In early January I got a call from a woman in Langley, B.C., named Freda whose husband Aiden hauls ag products down into southwest Washington state. He’s a company driver who used to be an owner-operator, and during his independent life Freda managed the administrative work, including her husband’s logbook compliance. She’s a bright spark, judging from our conversation, but she and her husband had a problem.

Operating dead-straight and true to the American hours-of-service rules, Aiden runs out of driving time somewhere north of Everett, Wash. That’s a little more than an hour from the Canadian border, depending on traffic.
Freda had been looking at the regs trying to figure out some way to get Aiden home. He’s on a multi-stop route and the shipper sets the schedule.
I’m sure Aiden’s employer is just as desperate to get him back, I replied. What does he say?

He hasn’t told us anything, Freda said. I think we have to figure this out on our own. That seems to be the prevailing attitude at truck fleets operating in the United States right now.

It’s going to change this month.

When the new hours-of-service regulations were implemented on Jan. 4, the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requested a 60-day period of soft enforcement. Time’s up.

A few months’ back our columnist Jim Park, editor of highwaySTAR magazine, attended an Ontario Trucking Association-sponsored orientation session for fleet operation managers in Toronto. It was led by Chuck DeWeese, a field supervisor with the New York State Dept. of Transportation and one of the people charged with explaining this stuff to carriers and drivers, as well as training his own enforcement personnel. After two hours, most of the several hundred people in the room still seemed pretty vague about how the new rules will actually play out on the road, Jim observed.

I can explain the rule in five minutes, DeWeese told him. But a full understanding of all the nuances of the rule would take considerably longer. It’s a lesson I learned myself when I added a phrase to Jim’s column in our January/February issue. It talked about extending the workday past 14 hours. I neglected to explain that you have to use the split-sleeper exception to do it. It no doubt confused readers. It confused Jim, who’s our resident expert on the topic. I thought you knew something I didn’t, he told me.

The fact is, hours-of-service rules hold drivers and employers equally responsible for compliance. Carriers are required to teach drivers and other employees about the regulations and cannot allow or require a driver to break them. If you employ drivers operating in the United States, they’re looking to you for help. And you have to help them.

If you haven’t felt compelled to learn about the new rules–in other words, if you haven’t felt the whip-crack of a fine or an out-of-service violation–it’s not too late to start. There are good sources of training material out there.
The FMCSA has a variety of training aids at its web site, www.fmcsa.dot.com, and a copy of the regulations is online under the rules and regulations area (look for Part 395). There is a brochure and a pocket guide for drivers, a Power Point presentation, and answers to frequently asked questions.

The Truckload Carriers Association held a conference on implementing the new rules and sells an audiotape of the proceedings. On it, two fleet managers share training ideas for drivers, sales staff, and operations managers.
Schneider National offers an online tutorial at www.schneider.com, and J.J. Keller & Associates has an assortment of material available at www.jjkeller.com (or call 1-877/564-2333).

LogChek, a division of the TFS Group of Companies in Waterloo, Ont., has an excellent training video and workbook that summarizes the changes in plain language and puts them into the context of real-world trips. Contact 1-866/LOG CHEK or visit www.logchek.com. Remember, drivers who violate the rules may be placed out of service until they rack up enough off-duty hours to come back into compliance. State and local law enforcement may also assess fines. FMCSA may levy civil penalties on drivers or carriers from $550 to $11,000 per violation, depending on the severity.

This month, we devote considerable space to how trucking operations will meet the mounting demand for truck drivers. In our cover story last month, a fleet owner declared, “He who has the drivers will win.
If truck drivers are so valuable, don’t put them in a position where they have to log 10 hours off before they can complete the last hour of their trip home.
We all have some learning to do on this issue. And we all have some teaching to do.