This Editorial appears in the March. 4 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today. American Trucking Associations’ request to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that it delay implementation of its latest iteration of a new hours-of-service rule for a few months — until a federal appeals court has ruled on ATA’s challenge — was very straightforward.
Unfortunately, in denying the request, FMCSA chose to twist ATA’s position into a quasi-legal motion, and set a bar so high that the request couldn’t possibly meet it.
As a result, the trucking industry will have to spend some $320 million training its workers and altering its operations to meet a rule that is quite likely to be modified or rejected by the court. And, of course, FMCSA’s batting average in court battles over the agonizingly slow course of the HOS modification saga is amazingly low.
Add to that $320 million another mountain of money that shippers, receivers and others in the supply chain — as well as rule enforcers — will have to spend getting ready for a rule that may well not survive, and FMCSA’s folly in rejecting the delay seems obvious.
As ATA President Bill Graves said after hearing of the rejection, “At a time of rising diesel prices, increased equipment and labor costs, the decision by the head of FMCSA to reject a reasonable request for a brief delay in enforcing this rule is unbelievable.”
There was little risk involved for FMCSA if it agreed to ATA’s request, since the only difference would have been a few months when the HOS modifications wouldn’t have been in effect.
But forcing the entire industry to prepare for modifications, with no guarantee the changes will stand after the court rules, is just bad government.
ATA General Counsel Prasad Sharma said the group “asked merely for the agency to extend the rule’s implementation deadline — a request the agency could grant so long as there is a reasonable basis to do so — [but that] FMCSA’s chief counsel instead analyzed the request as though ATA were asking a court for an injunction.”
Sharma said, “So rather than giving ATA’s request its natural reading, FMCSA contrived an analysis under an inapplicable test to critique the sufficiency of ATA’s request.”
And now the trucking industry will have to spend $320 million preparing for a rule that may well have a life span measured in months, before the court rejects it and FMCSA begins to work on the next set of proposed rules.
