Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/550385
Voices 4 | Overdrive | August 2015 Congressional action relative to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's 2013-implement- ed 34-hour restart restrictions has made that particular provision of the hours of service rule simpler since the first of the year. Yet the rash of hours exemption requests from another of the 2013-implemented requirements, the 30-minute break after eight hours on-duty, holds the potential to make things more complicated. Following an early-year request by beehive haulers for an exemption from the break that was granted in June, Tom Strese observed: "Pretty soon our HOS rules are going to look like the tax code." The hive haulers' request joined others from oversize/overweight haulers (also granted, with condi- tions, in June), oil and gas extraction site haulers, household goods haulers (denied last month), fireworks haulers ahead of Fourth of July celebrations (granted), Oregon log haulers and livestock haulers, among others. For most, it's the 30-minute break at issue, and FMCSA has been responsive in many instances. The 30-minute break require- ment was at the top of an Overdrive readers' hours of service "wish list" of changes to improve the regula- tions. The wish was to do away with it altogether. From Strese's point of view, complications within the largely one- size-fits-all regs – with his invoca- tion of that prototype of byzantine bureaucracy, the tax code – "is not a good thing." Many operators have criticized the one-size-fits-all approach to hours, though the current rule's complex- ity (particularly before the recent restart reprieve) is also a common criticism. In the aforementioned hours of service wish list, in addi- tion to rolling back the break and restart restrictions, readers' top five most commonly selected changes included favor for the adoption of segment-specific or experience-tiered rules to move away from the one- size-fits-all approach. Eventually, noted Angel L. Pellot Jr., the hours of service regs could "depend on what you haul" or your driving record. Such sentiment holds that added complication in the rule structure is preferable to unnecessary restriction. Commenting at Over- driveOnline.com, reader Bob Hearns said the problem then would shift from the driver to enforcement. "One set of HOS rules for an industry as diverse as ours is ludi- crous," he says. "It's not for safety, it's for ease of enforcement: to catch and punish those who break the rules. But it is obvious that when the rules make it more difficult to do your job, you are being punished ev- ery time you get on the road, not by the state troopers, but by the HOS rules themselves. "So keep asking for those legit- imate exemptions, and maybe the rule makers, who do not know the industry … might wake up and do not only the right thing, but the necessary thing. As a long-distance driver, although I live with the daily frustration caused by the HOS rules, I don't want to have to live with it." If the rules become too compli- cated for the U.S. Department of Transportation and other enforcers, "that's their problem," says Hearns. "The departments can educate themselves." Exemptions add fuel to hours debate Complexity of the hours of service rule is at odds with a one-size- fits-all approach. Both extremes have their flaws. Max Heine