ALEXANDRIA, Va. — After a week of modest industry reaction to the new U.S. hours-of-service rules, American owner-ops are the first group to formally speak out against the latest changes.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has filed a petition asking the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to reconsider the recently revised HOS regulations. “We’re filing for two common sense changes to the new hours of service proposal,” OOIDA CEO and President Jim Johnston said.

A year after a US court ordered a rewrite of hours-of-service rules, the FMCSA unveiled the new regime about a week ago, which includes a major revision to the controversial sleeper-berth provision.

The change now requires drivers to take eight consecutive hours off as part of their 10-hour, off-duty time. Under the 2003 rule, FMCSA included a provision that allowed drivers to obtain the necessary 10 off-duty hours by splitting their sleeper berth in two periods of their own choosing, as long as one was a minimum of two hours long.

That is no longer the case under the new rule, which requires truckers who use sleeper-berths to rest for eight hours in a row, and take another two consecutive hours off-duty before resetting their daily driving schedule. The additional two hours may be taken in or out of the sleeper berth.

The amendment, which goes into effect Oct. 1, has not received much applause from carriers or drivers. Many contacted by TodaysTrucking.com over the last week expressed their disappointment. Still, the initial reaction from trucking associations has been somewhat reserved until now.

Despite the encouragement in the rulemaking for truckers to cash in the opportunity for a nap or short rest period, the fact that the two-hour break does not stop the 14-hour clock is a disincentive for truckers to utilize the break, according to OOIDA.

“We’re simply asking that those two hours would also stop the clock, that the driver could take those off-duty and not count against his working time,” Johnston said. “We think its common sense because it’s consistent with the 10-hour off-duty requirement.”

Johnston pointed out that allowing truckers to take a two-hour midday break to tend to personal affairs — eating, showering, etc. — is totally consistent with the rest of the regulation and should not count against the 14-hour clock.

The other change OOIDA will petition for involves split-sleeper berth provisions for team drivers. Under the new HOS regulations, team drivers would have to take a minimum of eight consecutive hours off in the sleeper berth.

“That’s impractical for most team operations,” Johnston said. “We’re asking in our petition that the DOT retain the current sleeper-berth exemption, which allows the drivers to take sleeper berth time in whatever increments they want as long as no period is less than two hours.”

OOIDA contends that FMCSA’s abandonment of the sleeper-berth rules, at least as far as team drivers go, was based in part on the assumption that a schedule, such as the one where the driver goes on duty for five hours and then off-duty for five hours, only gives a driver a five-hour window of opportunity to obtain rest.

“This is simply not the case with team drivers,” OOIDA’s petition states. “Often the period of a driver’s rest is a combination of the length of the other (team) driver’s driving period plus that other driver’s breaks to take care of business.”

Meanwhile Canadian government officials have given no indication there might be implications for the proposed Canadian rules — due to be published next month — which include a more flexible sleeper berth provision.