Plan now or major regrets later

By Timothy D. Brady

It ‘s coming, No, not Christmas, Not the New Year, but something that will be potentially a game changer in the world of Over the Road Trucking. Over the past year, the FMCSA has taken comments on the changes to the Hours of Service rules. They released their proposed rules back in December of 2010. The FMCSA said they would publish the new rules by July, 2011, but after multiple delays and over 28,400 comments, the most recent announcement from the trucking regulatory agency has said this Thursday, December 22, 2011 is the release date of the New HOS.

I find the statement number 28,404 posted on the Regulations.gov website concerning the proposed change very fitting as to the sentiment of most truckers: “As a new Commercial Vehicle Driver, I am saddened to hear of the hours wanting to be taken away from us drivers. None of us can afford to lose the hours, or the pay from this! This is heartbreaking and I will hope and pray that this is not done to us. Remember that when you go into a store, It is us who has brought those items that your purchasing and need, and with less hours, less drivers will available to stock those shelves for you.”

The bottom line is simple. Whether we like it or not, HOS rules, which govern the time of every commercial trucker in America, are going to change in the very near future. Whether we’re ready for them or not, the question isn’t whether we like or dislike them; it’s, ‘how are we going to operate profitably under them?’

So what’s your plan for dealing with any or all of these HOS rule changes if they come to fruition?

Here are the most significant changes which will have the greatest impact on truckers, trucking operations and shippers. Let’s examine each of the rule changes and possible means of getting them to work for rather than against our operations. 

1. Modify the 34-hour restart: it would have to include two periods between midnight and 6 a.m., and it could be used only once a week.

The best means, in my opinion, to get this one to work is really dependant upon the specific type of trucking operation. But it will require the trucker and dispatch to communicate more closely and how they look at what hours they finish with the day before they take a 34-hour restart. To receive maximum operational benefit from a 34-hour restart, a driver needs to complete his day by 11 pm, which means his next available time to drive would occur at 9 am the day after he started his restart. In other words, if he stopped at 11 pm on Saturday he’d be available to drive at 9 am on Monday. (On the other hand, if he waited until 1am Sunday morning to rest, he’d have to set until 6 am on Tuesday morning to drive. Time management is going to become even more crucial and the driver needs to communicate this in complete terms to his dispatch.

2. The possibility of limiting daily driving time to 10 hours, rather than the current 11 hours.

This again is going to be a time management challenge. But it’s going to take a better system on the part of trucking companies in how they price their freight and subsequently pay their drivers. They need to go to a time plus distance pricing and pay system, wherein the freight rate is figured on both time and distance and the driver is paid on both time and distance. Example: a load that today takes 22 hours to drive over a two-day period, is going to require a portion of a third day. This in essence reduces the available time for the trucking company to put revenue-paying freight into a truck, while at the same time reduces the amount of pay a mileage-paid driver can make over the same period of time. So the only way for this to work for both company and trucker is to have a time-based pay along with the mileage pay.

3. Drivers would have to be released from duty after 14 consecutive hours, rather than have the current option of continuing on-duty but not drive. All drivers would have the option of taking two 16-hour shifts a week, but would have to be released from duty afterwards. Any on-duty time after 14 hours would be counted as a 16-hour shift.

Again, this could work for a trucker and a trucking company if managed correctly. The driver’s hours on duty are cumulative, so the effects of anything he does in regards to his hours on duty will impact his 70 hours of 8-day on-duty time. Those 16-hour days could in effect reduce the amount of on-duty (either driving or not driving on-duty time) in the 70-hour rule.

4.  Give drivers a one-hour break during the day by limiting actual duty time within the 14-hour driving window to 13 hours.
5.  Limit consecutive time behind the wheel by prohibiting a driver from driving if it has been more than 7 hours since his last off-duty or sleeper-berth period of at least 30 minutes.

These two work together in that you must take a 30-minute, off-duty break within 7 hours of beginning your driving. And you need to limit your on-duty time to no more than 13 hours in a single 14-hour shift. In other words, a trucker has to show a total of off-duty time every 14 hours, of at least 1 hour in 30-minute increments, taken in the first 7 hours of being on-duty. This is going to require a driver to plan his rest stops at the beginning of each day, to be sure he’ll have a location at which he can park and take his breaks. Nothing, as far as I can tell, says you can’t take that ½ hour break 30 minutes after you start your on-duty time. As an example, you could get up from a 10-hour rest break, do your PTI, fuel the truck and log it as 30 minutes on-duty. Log off-duty for 30 minutes and go eat breakfast, then log back in, drive for 7 hours; take your next 30-minute break and drive the remaining 3 hours.

6. Change the definition of on-duty time from any time in the truck, except the sleeper berth, to exempt any time spent resting in a parked truck and up to two hours in the passenger seat of a moving truck immediately before or after eight hours in a sleeper berth.

This will be a welcome change for many. Under the current rules, any time spent in the left or right seat of a truck cab, regardless of whether the truck is going down the highway or sitting in a rest area or truck stop is counted as on-duty. With this provision, that would no longer be the case. It would also permit co-drivers to ride in the passenger seat for up to 2 hours after 8 hours in a sleeper berth and still count it as off-duty.

7. The oilfield operations exception would be revised to clarify the language on waiting time and to state that waiting time would not be included in the calculation of the driving window. 

Too bad the rest of us can’t get this clarification. 

Now these are my own observations and recommendations from my own experience of driving a truck for over twenty years. Some may work for you and others may not. My point in this article is that, even if it’s new and we don’t care for it, if it becomes law, we must figure a way to make it work for our own operations. A trucker won’t let a mountain, adverse weather or congested traffic beat him, so why would he let a bunch of changed rules ruin what is a great and noble profession? One of the best ways to get the public’s attention–hence the politician’s attention–is to adhere to the rules they place upon your trucking operation while at the same time making sure you are financially compensated for the increased costs and loss of revenue the rules cause. Hold your shippers accountable for delays they cause and charge by the day plus miles for your services, so the carrier isn’t left holding the empty revenue bag. This goes for truck drivers too; if you don’t ask you won’t ever receive, and if you don’t insist on better compensation, it will never happen.

Good roads, good loads, and Happy Holidays,

Timothy Brady © 2011     Contact Brady through  www.timothybrady.com/contactus 
For more information on Trucking Business Courses go to: www.truckersu.com