WASHINGTON—It took the federal government nearly 70 years to rewrite regulations governing truck drivers’ hours-of-service (HOS). It may take the feds at least another year for their rewrite to pass legal muster.

Trucking interests are applauding the Department of Transportation’s request for a 12-month stay from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to delay implementation of its ruling that would effectively reduce the legal hours some 7 million commercial drivers could work.

“We’re opposed to anything that will upset the just-in-time delivery schedules that many of our customers adhere to,” UPS Freight spokesman Ira Rosenfeld said. “Looking at the impact at our own operations, if we have to move away from an 11-hour daily [driving] limit, what you’re probably going to see is more trucks on the highways. That translates into more congestion and more pollution, which nobody wants.”

After causing weeks of angst for the trucking industry, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) issued a long-awaited memo supporting an American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) petition asking the court to vacate the 11- and 34-hour provisions of the hours of service rule, pending reconsideration by the agency.

The U.S. Court of Appeals has granted a three-month stay of their decision striking down two aspects of the Hours of Service regulations. The new date is Dec. 27, 2007, for implementation of the change back to 10 hours driving time, and no 34-hour restart.

The government had asked for a 12-month stay, with the intention of trying for a third time to convince the same court that their regulations are in compliance with the intent of the law.

“We are pleased that the agency has supported our motion and our view that the court ruled only on the procedures that FMCSA used in adoption of the hours of service regulations, and not on the regulations themselves,” said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. “It is also important to note that the FMCSA states that 'available data show that continuing the status quo will not diminish safety.’”

Under current rules, drivers can drive 11 hours; the court ruled on July 24 that be rolled back to 10. Additionally, the court has eliminated the 34-hour restart provision, which allows drivers to restart their week after 34 hours off time.

Elimination of these provisions is estimated to cost the trucking industry as much as 9 percent in productivity and would require the hiring of thousands more drivers to an industry already strapped for legal, qualified drivers, industry executives said. It would also affect both truckload and less-than-truckload carriers in the way they position drivers in their networks.

“We’re really concerned about the uncertainty it creates in the marketplace,” said Randy Mullett, vice president of government relations for Con-way, the $4.7 billion trucking concern. “I’m disappointed the process is taking this long, but I’m not willing to throw that at the feet of the feds. It’s an extremely complicated issue with lots of moving parts. There’s safety, pollution, productivity, congestion, and driver availability. The feds have been trying hard to come up with the right balance, so I really can’t blame them.”

Shippers are worried that they would also be hurt. Gail Rutkowski, director of operations for AIMS Logistics and president of NASSTRAC, said that any rapid change in HOS regulations would hurt “the economy as a whole” and be disruptive to the nation’s supply chains.

In its request for a stay, FMCSA said a stay was needed to “prevent substantial disruption of trucking operations.” The agency said it was concerned with timing and transition costs if it were to issue an interim rule, which was a possibility. FMCSA predicted disruptions and confusion in HOS enforcement if the rules were changed again.

Annette Sandberg, the former FMCSA administrator from 2003 to 2005 and now a principal with TransSafe, a consulting firm, said when she worked at FMCSA there were more than 60 Congressionally-mandated regulations affecting trucking that had to be written. That volume often overwhelms FMCSA staff, which, like most government bureaucrats, does not have much real-world trucking experience.

“We did work to fix it,” Sandberg said. “But one of the things I realized is the people who wrote the rules never talked to the people in the field.”