FMCSA Continues to Work on Revising Hours of Service Rule
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration held a series of sessions to gather public input on the hours of service rules for truckers that are being revised. The fourth session was held Davenport, Iowa on the 25th of January. The first 3 had been held in Arlington, Virginia; Dallas, Texas and El Segundo, California. The FMCSA had invited commercial truckers, trucking companies, owners, operators; truck safety groups, researchers and other people to discuss issues that impact truck safety. These issues include rest time, on duty time, sleeper berth use, loading and unloading times, and others.
Last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reached an agreement with truck safety groups, the Teamsters union and others to revise the Hours of Service rule for truckers. The Bush Administration had set the rules at 11 consecutive hours. The rule had been soundly criticized by truck accident victims and New Jersey truck accident lawyers. The FMCSA promised that it will revise these rules within a period of 9 months. As part of its efforts to revise the rule, the FMCSA held these four public listening sessions to gather input from the public
Lowering the HOS rules is absolutely necessary, but on its own will not be able to tackle the problem of driver fatigue. The FMCSA has not paid any attention to the problem of sleep apnea, which is another contributor to driver fatigue. The NTSB has recognized the role of sleep apnea in trucker fatigue-related accidents, and has recommended mandatory sleep apnea sleeping for truck drivers. However, the FMCSA has failed to act on these recommendations.
hi I am least to a small co,and pull a hopper. I run 6 state and most loads go 50 to 200 miles, 2 to 3 loads a day. I love the hours of sevice the way that it is know. the truble i have is a lot of the plants that i pick up at don't care how long you sit to load. feed mills don't care(unless they are out of produt) how long you waight to unload. when you finly get to unload it taks 2 to3 hours.just latly i was told by dispach the i have to get the load deliverd no mater how long it taks or they where going to fier me. so i have bin running 14 to 19 hours a day to do 7 to 8 hours of work. the rest of the time is spent whighting to load/unload. they make us make the logbook look legal and remove times on bills of ladings.my co just passed a audit to, gess no one varafid missing times on bills of lading. well any way the big thing is to get trucks loaded and unloades in a timly maner or the trucker can charge fo wasted time. $85.00 per hour is what i think it sould be. you rent somthing for a day,you pay for a day no matter if you use it for 1 hour or 8 hours. well if you order a load and the truck sits hafe the day to load or unload after 1 hour the truck should go on the time clook. I have sat in line for 1000+ hours in 2009. all the drivers hear are having the same truble and all the drivers have run thes hours after the forteeen. 35 trucks 1000 hours each thats 35,000 hours that where driven ilegly becous we could not load or unload in a timly maner HOW WOULD ANY OF YOU LIKE TO WORK 1000 HOURS FREE . GIVE HALF OF YOUR DAY TO YOUR EMPLORER FOR FREE.