New HOS amends short-haul rule; Black boxes not included
WASHINGTON, -- While Canadian carriers are still adjusting to the news that the US's new hours-of-service rules will no longer include a split-sleeper provision, some short-haul truckers south of the border are celebrating a different amendment. Operators and delivery drivers who work within a 150-mile radius of their starting point will no longer have to maintain logbooks. According to the new HOS regime published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last Friday, the change was prompted by safety data that shows short-haul drivers make up over half the commercial fleet yet are involved in less than 7 percent of the nation’s fatigue-related fatal truck crashes. The new HOS rule also does not include electronic on-board recorders for long-haul truckers. Industry insiders expected the FMCSA to include a requirement for black boxes after a US court advised the agency to do so last year. But the FMCSA said the importance of EOBR issues warrants a specific and separate rulemaking that the agency is now developing. A published notice of proposed rulemaking is expected in early 2006. As TodaysTrucking.com reported on Friday, the FMCSA scraped a provision in from the court-rejected 2003 HOS rules that allowed truckers to split their 10-hour off-duty requirement in any two periods, provided one break was at least two hours long. The change now requires drivers to take eight consecutive hours off. The additional two hours could be takes in or out of the sleeper berth. (For the whole complete story go to: www.todaystrucking.com/displayarticle.cfm?ID=4282). This newest HOS regulation will go into effect October 1, 2005. There will be a transition period until Dec. 31, 2005. That time will be used to educate and retrain drivers, carriers, and enforcement personnel. For the most part, Canadian carriers frowned on the new change. "I think the US made the wrong decision," Paul Easson of Berwick, N.S.-based Easson Transport said.