In the process of reporting the variety of state responses to OOIDA’s petition to FMCSA to withhold federal enforcement grant funding from a number of states given apparent lengthy delays in adopting regs, I happened upon what might actually be a decent piece of news for anyone in the audience running primarily intrastate in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s intrastate hours rule starts with vehicles weighing more than 26,000 lbs. and generally is one that is more liberal than the interstate rule. It offers drivers the possibility of driving up to 12 daily hours in a 16-hour on-duty window, with an 8-hour required berth period rather than the longer 10 in the federal rules. Its cumulative on-duty limits are 70 hours in seven days or 80 in 8 days.
As regards the ELD mandate and how, assuming nothing changes at the federal level to delay the mandate (and that possibility has been seeing some action this week, of course), Wisconsin will implement the mandate for intrastate truckers there, Overdrive had previously reported the likelihood that Wisconsin would adopt an intrastate mandate on the same timeline as the federal rule.
However, in further back-and-forth this week with Captain Brian Ausloos there, it appears the intrastate rule will require in-state rulemaking to adopt, which may eventuate in a delay there.
While, as noted in the story from yesterday, the interstate rule is automatically adopted in Wisconsin, Ausloos noted in follow-up that’s not the case for the intrastate rule, which will require a rulemaking. “Wisconsin will need to go through a rulemaking process before this [the ELD mandate will] be a requirement for intrastate operations,” he says. “We will move this along as quickly as possible, but I would project that the end of 2018 or early 2019 would be a realistic expectation.”
If you’re running Wisconsin intrastate only, looks like you’ve got more time whether or not the ELD delay amendment in the Congressional appropriations bill — or Rep Babin’s two-year extension standalone bill — succeeds to delay the mandate.
Keep tuned.