Trucking Blasts HOS Plan

This story appears in the Feb. 21 print edition of Transport Topics.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Transportation Department’s new proposed hours-of-service rule is too complex, rigid, and would reduce the productivity of motor carriers, while making highways no safer, trucking industry and trade association executives and truck drivers told federal regulators last week.

Speaking at a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration “listening session” on Feb. 17, the industry representatives overwhelmingly agreed that the current hours rule is helping reduce truck-related traffic accidents.

FMCSA scheduled the hearing after widespread industry objections to last year’s proposed revisions to the HOS rule, which was initially adopted in 2003.

The 2003 rule, which revised the Depression-era regulation, lengthened allowed driving time one hour to 11 hours, cut the permitted work day to 14 hours and required a 10-hour break. It allowed drivers to “reset” their week after resting for 34 hours.

The 2003 revisions were successfully challenged in federal court by a coalition led by Public Citizen and the Teamsters union in a series of lawsuits. To settle the most recent lawsuit, FMCSA agreed to revise its rule, resulting in the proposal that was the subject of the Feb. 17 listening session.

Among the proposed changes, FMCSA said it was leaning toward cutting driving hours back to 10, and modified the 34-hour reset provision by requiring that it include two rest periods of at least six hours between midnight and 6 a.m.

At the listening session, officials and drivers urged the agency to withdraw its proposal that favors cutting the allowable driving time back to 10 hours from the current 11 and adds one hour of off-duty time within the 14-hour workday.

“Policy changes must be based on sound research and data, and not pressure or politics,” said Dave Osiecki, head of policy and regulatory affairs for American Trucking Associations. “The current rules are working. FMCSA has data from its CSA program showing a strong relationship between compliance with the rules and low crash rates.”

Several speakers also criticized a proposed requirement which would mandate two periods of rest between midnight and 6 a.m., during a 34-hour restart.

“The two consecutive nights of midnight to 6 a.m. is problematic for many drivers,” Osiecki said. “It will affect Monday morning deliveries and it will affect the amount of traffic during the daytime. . . . There is some freight that will shift from nighttime to daytime.”

Several drivers said the new requirements would not only reduce their earnings, but would also in some cases mean they couldn’t spend most of the weekend with their families.

“I get home mostly on the weekends,” said Michael Stout, a driver with Covenant Transport. But he said the new rule would “affect the quality of my home life.”

“It would force me to take my days off during the week, and there’s other drivers that are in the same situation who wouldn’t get the quality home time they need with their families,” Stout said.

Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, said a survey of his group showed that “the overwhelming majority” are opposed to the new requirements that reduce driving hours.

“Many respondents commented on how dramatic changes could be justified when compared with the safety data of the trucking industry,” Spencer said. “Over-the-road trucks have never been safer.”

Bob Petrancosta, vice president of safety for Con-way Freight, told the FMCSA panel, which included agency Administrator Anne Ferro, that there is no rule that more greatly affects truck drivers, motor carriers and their customers than the hours rule.

“Our concern is that the proposed changes to this rule will negatively impact our drivers, the environment, and the economy, but not provide proven safety benefits,” Petrancosta said.

He said the proposed rule would not only force major adjustments to the company’s network and infrastructure, it would also dump more trucks on the nation’s highways and “disrupt the movement of freight between major freight corridors.”

Harry Haney, a Kraft Foods Inc. executive speaking on behalf of the 400-member National Private Truck Council, said he is concerned that the proposed HOS revision could actually hurt safety by “moving more of the driving that currently occurs during the evening into daylight hours where congestion is worse.”

“We are also concerned that it could harm business efficiency and hence the fledgling economic recovery,” Haney said.

But Henry Jasny, general counsel of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said that while the rule is not a “panacea,” it moves “in the right direction.”

“The purpose of the hours-of-service rule is to improve safety by reducing driver fatigue, without having an adverse affect on driver health,” said Jasny, also speaking for Public Citizen, the Truck Safety Coalition and the Teamsters.

“The proposed changes will make highways safer, and reduce truck driver fatigue by limiting the excessively long hours driven by some drivers, but not by all drivers,” Jasny said.

Although the trucking industry has boasted that its safety record has been steadily improving, Jasny said that automobile safety actually has improved at a faster rate. In related developments last week, an analysis of the hours rule made public by ATA found that the agency “wildly overstated the proposal’s benefits” and that it would cost the trucking industry money, rather than saving money, as claimed.

The economic review for ATA by consulting firm Edgeworth Economics found that FMCSA used questionable logic, inadequate and “sloppy math” in attempting to justify its proposed changes to the hours-of-service rule, ATA said.

The study stated that while FMCSA claimed its proposal would produce as much as $380 million in annual benefits, it would actually cost about $320 million a year — a $700 million miscalculation.

Also last week, FMCSA announced it is extending the period for public comment on the proposed rule to March 4 from Feb. 28.