Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

Certain folks want to strike. Well they are about to get their wish.

There are two ways to interpret the word “STRIKE”. One, the way that our little buddies who could NOT understand supply and demand were advocating has to do with work stoppage. Our little buddies figured that if we stopped work then all our “demands” would miraculously be met.

What they failed to understand, what they apparently REFUSE to understand, is that we live in a global economy. Oil is traded on the global marketplace. (they shouldn’t feel TOO bad because apparently the US Congress doesn’t understand that either, sue OPEC indeed!!) Oil is a fungible commodity. If the US doesn’t buy the oil, why, Russia, China, India, Europe, or any of a whole lot of OTHER countries are in line to buy that same oil. If we don’t buy it then, on the Global Market, the demand falls. If the demand falls , and the supply is constant, THEN the price also falls.

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Recently I have had numerous discussions with drivers whom are slightly confused about the 14 hour rule. The truckers I have talked to say that they have to go “Off Duty” after their 14 hours has been used. That’s not true. The 14 hour rule only applies to your driving time, not your “on duty, not driving” time. If you go On duty not driving after 14 hours, you can remain on the clock so to speak for as long as you want. But you cannot drive after 14 hours until you have had a consecutive 10 hour break.

The reason I bring this up is because we had a driver in our fleet that told a receiver that he could not unload the trailer due to being out of hours. (The Drivers unload their own trailers). He had reached his 14 hours mark and thought that he had to go off duty. This was at 3am in the morning. Well, the receiver could not get in contact with anyone at our facility until 7am that same morning. Due to the driver not unloading his freight, the receiver had to shut their production down at 6am and the driver refused to unload the freight until he had a 10 hour break, when in fact he could have went on duty not driving and legally unloaded his freight and kept our valuable customer in production. We were able to get another driver in the area to arrive and unload the trailer for them so they could get back up and running. It was 9am before they were able to start their machines back up. 3 hours of downtime cost them approximately $9000 in production loss..and it could have all been prevented if the driver had been properly educated about the 14 hour rule.

PATT (Parents Against Tired Truckers) probably have their hearts in the right place, trying to protect the ultra safe four wheeler drivers from the big, bad killer truckers.

Founder of P.A.T.T. issues scathing testimony against FMCSA over HOS
The Trucker Staff  12/19/2007
WASHINGTON — Attempting to address fatigue on the highways by allowing truckers to drive more hours is like allowing motorists to consume more alcohol in order to alleviate drunk driving, the founder of Parents against Tired Truckers (P.A.T.T.), told a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Hours of Service today.

It goes on with a lot of statistics. They’ve got their stats and we’ve got our stats to counter their stats. The problem with driving 11 hours isn’t driving, it’s working or even waiting without being able to sleep, then driving for 11 hours.

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I know this is from Australia, but it shows the technology available, besides, I like the title.

Carmel Egan
December 16, 2007
INTERSTATE truck drivers are switching off their lights to hurtle through the dark at 100kmh - and swerving to the wrong side of the highway - to avoid cameras.

They are avoiding the cameras because -

The truck drivers are turning their lights off to avoid detection by Safe- T-Cam, a network of point-to-point fixed cameras that collect, verify and store data on heavy vehicle movements on major arterial roads.
The systems - designed to combat heavy-vehicle driver fatigue - are positioned throughout NSW and South Australia but also catch drivers entering and exiting Victoria.
The overhead cameras focus on the driver’s face and the truck’s front number plate so their identities can be verified during police logbook checks.

I used to have the attitude that HOS needed to be strictly enforced, until they came up with rules I didn’t like. Even as a team we had trouble driving strictly by latest must drive 11 hours before stopping rule. What’s wrong with a little flexiblity in allowing drivers to rest when they want to rest, instead of forcing drives to drive when they’re tired and rest when they’re not.

Just like this article, it only takes a few idiots to mess it up for the rest of us.

Looks like we’re stuck with the HOS rules as they are right now. 11 on 10 off with a 34 hour restart. If I’m out here working, I want to be working instead of waiting for hours in a truck stop!

