Another step has been taken to address livestock haulers’ regulation concerns.
On Tuesday, Aug. 21, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced that it is seeking comments on proposed changes to the current hours-of-service (HOS) regulations. HOS regulations limit how long and under what conditions commercial truck drivers can operate. The regulations are also at the heart of the ranching industry’s concern over electronic logging devices (ELDs).
There are six proposed changes in total, two being petitions by truck driver organizations. In general, the proposed changes would exempt short-haul trips and add more flexibility for drivers regarding break timing and duration, as well as dealing with difficult driving situations. More details below.
The proposed changes do not completely match up with what livestock haulers have been hoping for, however.
“It is a mixed bag, as it stands,” Lia Biondo, director of policy and outreach at the United States Cattlemen’s Association (USCA), told WLJ.
“What’s great to see is just that they’ve heard us,” she added, noting that some of the proposed changes will be helpful.
“It’s good to see that they are reacting to things that we’re saying, especially because one of the areas that they are seeking comments on is petitions that have been made over the past year. And there have been plenty.”
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) similarly called the move a positive step.
“We are grateful for FMCSA’s willingness to consider options for flexibility on Hours of Service rules,” said Allison Rivera, Executive Director of Government Affairs for NCBA, in the group’s response to the proposals.
“The proposals released today are a positive step towards focusing on needed changes to Hours of Service, but more specific changes that address the unique realities of the livestock hauling industry are still needed. We will continue to work with FMCSA to provide flexibility for the livestock hauling industry.”
Legislative efforts
The advanced notice of the proposed rulemaking was released on Tuesday. The comment period will last 30 days from the point the proposed rule is posted in the Federal Register. As of press, that had not happened. Appearance in the Federal Register usually occurs a few days after a proposal is announced, but sometimes it can take up to a couple weeks.
Even though the comment period will be short, there is no guarantee on when any action might be taken on the proposed rule.
“We might not see something for a little bit going through the agency, so that’s why it’s important to focus the majority of our efforts on the legislative side of things,” Biondo said.
Some of this legislative effort includes S. 2938, also known as the “Transporting Livestock Across America Safely Act.” It calls for exempting from the “on-duty” time for HOS activities associated with loading and unloading livestock and trips that are certain air miles away from destinations. Additionally, it calls for different time limits on drive times when a trucker is hauling livestock, and increased flexibility about duration and placement of mandatory rest times. The bill was submitted in June but hasn’t come out of committee.
The so-called “minibus” appropriations bill—H.R.6147—passed the Senate on Aug. 1 with an amendment to postpone the ELD requirement for livestock haulers for a year. It was hoped this delay would give S. 2938 more time to be considered. Now it looks like little will happen on either bill in time.
“Everyone is bracing themselves for another continuing resolution,” Biondo reported. “Funds expire Sept. 30, but with the farm bill and some of these other, bigger pieces of legislation coming down the pipeline, it’s not very likely that we’ll get to it before the deadline.”
Specifics and details
As mentioned above, there are a total of six changes in the proposed rule. They are:
1.Short-Haul Operations—Drivers would be exempted from the requirement to use ELDs or prepare records of duty status (RODS) if their roundtrip would take 11 hours or less of driving and can be accomplished in 14 consecutive hours.
2.Adverse Driving Conditions—An additional two hours of driving time would be added to allowable drive times if adverse conditions such as snow, sleet, fog, or other bad weather or unexpected traffic conditions exist.
3.30-Minute Break—Changes would allow for greater flexibility on timing of required 30-minute breaks.
4.Split Sleeper Berth Time—This would allow for the required 10 hours of off-duty time to be split into two periods of at least two hours for those drivers with sleeper berths.
5.OOIDA Petition—The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association petitioned the FMCSA to amend rest break requirements to remove the required 30-minute break and to allow for a more flexible, potentially longer break.
6.TruckerNation Petition—The group TruckerNation petitioned that the regulation against driving after the 14th hour after beginning work be changed to the 14th hour of being on-duty, as well as requesting the 30-minute break requirement be eliminated.
Though many agencies’ calls for comments on proposed rules come with specific questions, the FMCSA-proposed rule has some highly specific questions and requests on how stakeholders make their comments. Each of the six proposals—numbered 1-6 as seen above—come with two to six individual numbered questions. For example, on the short-haul operations proposed change the questions are:
a. Do you have any data to show that extending the 12-hour period for the short-haul exception to the RODS/ELD requirements to 14 hours would change the safety performance of carriers using the short-haul provision?
b. How specifically would a 14-hour period change your driver or carrier operations as compared to 12 hours?
c. What would the incremental change be for your operations/business if the exemption was changed to 14 hours? For example, would your operations expand or would your drivers/carriers move from non-exempt status to exempt status? What would be the economic impacts of that incremental change?
The FMCSA asks that comments be submitted with indications of the specific sections being addressed. It is strongly recommended that anyone interested in submitting comments read the proposal in full online as it contains many specific details that could not be presented in their entirety here.
Once the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, documents can be read and comments can be submitted online at regulations.gov by searching for the Docket ID of FMCSA-2018-0248. — Kerry Halladay, WLJ editor
