Hours of Service

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has issued a final rulemaking regarding clarification to the applicability of emergency exemptions for motor carriers during emergencies.

The federal government is looking into speeding up the process in which Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) are issued. At the same time, the federal government ruled against revisions to the hours-of-service (HOS) requirements, citing that safety groups gave no basis for changes that would have provided more flexibility to drivers.

Economic recovery and pandemic relief upstage harsher rules on truckers, as the overall industry applauds productivity goals. In the meantime, big environmental rules loom at EPA, while one large TL carrier wants to speed up the process to obtain a Commercial Driver’s License.

The latest tweaks to the 83-year-old truck driver hours of service regulations went into effect Sept. 29 as the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) attempts to build in flexibility to a monolithic regulation covering some 3.5 million long-haul truckers.

FMCSA Acting Administrator Jim Mullen explained that this ruling is the result of listening to all industry stakeholders, including the motor carrier industry, truckers, safety advocates, law enforcement, and state partners.

The Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said yesterday that its national emergency declaration to provide hours-of-service regulatory relief to commercial vehicle drivers transporting emergency relief in response to the nationwide coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has been extended through May 15, 2020 or until the revocation of the Presidentially-declared COVID-19 national emergency.

While the motor carrier hours-of-service (HOS) final rule has ostensibly been on the back burner since the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a notice of proposed rule making (NPRM) geared towards HOS rule changes, with an emphasis on increasing safety through updating existing commercial motor vehicle driver regulations last August, it appears now that the wheels may be turning on the potential next steps for a final rule.

New HOS tweaks top the list of regulatory changes heading into 2020. Carriers say flexibility is key to effective industry regulation covering the niche sectors that make up this dominant, $700 billion industry.

While the Trump administration works to water down some trucking regulations, states are more aggressive than ever in their pursuit of more revenue.

Varying estimates from positive to pragmatic existed before the new rule became effective in July 2013. However, the grim reality is that trucking stakeholders are now experiencing substantial losses in productivity due to the change—and in many cases it’s much worse than was predicted.

In a recent speech to shippers and carriers, Anne Ferro, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), said: “We need a real change in our transportation culture to recognize that safety means more than complying with safety rules. It means changing work/rest schedules that contribute to fatigue.”

It has only been barely three weeks since the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) new motor carrier Hours-of-Service (HOS) rules took effect. Before the July 1 effective date, there was (and still remains really) much speculation and conjecture surrounding exactly what the impact of the new rules is or will eventually turn out to be.

The HOS rule is now the subject of a similar lawsuit by the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Public Citizen, the Truck Safety Coalition, and two truck drivers on the grounds that the final HOS rule still fails to make needed improvements to protect the public from tired truckers and should be subjected to judicial review.

In response to the December ruling from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regarding its final rule for final rule for truck drivers’ Hours-of-Service (HOS), the American Trucking Associations (ATA) said it has filed a petition with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia asking the court to review the rule.

Late last week, the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said that its new Hours-of-Service (HOS) rule that was scheduled to be rolled out on Friday, October 28 has been pushed back.