Can You Hear Us?

We all have to hope that officials of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration really have their ears open when they hold their three public “listening sessions” later this month over their embattled hours-of-service rule for the nation’s truck drivers.

At the same time, it is incumbent upon the trucking industry to bear witness to what has been accomplished under the rule that the agency now is apparently prepared to scuttle and what the uncertainty over the rule is costing the nation’s freight system and its freight carriers.

FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro announced on Jan. 4 that hearings would be held in suburban Washington, Dallas and Los Angeles later this month as part of the agency’s commitment to send a new rule to the White House for review by July (see story, p. 1; click here for story).

There is little doubt that the misguided interest groups that have spearheaded the drive to sabotage the work rule will be in the audience denouncing it, even though truck-involved highway fatalities have fallen every year since the new rule went into effect. In fact, truck-involved highway deaths reached a new low last year — not long before the Department of Transportation agreed to abandon the rule to settle a court suit with those same interest groups.

We should not prejudge the outcome of this effort by FMCSA. The agency agreed to review and revise the rule, but it did not agree to change it in ways that would please the rule’s opponents. That being the case, it is trucking’s responsibility to help FMCSA preserve what is best about the rule and to improve those portions that could use fixing.

We believe that FMCSA desires to improve trucking safety and that it understands that only by working with the industry can it improve safety without damaging the freight delivery system.

No one has more interest in improving the safety of the nation’s highways than the trucking industry. The country’s roads are our workplace as well as the place where our families and friends operate their own vehicles.

The trucking industry has been supporting FMCSA over the many years it has taken to upgrade and update the rule that governs commercial drivers, through thick and thin and multiple lawsuits.

It is critically important that FMCSA not succumb to the threat of continued litigation when it considers what to do. We all need no less than FMCSA’s best effort to create an hours-of-service rule that will withstand judicial review and allow trucking to focus on delivering the freight.