Mark Schremmer
Relaying concerns from truckers, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy recently told the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that its hours of service are too rigid.
“Advocacy understands that hours-of-service regulations are statutorily mandated but believes that the FMCSA should seek regulatory changes that would improve safety by providing greater flexibility and give small businesses and drivers more control over their driving time,” the agency wrote.
Deregulatory effort
In April, the U.S. Department of Transportation asked the public to identify regulations that can be modified or repealed to reduce the regulatory burden.
Following the request, the Office of Advocacy hosted a small-business regulatory roundtable on April 14. About 100 people participated in the roundtable, delivering comments on 36 issues. The issues that received the most attention were hours of service, entry-level driver training, speed limiters and broker transparency.
On May 5, the Office of Advocacy filed official comments to the DOT. Overall, about 900 comments were filed to the docket.
Hours of service
The lack of flexibility within the hours of service was a common theme in comments filed by the Office of Advocacy, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and individual truckers.
“Small-business representatives stated that the existing hours-of-service rules are not sensible for today’s trucking industry because they force truckers to be on the road when they are tired, during busy travel times and during hazardous weather and road conditions,” the agency wrote.
Prompted by a petition from OOIDA, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration modified its hours-of-service regulations in 2020 to provide truck drivers more flexibility within the rules. Those modifications involved exceptions for short haul and adverse driving conditions, a sleeper berth provision and a change to the 30-minute break requirement. However, OOIDA and individual truckers don’t believe those changes went far enough.
OOIDA wants the regulation modified to allow truckers to “pause” their clock and to utilize expanded split sleeper-berth options, such as 6/4 and 5/5.
“This flexibility would improve drivers’ rest and alertness,” OOIDA wrote. “It makes far more sense to allow alert drivers to leave the sleeper berth and begin driving with the option to obtain additional rest later in the day, rather than forcing drivers to idly wait for their driving clock to restart. More restrictive sleeper berth splits can force a trucker to drive when tired and rest when alert. The truth is that not all drivers are able to sleep seven, eight or 10 hours at a time. Thus, allowing them to split their sleeper time more efficiently will help them to gain more adequate rest, resulting in increased alertness and better driver performance.”
The Office of Advocacy also relayed a list of recommendations regarding the hours of service:
- Amend HOS regulations to provide more efficiency for drivers and establish FMCSA pilot programs to analyze expanded flexibility options, including a “split-duty” period and additional split sleeper berth options.(The FMCSA removed the old split sleeper.)
- Clarify through guidance that the HOS regulations apply only to employees and not to self-employed carriers. (Guidance does not have the standing of regulation. The HOS regulations must apply to both company drivers, OOs and independent drivers.)
- Provide separate regulations for the short-haul trucking industry similar to how the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has separate regulations for general industry, construction and maritime.(OSHA applies to non-highway and FMCSA applies to highway.)
- Recognize that last-mile delivery companies highlight the unique challenges of short-haul trucking. As such, safety measures based on miles do not accurately reflect the risks faced by short-haul drivers.(Fatigue vs. greed.)
- Recognize that HOS complexity is contributing to the driver shortage problem and impacting the economic incentives facing drivers.(Is there a real driver shortage?)
- Provide a consistent policy for preemptively and proactively declaring an emergency so FMCSA has a preemptive policy for declaring a regional emergency at least five days in advance of a reliably predicted disaster.
- Consider exempting livestock haulers from the HOS regulations due to the demands associated with livestock care, labor challenges, driver shortages and supply chain concerns. (A fatigued truck driver transporting livestock or fatigued truck driver transporting widgets are both unsafe and contribute to unsafe commercial vehicle highway safety.)
