It's been quite some time since truckers had so many live arrows pointed in the direction of the hours of service rules.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration under Derek Barrs seems truly motivated on the flexibility front, looking for potential safety justification for expanded sleeper-berth splits and/or mid-duty-period breaks to pause the 14. Just last week 250-truck fleet CEO Zach Meiborg offered a radical simplification of the logbook to daily-only limits of on- and off-duty time, drive time governed by nothing more than the 14-hour duty maximum.
Other huge simplifications have been offered, too, by owner-operators -- 11-hour drive limits only in any 24-hour period, no 60- or 70-hour cumulative duty limitations.
With legislative-priority changes in the air, and a Trump administration that could be motivated to do as much as possible over its final two years, let's dust off and update the hours of service wish list. If you could have just one of the changes below, which would be best for safety, for flexibility?
The first couple options above are in effect FMCSA's pilot flexibility tests now getting under way, the second two those daily-limits-centered simplifications I mentioned above. The remainder are ideas owner-operators have long proffered over my two decades here at Overdrive. (Regular readers will recall the original HOS wish list back during the federal sprint toward ELD mandate implementation.)
If you've got other ideas, we're all ears. Keep it coming.
[Related: What if you didn't need 10 off after 11 or 14 in the hours of service?]
With Democratic party in Congressional control, any hope for legislative wins?
One thing's clear, with President Trump at the White House desk, bipartisanship will be a pre-requisite for any legislation.
We haven't seen much of that in recent memory, so I might join you in the low-expectations game. At once, it's almost been a half-year since we did a highway bill draft advance out of the House transportation committee with just two no votes out of a total 64.
Hope yet for work across the aisle? (There's a lot to like about trucking provisions in the "BUILD America 250" legislation, including principal-place-of-biz requirements extended to brokers with authority, truck parking expansion measures, efforts to strengthen electronic logging device provider certifications, and the list goes on. Track back through it in detail here.)
The big highway bill never got its full House floor vote, and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association at this early stage couldn't speculate on whether it might in the coming weeks of lame-duck terms for so many outgoing House members. The prior highway bill passed its late-September expiration deadline, and appropriations are currently happening under short-term extension to a date in December.
I don't think I can hold my breath for the next month, but here's to a little wishful thinking?
[Related: Parking, predatory truck leasing, ELD certifications: Highway bill advances]
