WASHINGTON — As they promised, various trucking and public interest groups have filed separate court challenges in opposition to the latest U.S. hours-of-service rules.

Despite some ideological differences, several interests are united in asking the United States Court of Appeals to once again review the Federal Motor carrier Administration’s HOS regime.

The Owner-Operator and Independent Drivers Association, which filed its court challenge earlier this year, is now joined by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Truckload Carrier’s Association, as well as the Ohio and California Trucking Associations, which have also filed “motions to intervene” in the petition for review.

“This means we have a great deal of support for our petition now,” says Paul Cullen Jr. of OOIDA’s legal team. “These groups support OOIDA’s position and will have the opportunity to present arguments of their own.”

Public Citizen wants the courts to push
EOBRs in any new HOS revisions

The groups want the court to review specifically, the 14-hour on-duty clock and the controversial
split sleeper-berth provisions in the newest rule, which — under the direction of a previous Appeals court in 2004 — was revised by FMCSA last summer.

The current regulations are set up in a way that if a trucker chooses to split up the required 10 hours of off-duty time, one of the two periods must
be at least eight hours. That eight-hour rest period stops the 14-hour maximum on-duty clock. The other two off-duty hours can be taken at another time — either in the sleeper or out — to fulfill the 10-hour off-duty requirement, but they do not stop the 14-hour clock.

Furthermore, team drivers have to take a minimum of eight consecutive hours off in the sleeper berth. So, says OOIDA, “one driver is virtually imprisoned in the sleeper berth, and the other driver is pressured to drive at least eight hours in one stretch while the other driver is off duty.”

OOIDA argues that the final rules were reached in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner, given the information the FMCSA had before it.

The controversies surrounding HOS makes for strange bedfellows. Many of OOIDA’s and TCA’s criticism are echoed by safety and public interest groups like Public Citizen and groups viewed as anti-truck, such as Parents Against Tired Truckers and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH).

That coalition, which was successful in getting the Appeals court to throw out the 2003 HOS rule the following summer because the FMCSA did not take the “physical health of the operators” into account, has also filed its own two-page petition.

The groups say that the Teamsters union is supporting their challenge as well.

“Like the nearly identical rule issued by FMCSA in April 2003, which the court struck down in 2004, the 2005 rule dramatically increases both the
number of hours that truckers may drive without a break and the number of hours truckers may drive per week,” says Public Citizen in a press release.

“Further, the 2005 rule, like the 2003 rule, fails to require electronic onboard recorders, which would provide reliable data on how many hours truckers drive and permit effective enforcement of the rule. Cheating on paper logbooks is rampant,” the group claims.

Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said the government agency all but ignored the Appeals Court’s directions when it tossed out the 2003 rules.

While the court had problems with several aspects of the final rule — including increasing the maximum driving time from 10 to 11 hours; the sleeper berth provision; the 34-hour “restart” provision; and the lack of so-called “black boxes” — it did not make an official decision on those matters because the “health” issue alone was enough to throw out the regulation entirely. However, the court did expect the FMCSA to consider these matters as well, saying “the agency will be free in its further proceedings to consider the other objections anew in light of this opinion.”

The FMCSA felt that the sleeper-birth change met the court’s criteria, and left other major aspects of the 2003 rule more or less intact.