Last month's federal appeals court decision vacating the hours-of-service (HOS) rules has turned the trucking industry and companies' distribution operations topsy-turvy. Shippers are left wondering: Are the new HOS rules gone for good? Or will the old rules come back from the grave? Even worse, will a whole new set of regulations emerge to burden shippers and truckers?

If that situation has left you feeling sorry for yourself, take a look across the Atlantic at the Brits. They're stuck in a similar predicament, waiting to see whether proposed regulations that could drastically alter logistics practices will be adopted.

If passed, the rule will require British motor carriers to pay a tax whenever they deliver shipments during rush hour. The ironic part of this scheme is that it started out as a way to help truckers.

Motor carriers in the United Kingdom pay higher taxes on diesel fuel than do their counterparts in other European countries. So some bureaucrats came up with the idea of putting an electronic monitoring device inside lorries (Brit speak for "trucks") that would measure a vehicle's location and how far it had traveled. The government would then use the data collected from the monitor to charge a toll based on the number of miles traveled.

The government would use that same information to give truckers a rebate on the fuel tax, bringing them in line with surcharges in other European countries. "The initial idea for the road user charge was to make it more equal for us," says Toby Clark, deputy editor of Motor Transport, a U.K.-based sister publication to Logistics Management. "When it was first proposed, the road-haulage industry supported it as a way of providing a tax-neutral [scheme] for U.K. haulers. Any costs in road tolling would be offset by a rebate on fuel duty."

But then the user charge evolved into something else. In an attempt to reduce traffic on busy roadways, the government proposed charging a higher fee during rush hours than for off-peak travel. "In Phase Two, they would introduce a differential charge according to time of day and locality—a true congestion charge," Clark explains.

No surprise that this new proposal has created an uproar across the pond. Clark says many truckers have begun questioning the costs of equipping every truck with technology to monitor its location at every minute of the day. "The costs for implementing this system are astronomical," he says. "Nobody can see how it could support its own costs."

But feasibility and finance aren't the only concerns on truckers' minds. The highest cost might come in terms of government intervention in business and the erosion of privacy and autonomy. "It's a clear precursor to charging every vehicle on the road," says Clark. "It's sort of the technocrats' dream of monitoring road transport."

Tony Blair's government originally proposed implementing the road user tax in 2008, but industry opposition has left the measure in limbo. Says Clark: "The overall view of the road user charge is really stark disbelief. The technology is too complex and the implications for enforcement are frightening."

That may be the case in the United Kingdom. But I fear that if the U.S. government hears about this plan and then some terrorist employs a truck bomb, it could happen here. Now that the United States is scrutinizing every shipment moving through its airports and seaports, it would make sense that federal officials would also want to monitor the location of every truck traveling its highways. And that would wreak more havoc on distribution than any HOS rule ever would.