Hill Says to Expect Announcement on HOS Revisions in Late November

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Oct. 29 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

ORLANDO, Fla. — John Hill, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, told Transport Topics he expects to issue guidance on the agency’s revisions to the hours-of-service rule in late November.

“I believe that we have to give the law enforcement community and the industry some notice, and I would expect there to be some kind of announcement toward the end of November,” Hill told TT in an exclusive interview Oct. 22 during American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition.

Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted a stay until Dec. 27 of its ruling vacating provisions that allowed for an 11th hour of driving and a 34-hour restart.

In an attempt to satisfy the court, Hill said, the agency was poring over data, and “the majority of my time is spent dealing with the hours-of-service issue.”

“It’s very critical. I feel the responsibility every day that I come to the office,” he said. “The decision is very weighty, and I’m considering it very seriously, knowing there’s going to be scrutiny from the court, scrutiny on [Capitol] Hill, scrutiny from the industry and scrutiny from the advocacy groups.”

Regardless of the decision the agency ultimately makes, Hill said, he is prepared for some to be upset.

“You’re never going to make everybody happy,” Hill said, “but you always try to do the right thing.”

Hill said he had requested data on truck-involved crashes for 2006 earlier than usual — by the first of November — “because it’s the best data we have about the 10th and 11th hour” of driving.

Usually those data are compiled and sorted for the agency by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and delivered in the first quarter of the following year.

Hill said the data “will give us better indication about the fatigue-related crashes, and that’s going to be . . . one of the factors in our decision-making process.”

During the interview, Hill did not give many clues as to what that decision might be, though he did say, “In one respect, the court was procedural in dealing with the 11th hour, but we believe that there are other issues that we’re looking at to make sure that there’s support before moving forward with any action.”

ATA has asserted that the court’s ruling was rooted in the procedures FMCSA used to write the rule — rather than the rule’s substance — and that the agency should retain both the 11th hour of driving and the 34-hour restart.

On Oct. 23, the 11th hour of driving got support from Rear Adm. Thomas Barrett, deputy secretary of the transportation.

While addressing ATA’s board of directors, Barrett said the original intent of the revisions to the hours rule in 2003 was to update a rule that “was a throwback to the World War II era [and] bring it into the 21st century.

Barrett called the pre-2003 rule “too restrictive on drive time and too tolerant of long workdays.”

The 2003 rule increased the allowable drive time to 11 hours from 10, but cut the maximum workday to 14 hours from 15. It also raised the minimum daily rest period to 10 hours from eight.

Since 2003, FMCSA has tried to revise the rule twice, only to see lawsuits headed by Public Citizen thwart those efforts.

Public Citizen won judgments against the rule in 2004 and in this July from the D.C. court, at first vacating the entire rule, and most recently just the 11th hour and 34-hour restart provisions.

After the 2004 ruling, FMCSA reissued a nearly identical rule but provided more data as part of the rulemaking process.

In his “state of the industry” address, ATA President Bill Graves said it was the federation’s “ultimate hope — and belief — that the final ruling of the court will keep the current provisions in place.”

After hearing the comments of Hill and Barrett, Graves said he still maintained his belief FMCSA would keep the provisions.

“I still think we made a good case for maintaining the 11 and the 34 . . . we are working to add additional info in support of the 11 and the 34,” he told TT. “So I’m still expecting, as I said in my comments, that there will be an interim final rule to put those two items back in play.”