Proponents of Current HOS Rule Urge FMCSA to Add Flexibility

This story appears in the Jan. 25 print edition of Transport Topics.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Backers of the current driver hours-of-service rule far outnumbered opponents in the first of four scheduled public hearings held by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration as it reviews the much-contested regulation.

A representative sample of dozens of trucking industry executives praised the regulation’s effects on safety during the session here, although several said they needed more flexibility in how drivers may schedule time in trucks’ sleeper berths.

“There has been no factual basis to consider changes to the hours-of-service,” said Ron Uriah, vice president of safety and risk management for Pitt-Ohio Express. “Changing the hours will increase the need for drivers and trucks on the highways.”

“American Trucking Associations believes that the current rule should be retained, pretty much as is,” Dave Osiecki, an ATA senior vice president, said here Jan. 19.

Public Citizen and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, along with the Teamsters union, testified against the rule. They have sued FMCSA three times since 2003, seeking to overturn the rule, and in October 2009 reached a settlement with FMCSA, under which the agency agreed to draft a proposal for White House review by July and to complete a new rule sometime in 2011.

Additional listening sessions were scheduled for Jan. 22 in Dallas, Jan. 25 in Los Angeles and Jan. 28 in Davenport, Iowa.

“We want to reach out and gather as much information and as many comments as possible: the good, bad and the ugly,” FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said, opening the session. “One fatality on the road is one too many, and we owe it to the public to do better than we have been doing and I am committed to getting there.”

Gerry Donaldson, senior research director for Advocates, said that despite FMCSA’s safety mission, the “agency has expanded truck driver working and driving hours in an era where examination of the hours worked in other transportation modes has repeatedly shown . . . [a] need [for] shorter working hours and longer resting periods.”

The current rule expanded driving time to 11 hours within a 14-hour work period before a mandated 10-hour rest period. Previously, drivers could work for 15 hours a day and drive for only 10 hours before a required eight-hour break.

Frank Silio, a trainer for Covenant Transport, said one way to get longer rest periods was to allow drivers to split mandatory rest hours in the sleeper berth.

Before 2005, drivers could split their 10-hour off-duty period in a sleeper berth into two periods, as long as one was for at least two hours. Since then, however, the rule has required that if a driver splits the mandatory 10-hour break, one period must be at least eight hours long.

“We need flexibility. The current rule is too hard on us,” said Silio, who is also a member of America’s Road Team, a group of safety ambassadors organized by ATA. “We know when we need to rest, and it may not always be at the same time as the rule requires.”

Osiecki said that increasing sleeper-berth flexibility “will improve safety.”

“Increased flexibility is not the answer,” Donaldson countered during the sometimes contentious hearing. “Safety organizations believe that the first order of business is to substantially reduce the amount of working and driving hours.”

Lena Pons, a transportation researcher with Public Citizen, said FMCSA has “increased the allowable hours of driving and working.”

Richard Reiser, executive vice president of Werner Enterprises Inc., said that in addition to providing flexibility in sleeper-berth use, FMCSA should maintain the controversial 34-hour restart provision that allows drivers to reset their weekly driving allotments by taking an extended off-duty period.

“There’s been no significant change in the number of hours worked by our drivers as a result of the 34-hour restart,” he said.

LaMont Byrd, director of the Teamsters’ health and safety department, said the union opposed the restart provision, but he said the union’s members wanted FMCSA to “rethink” the sleeper-berth issue.

Despite the criticisms by the union and advocacy groups, most witnesses testifying at the hearing supported the rule.

Gaylon Fuller, specialty operations manager for Cast Transportation Inc., said the 34-hour restart has “worked really well for us” and that drivers typically take 34 to 48 hours off when using it.

Randy Mullett, vice president of government relations at Con-way Inc., cited studies showing that most crashes take place in the first eight hours, not the final three hours, of a driving shift, which he said means “driving time is not a primary contributor to fatigue. . . . Therefore, focusing strictly on driving time is misplaced emphasis.”

Chris Peters, representing Carlisle Carrier Corp., said that by losing the split, his 250-truck regional fleet reduced per-driver miles by 6% to 9%, “[requiring] us to add 6% to 9% more trucks, trailers and other traffic in the marketplace.”