This Editorial appears in the Feb. 20 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today. Sometimes, half a loaf just isn’t enough. And that’s especially true when that half a loaf actually consists of something bad that the other guy didn’t do to you after he had threatened to do so.
That’s just what happened when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently rolled out its latest version of the hours-of-service rule for the nation’s truck drivers.
After hinting broadly — that is to say, in lots of places and to lots of people — that the agency was looking to find a way to trim driving hours from the current 11 to 10, the rule did not do so.
But FMCSA officials since have made it clear that the only reason they didn’t try to enact that cut is that a higher authority — namely, the White House Office of Management and Budget — told them that they had failed to provide a strong enough foundation to justify such an action.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, what FMCSA did do in the rule — namely, seriously damage the usefulness of the restart provision — was surely enough to cause the trucking industry to object strenuously.
And, added together, that is why American Trucking Associations has taken the unpleasant — but necessary — task of challenging FMCSA’s actions in a federal appeals court.
As ATA President Bill Graves said on Feb. 14, “We regret that FMCSA and the Obama administration have put ATA and its member companies in a position to take this legal action.”
We have been saying all along that the 2004 HOS rule has been working: We have seen historic improvements in highway safety since the rules went into effect. But FMCSA has knuckled under to several interest groups that are intent on scrapping the rule.
While trucking surely had reservations when the 2004 rule was implemented, the industry found ways to comply and to work the changes into their routines that allowed us to continue to deliver America’s freight on time and in a cost-effective way.
Now the agency wants to change the rules again — and without necessary evidence to support those changes.
Enough is enough.
As Graves said last week, “The law is clear about what steps FMCSA must undertake to change the rules, and we cannot allow this rulemaking, which was fueled by changed assumptions and analyses that do not meet the required legal standards, to remain unchallenged.”
