Home
»
Trains Magazine
»
Forums
»
General Discussion
»
new truck duty time rule overturned in court

Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
The US Court of Appeals has overturned the new Hours of Service rules that was created and signed into law this year. There is a watch dog group that claimed in the suit to the Appeals court that accident rates grow up exponetally between 10-11 hour of driving. The US Appeals Court agreed stating that the new rules are "Caparious" and "Abritary" I drove for 16 years and the rules that were in force were written back in the late 1930's when doing 200 miles in a day was alot of work: Maximum time in 8 days 70 hours. Maximum time on duty 15 hours this includes 10 hours of driving. then you must take 8 hours off. A single driver can leave Boston on Monday morning drive 10 hours and 8 off resulting in a rotating day/ night time work and wreckage of normal sleep cycle added to that is the stress of the job and uncertian to poor diet. By Thursday he or she may be out of hours and legally cannot drive until about saturday midnight. This law ignores shippers and recievers appointment times which must be met. For every driver that fails to properly use the law to stay legal and to stay rolling for the company will end up being replaced by any one of 50 or so recruits that fills up any trucking company's orientation trailer on a given week. The new law was to allow a driver to drive 11 hours then must stop for 10 hours. (Sleep, dinner, shower etc) leaving 3 hours free for trade related onduty types of work such as fueling, scales etc.. After 70 total hours are accumalated then the driver CANNOT move for 36 hours regardless of where he or she is at. This could be a parking lot behind a rest area 200 miles from a nearby source of food, rest, shower water and laundtry etc Or a truck stop. Predictably this will result in adding more trucks, drivers and load upon the shippers and recievers to meet appointment times. The appointment times are usually set without the driver's input and sometimes a good driver will say "I cannot make it on time" and the cycle begins all over again with the orginal freight to A to B by X time and date. Alot of drivers have left the industry due to drug testing, Alcohol rules and various other personal reasons such as health and the more common ultimateum from the spouse (My way or the highway) due to long and longer absences from home which usually runs from 6 weeks to 6 months at a time. The battle over the Hours of service continues with the shippers and recievers on one side who DEMAND Just in Time delivery and other personel whose cargoes such as produce and gasoline cannot will not must not be delayed. And the other corner will hold drivers, dispatchers, the company and the law enforcement as well as the families and friends of the drivers. Many times personal conflicts such as lack of sleep, bad diets and exhaust problems as well as outside interfernece such as hookers, bums and similar problems prevents the cargo from moving in a regular and timely manner. Alot of drivers will abuse the hours of service and drive to thier personal maximums. For example I have run from Garden City Kansas with a load of meat from Satuday morning 10 Am to arrive in Bakersfield California at 10 AM Non-stop via NM, AZ (2100 miles or so I think) simply because the load MUST be at the reciever's dock by 4 PM monday or it will be considered a service failure against me, my company and the law. The problem comes in play when you have about 5 more hours to get to Salinas CA where the cargo is due. I have personally driven when tired and sleepy at times. This is worse than drunk driving or drugged driving. I will attest to about 12 instances which I woke up with just enough time to execute a emergency manuver to avoid hitting and killing a bystander, cycilist or family broke down on the side of the highway. How many more lives I have saved by stopping to get 8 (Acutally 12 or more) hours of sleep simply because I cannot keep it between the lines>? I dont know, only God does. This is one of many loads that were delivered with the legal paperwork turned in. As I am no longer involved with the laws of service I can truthfully state that there were problems between hours of service and expected appointment times. I also must inculde the usual amount of time lost waiting for cargo to be loaded or unloaded which is measured in hours and days. Sometimes the driver is expected to do the work manually. 1400 Cases of popcorn will take one person about 5 hours to move. Or the driver can elect to pay someone large sums of money out of pocket for "Lumpers" to do the work while he or she tries to rest. Grocery and Frozen food warehouses usually see 40-60 hours of standing by the dock waiting for word on the load (Alert, standing and waiting in line with other drivers) which is not paid, not covered by the law (One writes in 15 minutes loading and unloading on the lawbook while the rest of the time is created "Off duty" or "Sleep" to save driving time that will be needed to get the load to the east coast legally. Thus the battle goes on. People in the industry have debated this for 12 some years now and we are not any closer to a new set of laws that makes everyone healthy and productive.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag