It’s gonna be a long haul

By Advance Business Capital

Suspicious Timing

The proposed revisions to the current HOS regulations were released on December 23, the day before Christmas Eve. The timing apparently wasn’t accidental. Aware that it was about to stir up a hornet’s nest, FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) must have hoped the new regs wouldn’t get much notice in the flurry of gift-wrapping and TV specials.

Didn’t work. Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Association, pounced on them with a scathing round of criticism. The agency, he said, “has dropped three big chunks of coal under trucking’s Christmas tree.”

Fixing What Ain’t Broke

Actually, there are seven elements to the proposal, but who’s counting? Graves doesn’t like any part of it, saying “the Obama Administration’s proposal is overly complex, chock full of unnecessary restrictions on professional truck drivers and, at its core, would substantially reduce trucking’s productivity.” If adopted, he predicted the regulations would:

• reduce drivers’ maximum daily drive-time to ten hours
• reduce drivers’ maximum daily working-time window by an additional hour
• effectively abolish the 34-hour restart as it currently exists

Graves then went on to blast the administration itself. “When viewed against trucking’s sterling safety record,” he said, “It’s plain that the Obama administration’s willingness to break something that’s not broken likely has everything to do with politics and little or nothing to with highway safety.”

A Misguided Failure

If the regulations really are pure politics, they’ve backfired big-time. So far, no disinterested party has expressed support for them. Transport Topics, the weekly voice of the trucking business, usually tries to take an above-the-fray tone in its political coverage, but for the new year, it led with an editorial that called the proposal “a misguided failure that seems certain to make the nation’s roadways less safe than they are today.” Several other trucking journals have echoed TT’s disapproval. More are sure to follow.

The OOIDA (Owner Operator Independent Driver Association), which is typically a reliable counter-balance to ATA and the big fleets, hasn’t yet pronounced judgment, likely a sign of its own discomfort with the regulations. “We are carefully analyzing the proposal,” said Todd Spencer, the organization’s executive vice-president. “However, I can tell you that to make additional safety gains, the next hours-of-service rule must be more flexible to allow drivers to sleep when tired and to work when rested. The rules must encourage truck drivers to get off the road when they are tired and must not penalize them for doing so.”

Even Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was guarded in support of FMCSA’s revised regulations, confining his comments to homilies. “A fatigued truck driver,” said LaHood, “has no place behind the wheel of a large commercial truck.” Well, duh.

First Draft

But how firmly does FMCSA stand behind its own work? Remember, this is not the final draft of the regulations. Interested parties now have sixty days to “comment” on them. The agency will then consider input and issue a final revised version.

Most federal regulations undergo some sort of public review period, but this is a particularly wide window. Industry observers believe the Obama administration never intended to mandate safety regulations which it knew would enrage the big trucking companies. The thinking goes that this proposal is designed to allow FMCSA to back off and issue a final version that sets looser standards.

If this is true, a legitimate question is why FMCSA didn’t issue regulations it intended to keep? The likely answer is “politics.” Bill Graves is correct when he characterizes the administration’s regulations as political. What he doesn’t mention is that his own position is equally so.

Compromise Ahead

FMCSA’s “new improved” regs are a response to court rulings on lawsuits launched by Public Citizen and the Teamsters Union. Judges rule on points of law but they don’t set policy. That’s up to the other branches of government; politicking is inevitably a part of the process.

All regulatory policy has a political element. It’s hard to be otherwise. As president of ATA, Bill Graves’ job is to represent the business end of the industry, which will always favor longer hours of service, just as the Teamsters will always favor shorter hours. The most likely interpretation of this flak-catching set of rules is that, as it has in other areas, the administration hopes to eventually find some compromise position acceptable to both the trucking industry and its drivers.

Dirty Word 

It would be nice if Hours of Service regulations could be based purely on safety standards, but trucking is a business and considerations of the bottom line are not out of place. Accidents are costly to drivers and companies; everyone wants to reduce them, but an industry so central to the nation’s economy has to balance safety with productivity.

Brother, that’s politics, and with all respect to the ATA’s Graves, “politics” is not a dirty word. It’s how things get done in the real world.

This story was drawn from articles in TruckingInfo.com, The Trucker, Wikipedia, Wall Street Journal and Transport Topics.  

This article is provided as a service for truckers and everyone in the trucking industry by Advance Business Capital. ABC is the first and only factoring service designed by truckers for truckers. We provide innovative financial solutions exclusively to For-Hire truckers and Freight Brokers and are proud to be the first factoring company to receive the P3 (Preferred Platinum Provider) endorsement from the Transportation Intermediaries Association. 

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