Hours of Service

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has issued a final rulemaking regarding clarification to the applicability of emergency exemptions for motor carriers during emergencies.

This whitepaper covers the main points of stressors that truck drivers experience and how to mitigate burnout, slowing turnover.

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The federal government is looking into speeding up the process in which Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) are issued. At the same time, the federal government ruled against revisions to the hours-of-service (HOS) requirements, citing that safety groups gave no basis for changes that would have provided more flexibility to drivers.

Economic recovery and pandemic relief upstage harsher rules on truckers, as the overall industry applauds productivity goals. In the meantime, big environmental rules loom at EPA, while one large TL carrier wants to speed up the process to obtain a Commercial Driver’s License.

Paradoxically, truck drivers are both scarce and underutilized; optimizing drivers’ time can address both problems.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance has set May 4-6, 2021, as the dates for this year’s International Roadcheck, over that 72-hour period, commercial motor vehicle inspectors in jurisdictions throughout Canada, Mexico and the U.S. will conduct inspections on commercial motor vehicles and drivers.

The latest tweaks to the 83-year-old truck driver hours of service regulations went into effect Sept. 29 as the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) attempts to build in flexibility to a monolithic regulation covering some 3.5 million long-haul truckers.

FMCSA Acting Administrator Jim Mullen explained that this ruling is the result of listening to all industry stakeholders, including the motor carrier industry, truckers, safety advocates, law enforcement, and state partners.

The Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said yesterday that its national emergency declaration to provide hours-of-service regulatory relief to commercial vehicle drivers transporting emergency relief in response to the nationwide coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has been extended through May 15, 2020 or until the revocation of the Presidentially-declared COVID-19 national emergency.

While the motor carrier hours-of-service (HOS) final rule has ostensibly been on the back burner since the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a notice of proposed rule making (NPRM) geared towards HOS rule changes, with an emphasis on increasing safety through updating existing commercial motor vehicle driver regulations last August, it appears now that the wheels may be turning on the potential next steps for a final rule.

New HOS tweaks top the list of regulatory changes heading into 2020. Carriers say flexibility is key to effective industry regulation covering the niche sectors that make up this dominant, $700 billion industry.

The U.S. Transportation Department is poised to relax the federal regulations that govern how many hours a day truckers can be behind the wheel, interest groups have lobbied to make the rigid “hours of service” rules more flexible.

As 2019 starts with uncertainty over Hours of Service regulations, blockchain technology will become the go-to solution for truckers wanting faster, better business management.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is seeking public comment on revising four specific areas of current hours-of-service regulations, which limit the operating hours of commercial truck drivers.