It’s time for hours of service to be about the driver

The onslaught of exemption requests from the hours of service is not slowing down, at all. The problem: they are all focused on what’s being hauled, not who is hauling it.

Various groups are vying for – and receiving – relief from different aspects of the regulation. Common targets are the mandatory 30-minute rest break and the prohibition from driving after the 14^th hour of being on duty.

To be clear, I’m not challenging the sanity of granting the hours-of-service exemptions. I am, however, challenging the reason why.

Each and every exemption, or waiver in the instances of emergency declarations, focuses on the commodity being hauled or the need for the commodity. For example, truckers who drive concrete mixers don’t have to take the 30-minute rest break because the mixture could be in jeopardy if they do. Truckers who haul fireworks around the Fourth of July get to drive past the 14^th hour of on-duty time. And livestock, let’s not forget about the animals. Deliver them with expediency for their health and safety.

Waivers to the hours-of-service regulations are also very common after natural disasters. And rightfully so. It’s not exactly sane to hold up relief efforts over arbitrary rules that do not affect safety overall.

All of the reasons for the various exemptions and waiver are sound in their own right. The problem, in my mind, is that our focus is off the mark. What’s in the trailer should never be more valuable than the health and safety of the driver delivering the goods. Valuable, yes. Just not more valuable.

The hours-of-service regulations should be more about protecting the driver, not controlling them.

This isn’t such an outlandish idea. In fact, truth be told, it is the original idea behind the hours of service regulations.

Back in the 1920s and early 1930s, trucking evolved and, frankly, was a bit out of control. John J. George detailed the state of the industry in an analysis of the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 in the Cornell Law Review.

He was much nicer and clinical in his assessment of the industry, but the gist is that unconnected motor carriers banded together to form a coordinated, nationwide system to move intrastate and interstate commerce. The motivating factor was to capitalize on restrictions on the rail system to steal the freight.

Motivated by competition and greed, motor carriers were working truckers ungodly hours.

George details part of the congressional debate over the bill, related to hours of service:

“Practically unanimous is the view that regulation must seek safety of highway travel, and a more humane treatment of employees than now obtains in working them 18 to 20 hours a day and even 100-120 hours with only two or three hours rest,” he wrote. “Drivers’ drowsiness appears a potent cause of highway accidents and the contention is ably made that such a cause inevitably results from the lengthy hours to which truck and bus drivers are subjected.”

Congress established the need for hours of service to protect drivers and, in turn, increase highway safety.

Of interesting note, the lawmaker championing the protections, Rep. Joseph Monaghan, D-Mont., proposed to limit on-duty hours.

“Monaghan offered an amendment whereby the Commission would prohibit an employer from working an employee in interstate or foreign motor commerce longer than eight hours in 24 with less than 12 hours free before resuming operation of the vehicle,” George wrote about the amendment.

“In behalf of this proposal argument was projected thus: impairment of employees’ efficiency and health results from present excessive hours; wide disparity exists between hours of interstate motor transportation employees and those of railway workers; the serious endangering of life on the highways results from operation of vehicles by exhausted employees, and Congress has already made provision for an eight-hour day for railroad workers.”

Monaghan received support from another lawmaker, a former railroad engineer, John G. Cooper, R-Ohio.

“Rep. Monaghan received vigorous support from Rep. Cooper, a former railroad engineer, who related his experience with drowsiness from 36-hour shifts in the ‘good old days’ of railroading in Ohio 25 years ago,” George wrote.

The same arguments about the complexity of trucking and economic greed nipped that in the bud. That stymied any congressional solution and Congress punted the decision to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Here we are more than 80 years later, still without consensus on the hours of service. The only difference is now we don’t keep drivers’ health and safety at the forefront of the conversation.

There would be no business end of trucking if it weren’t for the drivers. (We won’t even touch the autonomous truck subject right now.) Instead of limits intended to protect drivers, we see motor carriers view every last available minute of driving and on-duty time as commodities. Productivity is the buzzword they like to use.

The leadership at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration spent the last few months connecting closely with drivers. Ray Martinez sought input and we hope he listens closely to the people who know what life regulated by hours of service is like.

It’s time to go back to the initial reason behind the hours of service – protecting the drivers.