In a letter to Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx last week, members of the House said the July 1 institution of the new hours of service rule was “counter to commen sense,” given that the agency hadn’t waited on the results of its field study before the rule went final July 1.
The letter specifically calls out the 34-hour restart provisions for being overburdensome and costly. The regulations restrict drive flexibility and increase costs for “the already over-burdened trucking industry,” the letter says, and the costs will be passed on to American consumers, they write.
Fifty-one representatives signed the letter, which was written to ask that a date be given to Congress for when the agency expects to submit the findings of its study to Congress, as required by the MAP-21 highway funding law.
The law actually required FMCSA to submit the findings by March 31, 2013, but the agency didn’t. The rule obviously went into effect without the results of the report.
The letter says the trucking industry is a “pillar of the US. economy,” and, as such, any restricting regulations of the industry should “be backed by factual, statistically-valid and data-driven studies that are fully completed and analyzed before the proposed rule comes into effect.”
Click here to read the letter in its entirety.
A court ruled Aug. 2 to uphold the restart provisions of the rule after the American Trucking Associations had sued to overturn it.