondary law to accompany this law would require vehicles in the right lane to move left 1/8-mile before encountering merging traffic. That would give the right-of-way to merging traffic on the freeway and allow them to accelerate more rapidly and unhindered. As it is now, traffic backs up and stops to allow merging traffic.
Charlton Wissmueller
Senior Buyer, Transportation Services
Chrysler LLC
Auburn Hills, Mich.
