WASHINGTON, — While Canadian carriers
are still adjusting to the news that the US’s new
hours-of-service rules will no longer include a
split-sleeper provision, some short-haul truckers
south of the border are celebrating a different
amendment.

Operators and delivery drivers who work within a
150-mile radius of their starting point will no longer
have to maintain logbooks. According to the new HOS
regime published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration last Friday, the change was prompted by
safety data that shows short-haul drivers make up over
half the commercial fleet yet are involved in less
than 7 percent of the nation’s fatigue-related fatal
truck crashes.

The new HOS rule also does not include electronic
on-board recorders for long-haul truckers. Industry
insiders expected the FMCSA to include a requirement
for black boxes after a US court advised the agency to
do so last year. But the FMCSA said the importance of
EOBR issues warrants a specific and separate
rulemaking that the agency is now developing. A
published notice of proposed rulemaking is expected in
early 2006.

As TodaysTrucking.com reported on Friday, the FMCSA
scraped a provision in from the court-rejected 2003
HOS rules that allowed truckers to split their 10-hour
off-duty requirement in any two periods, provided one
break was at least two hours long.

The change now requires drivers to take eight consecutive hours off.

The additional two hours could be takes in or out of
the sleeper berth.

(For the whole complete story go to:
www.todaystrucking.com/displayarticle.cfm?ID=4282).

This newest HOS regulation will go into effect October
1, 2005. There will be a transition period until Dec.
31, 2005. That time will be used to educate and
retrain drivers, carriers, and enforcement personnel.

For the most part, Canadian carriers frowned on the
new change. “I think the US made the wrong decision,”
Paul Easson of Berwick, N.S.-based Easson Transport
said.