Opinion: Ag Haulers Need Flexibility of Hours Exemptions

Flexibility and timeliness are two essential ingredients in the transportation of agricultural commodities by commercial transporters throughout the United States.

One of the more mysterious changes found in the proposed hours-of-service regulation promulgated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is the potential to eliminate the agricultural exemptions currently available to accommodate the peak planting and harvesting seasons in the various states. Another is the removal of timber (trees) as an exempt agricultural product. The forest-products industry currently depends on the exemption, especially when weather disrupts the transportation of logs and related products.

A majority of states in the nation have used the flexibility allowed by the current agricultural exemptions to set operating hours of service different from the federal standards, based on the specific needs found within the individual states. The necessity to maintain this flexibility is a major point that the Agricultural Transporters Conference made clear to FMCSA several times, and it was one of the major points made in the final comments that the conference filed with the agency Dec. 15th as part of the final comments submitted by the American Trucking Associations.

Commercial agricultural transportation is a significant segment of the trucking industry in the United States. It is growing annually, as more and more grain is transported by trucks due to the elimination of short-haul rail lines. Due to more frequent peak harvesting seasons for produce and other perishable commodities, which must be delivered in a timely manner, the need for efficient commercial agricultural transportation will only grow as our economy continues to grow. For instance, in California, where agriculture is now the largest component of the economy in that state, it appears that the new proposed hours-of-service regulation would only limit the agriculture exemption to farmers who move products themselves within a 100 air-mile radius of the products point of origin, thus destroying the commercial (for-hire) transportation industry in California.

The California agriculture industry is a $26 billion industry that produces 350 different crops and livestock commodities and generates more that $70 billion in related economic activity, including transportation. This economic activity has had tremendous impact on California households. In just five decades, advances in agriculture production have resulted in a drop in spending on food consumption from 24% of disposable income in 1949 to only 10% today.

The elimination of the commercial agricultural transportation industry could apply to all states as the states would have only three years to comply with the new hours-of-service rules or face the loss of Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program funding.

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