HOS regulations here to stay
John D. Schulz, Contributing Editor -- Logistics Management, 1/1/2009
WASHINGTON — The good news for shippers entering 2009 is that there is no news. There’s going to be no change in the current hours of service (HOS) regulations governing approximately three million long-haul truck drivers.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), in a move welcomed by both shippers and carriers, has decided to maintain the current HOS regulations. This just may end an eight-year legal and procedural battle to revise the HOS regulations, which went largely unchanged from 1935 until FMCSA first offered its first revision back in 2000.
In one of the final truck-related regulations issued by the Bush administration, FMCSA said it was adopting as final its interim final rule of Dec. 17, 2007. That allows drivers to drive 11 hours within a 15-hour work day with a 34-hour restart provision.
Both provisions had been challenged in court by Public Citizen, Advocates for Highway Safety, unions and other groups on procedural grounds.
The final rule was scheduled to be published in the Federal Register and became effective Jan. 19, the final day of the Bush administration.
“There have been procedural rules that have been identified by the court. We are properly addressing the concerns of the court,” FMCSA Administrator John Hill said in a conference call. “I feel confident that moving forward is the best public policy at this time.”
Both shippers and carriers have adapted to the new rules that went into effect in 2003, despite court challenges. The biggest change was a push by carriers to urge shippers to become more efficient at their loading docks since driver waiting time was no longer counted as off-duty time, but rather part of the drivers’ work day.
Any changes to these rules would be highly disruptive to shippers and carriers. Some shippers have made changes to their practices to adapt. Carriers, on the other hand, have fine-tuned their networks to adapt to the required 11- and 15-hour requirements. Any further changes, they say, would be costly and inefficient.
Drivers are limited to 60 hours driving in seven days, or 70 in eight days, while allowing those clocks to be reset by taking 34 straight off-duty hours. Previously, the rule had allowed for 10 hours of driving in a 15-hour period, but allowed drivers to log on and off duty whenever they wanted.
FMCSA’s Hill said he decided to propose keeping the current rules rather than create confusion within the trucking industry and the enforcement community by issuing further revisions. He called uncertainty “the enemy of enforcement and compliance.”
There are still signs, however, that the incoming Obama administration might be sympathetic to the Teamsters union, Public Citizen, and other safety advocates who might try one more time to challenge these rules in court.
There are strong objections by some in Congress regarding HOS. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he was “disappointed that FMCSA is going down a path of trying to continue new standards for daily and weekly maximum driving time, when these standards have twice been rejected by the courts.”
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