DOT maintains 11-hour driving limit for truckers
WASHINGTON (AP) - Big trucking companies got their wish on Tuesday when federal regulators maintained existing limits on drivers’ hours, rather than endorsing a court order sought by consumer advocates that would have required one less hour behind the wheel each day.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued an interim final rule that maintains the current 11-hour driving limit, under which truckers are required to rest for 10 hours.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in September delayed until Dec. 27 a requirement that would reduce the continuous driving limit to 10 hours with eight hours of rest.

I’m a little confused. If the Court decision isn’t until the 27th, what’s the FMCSA coming out with their “interim final rule” now for? Read the rest of this entry »

It seems that Dart Transit is making an attempt at bringing reality into the Hours of Service Debate. Not complete reality, mind you, but more realism than has been considered to date. eTrucker has reported, in an article published yesterday, that

“Dart Transit Co. wants a two-year exemption from two provisions of the hours-of-service regulations so that 200 of its owner-operators can operate under a fatigue risk management system that encourages quality nighttime sleep and uses electronic onboard recorders (EOBRs) to monitor drivers’ rest schedules.”

The two provisions in question are the 14 hour clock and split-rest limitations; all other HOS provisions will apply. The goal here is to place the specified 200 drivers into a scientifically valid test in real world conditions. The on-board recorders will be used to ensure that the truck isn’t moving for at least six straight hours between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. (meaning, presumably, that the driver is sleeping and not playing some silly video game). The idea is to provide night-time sleep while, at the same time, affording drivers a little more flexibility in choosing when and how they manage to get in their full ten hours of rest during any 24 hour period.

They’ll also, according to the article, use

“…software from Circadian Technologies to analyze driver fatigue risk on a daily basis. Exempt drivers and their fleet managers would get these scores, along with instructions on how to improve them, such as temporary reductions in workload.”

Dart applied for the exemption in June and the FMCSA published a notice of the exemption request, seeking comments, on Monday; the comment period closes on December 26. If the exemption is granted, Dart will begin taking applications and providing health screening from and for O/Os seeking the opportunity to participate in the study. The health screening is being done to eliminate anyone from the study who might have an undiagnosed sleep disorder.

On the face of it, this study would seem to go a long way toward bringing scientifically backed, and reality based, evidence into the HOS debate - rather than the unending litany of bias-ridden statistics. But do I think this’ll be groundbreaking or earth-shattering? Nope, but the proposed study, as well as its method and practice, is rife with interesting implications….

Drivers Daily Log should be a required program for anyone with a computer in a truck. This is more than a computerized log book. It does so much more. I’ve been a user for a several years. When the new rules came out in 2004 and all the changes since then, while everyone else was confused, I always knew if I was legal or not. I mentioned Drivers Daily Log before in my Business Software post, but it’s worth mentioning again in more detail.

Hours of Service

Canada has gone through the same Hours of Service upheaval as we have. If you drive in the US and Canada you have to switch to the Canadian and back to the US rules (and soon Mexico) depending on what country you’re driving in. Canada recently had their Hours of Service rules change and without going into detail, they’re more than a little confusing. The guys at DDL keep all of these rules up to date including rules for intra-state drivers in Alaska, Florida and a few other states that have their own rules for in-state drivers.

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The ATA filed for a stay on the ruling by a Federal Judge that eliminates key parts of our current log rules. The ATA asked for an eighteen month stay to allow DOT time to get its act together and find a solution to this problem. Even if the Court denies the stay, we will have another couple of weeks before the July 24th ruling goes into effect.

If you are a flat-bedder that had to sit over the week-end because you didn’t have a load, it was probably on a trailer going to North Carolina being pulled by the first Mexican truck to deliver in the U.S. under the new program. Its pretty hard to argue that this load would have been hauled by an American Trucker, but since a Mexican driver ran it to its destination, there was one less load for our own drivers.

Tomorrow marks the sixth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. Where were you on that morning? I was in Jackson, TN watching the towers fall on TV at the Loves truck-stop. Remember the skies without airplanes for almost a week. We all came together then and stood together as a Nation. Take a few minutes tomorrow to remember, remember the innocent who died at the hands of madmen, remember the soldiers who have payed the ultimate price to defend America from these monsters, remember how we put aside our petty differences and stood united.

Be Safe;
Don Rogers