Hours-of-Service flaws require immediate action

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, leaders ofAmerican Trucking Associations again called on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and Congress to swiftly address the mounting problems caused by changes to the hours-of-service rules.

“From the outset, ATA was confident the hours-of-service rule changes were based on politics, not data,” said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. “Well now we’re seeing mounting evidence that rather than solving anything, these rules are creating many problems for drivers and fleets alike.”

“I’ve seen the impact these rules have had on my fleet, and clearly I’m not alone,” said ATA Chairman Phil Byrd, president of Bulldog Hiway Express. “We’ve seen the Wall Street Journal document the impacts twice in less than a week, the American Transportation Research Institute publish evidence of the costs and additional challenges caused by these rules and tomorrow Congress is going to put these regulations under the microscope.

“By now it should be clear that these rules were a mistake – everyone can see it,” Byrd said. “FMCSA should listen to the facts and rollback this ill-advised rule.”

Graves called on Congress to support the TRUE Safety Act, a bill introduced by Reps. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Tom Rice (R-S.C.) and Michael Michaud (D-Maine) to stay the new rules until an independent review can be completed.

“The TRUE Safety Act will put the brakes on these rules until they can be thoroughly vetted,” Graves said. “We’re confident that once they are independently and objectively reviewed, FMCSA will have no choice but to undo what it has done.”

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  • The two general factors that determine profitability in the trucking industry are time and distance.Since the government can’t control the distance you have to travel,they enact laws that control the amount of time you have to get there.The amount of money to be made is proportional to the amount of time you have to make it in.If you wish to make as much as you did before,now you must charge more,to maintain your margin and your customers will surely love you for that.Add to that the fact that your drivers potential for generating income has also been curtailed,which is not the best thing either.Now if you could get the carriers to honestly self -regulate and the drivers to honestly self-regulate,we wouldn’t need any HOS rules at all.But since we don’t live in a perfect world,neither this or rules work well.