The new hours of service rule has not yet taken effect and already many are crying.

Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highway, together with Parents Against Tired Truckers, have filed suit to stop implementation of the new hours of service rule on the grounds that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has placed trucking productivity ahead of safety in its decision-making process, thereby violating both the spirit and the letter of its enabling legislation, the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999.

Congress explicitly directed the agency to “consider the assignment and maintenance of safety as the highest priority, recognizing the clear intent, encouragement, and dedication of Congress to the furtherance of the highest degree of safety in motor carrier transportation.”

Increasing the number of consecutive hours that commercial drivers are permitted to operate their trucks is clearly an effort to trade off trucking industry economic interests against improved safety, an action that violates congressional instruction and intent.

While I agree with this argument, past history tells me that cost analyses have always loomed large in government’s decision making. Indeed, when the Carter administration deregulated the trucking industry it knew safety provisions would need to be tightened. However, the subsequent Reagan administration, citing costs and productivity alone, nixed any such tightening. While I would have liked stronger priority given to safety, I am not totally displeased with the weight the FMCSA gave safety in the hours of service rule-making deliberations

On the reverse side of the same coin, this past July the Truckload Carriers Association delivered a letter to the FMCSA’s Acting Administrator Annette Sandberg urging support for two industry petitions filed by Wal-Mart and the Arizona Public Service Co.

The petitions request FMCSA to reconsider its requirement that the 14-hour period during which drivers would be permitted to work each day must be consecutive hours.

According to the TCA, ” by requiring the time clock to continue running no matter what, the final rule will actually induce drivers to continue driving even when it may have been more prudent for them to stop.”

TCA’s letter further described “the disincentive [the consecutive hours requirement] will create for a driver to pull off the highway and eat a relaxing meal … [and would instead] promote the same unsafe conduct in truck drivers that has become so extremely commonplace among automobile drivers – eating in their vehicles while driving.”

Where has the TCA been hiding its collective head? As any truck driver will attest, the current state of affairs in the truckload industry dictates that the driver not only eat while driving, but that she/he conduct all other bodily functions while maintaining speed and proper distance between vehicles. Thankfully, most of us insist on parking and setting the brakes prior to sleeping.

TCA also told FMCSA that while it “may believe and have intended for the increase from 10 to 11 hours drive-time to have increased the industry’s productivity, whatever productivity gain that specific change could have produced will, unfortunately, be offset by the huge pending loss in driver and carrier productivity that the 14 consecutive hours requirement will cause.”

Now we get to the heart of the matter and the TCA’s prime concern – productivity.

The TCA also points to “the significant wait times [drivers experience] at many of the loading and unloading docks across the country” and further that “carriers have little, if any, ability to prevent these delays from happening or to minimize their duration.”

Oh, really?

The “carriers have little, if any, ability to prevent these delays” because they refuse to exercise any. There are times when circumstances run amuck and cause a driver to be delayed. However, if a shipper or receiver habitually delays a driver, the ability rests squarely with the carrier to refuse to carry that shipper or receiver’s freight or force payment of delay time. Shippers and receivers will only behave in a manner that is profitable to them. So long as their cavalier attitude toward delays costs them nothing, the attitude will continue.

As contemptible as the carriers’ weakness to confront customers (shippers and receivers) is, it is understandable. Killer competition, especially among truckload carriers, has them begging. What is not understandable is the carriers’ refusal to face the fact that not only do I, the driver, lose when I am delayed, but the carrier loses as well. There are just 24 hours in a day and any portion of that 24 that is wasted can never be reclaimed as profit making time.

The TCA honestly expects us to believe that ” the requested change to the final rule [from consecutive hours to cumulative hours] would actually increase both productivity and improve highway safety and also help to reduce driver fatigue.”

As an experienced driver who has put in more than his share of 18-hour days, I believe the new 14 consecutive hour rule is a good one. Fourteen hours per day spent on the job is more than enough for anyone; 14 hours generating revenue, that is.

In their plea to change 14 consecutive hours to 14 cumulative hours, the TCA and others attempted to maintain the status quo whereby drivers put in 17- to 20-hour days in search of a full day’s pay. This is a recipe for blood and bankruptcy, if not total disaster.

In late August, after reviewing eight petitions for reconsideration of the new hours of service rule, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration decided to stick with its original rule. FMCSA Administrator Annette M. Sandberg explained: “The new hours of service rule strikes a balance between reasonableness, consistency, and enforceability, while improving safety and protecting all highway users. Recognizing that carriers, drivers and law enforcement must prepare for the Jan. 4, 2004, compliance date, we have denied the petitions in sufficient time to allow these groups to meet the compliance deadline.”

On behalf of tired truckers everywhere, thank you Ms. Sandberg.

Guy Bourrie has been hauling on the highways for 20 years. He lives in Washington, Maine, and can be reached at redhaven@midcoast.com.