A proposed federal rule to require the installation and use of speed limiters (aka governors) on all trucks weighing more than 27,000 pounds has been sent from the DOT to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for its approval.

The rule, sent May 19 to the OMB, is being produced via a joint rulemaking by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Once the OMB stamps its approval on the rule, it will be published in the Federal Register and open for public comment for 60 days, according to the DOT’s latest rulemakings report.

The same report projects the rule to clear the OMB Aug. 15 and be published Aug. 27. The public comment period would last until late October.

Following the public comment period, the two DOT agencies creating the rule would then produce a Final Rule, which would go through the same review process as the proposed rule, except it would not have a public comment period.

The rule likely would go into effect two years following publication of the Final Rule.

NHTSA and FMCSA began work on the speed limiter mandate following a successful petition from the American Trucking Associations and Roadsafe America.

The American Trucking Associations and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, both of which separately sent letters to the Department of Transportation about the issue last week, stand on opposite sides of speed limiters. ATA favors a rule to require speed limiters on all trucks weighing more than 26,000 pounds, citing safety as its primary reason. It hopes to see trucks governed to 65 mph or less

OOIDA, however, says speed limiters will hurt highway safety, rather than help. “A speed limiter mandate will result in cars and trucks operating at different speeds on the highways,” OOIDA said in its letter. “When cars and trucks operate at different speeds on the highway, there is a significant negative impact on safety. Traffic is more dynamic and less predictable. Accidents increase. Your agencies must ensure you do not produce a mandate that will arbitrarily add dangerous car-truck speed differentials to our nation’s highways.”

ATA, however, called the regulation “common sense,” telling the DOT the rule is past due.

“In 2006, as part of our longstanding commitment to highway safety, ATA petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to require the speed limiter on all large trucks be set in order to electronically limit their top speed to no more than 65 miles per hour,” ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said. “We waited patiently until the government finally said in January 2011 they would move ahead with a speed limiter mandate, but this common sense regulation has been mired in bureaucracy for over four years now. It is long past time for NHTSA and FMCSA to move ahead with this rule.”

ATA says slowing trucks down will reduce the frequency and severity of crashes. They do, however, also support a national speed limit of 65 miles per hour for cars.

“In addition to slowing truck speeds, ATA believes in slowing down all traffic,” Graves said. “That’s why we back a national speed limit for all vehicles of 65 miles per hour and are disturbed by the recent trend of states raising their speed limits to 70, 75, 80 or in some areas even 85 miles per hour. These limits are reckless and are needlessly endangering millions of motorists.”

The debate has been spurred on recently by states increasing their speed limits. South Dakota recently pushed its speed limit to 80 miles per hour, while Texas is alone at the top with speed limits on some highways up to 85 miles per hour.

OOIDA said many states have eliminated car-truck speed limit differentials over the last 15 years because it’s safer for cars and trucks to travel at a more uniform speed.

Truck operators will no longer be required to carry paper copies of their medical certification cards beginning Friday, Jan. 30, as the certification will have been integrated into drivers’ CDLs, FMCSA is expected to announce this week.

Agency spokesperson Marissa Padilla in response to an inquiry from Overdrive this week said drivers can cease carrying paper copies of their medical certification beginning 15 days after it is renewed.

However, drivers have been required since Jan. 30, 2012, to self report their operating status and provide their medical certificate to their state licensing agency upon renewal of their medical certification.

So, presumably, the CDL-medical certification has already occurred for most drivers.

More details are expected to be published by FMCSA this week.

Carrier Insurance Rule Hits Small Business Hardest

Are your insurance premiums going up? The FMCSA finally issued its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), which proposes an increase in the minimum financial responsibility required of carriers, but the notice stops short of suggesting a dollar amount. Instead, the FMCSA is asking for input from trucking companies and other industry stakeholders.

The ANPR includes 26 questions that the FMCSA wants answered during the proposal’s public comment period, which ends Feb. 26. The FMCSA asks how much carriers currently pay for insurance, how much they expect their premiums to increase if the minimum is raised, and how the proposed rule would affect small carriers differently than large carriers.

Small Business Hit Hardest

Many of the largest carriers are self-insured, meaning they meet the financial responsibility requirement through bonds, letters of credit, or through some other financial means. Financial responsibility for small carriers and owner-operators generally equates to insurance coverage. The current minimum of $750,000 for general freight has been in place since 1985. The FMCSA noted when it first took up the question of financial responsibility that, had the current minimums kept pace with inflation, the minimum would be about $1.6 million today as measured by the consumer price index. Measured against the medical consumer price index, it would be $3.2 million. That wide range makes it difficult to speculate on what the new minimum might be.

Increasing the minimums would hit small carriers and owner-operators hardest, as it would lead to higher insurance premiums, already one of the biggest business costs for a carrier. Commenters in our last story about carrier insurance said that they pay anywhere from $4,000 to $13,000 per year on insurance premiums for one rig. The increased costs would force many out of business, even as demand for trucks is high and rates have risen significantly.

Not Worth the Cost

The current driver shortage and tight capacity already limits the trucking industry’s ability to keep up with high demand from shippers. Raising insurance premiums would add another check on capacity growth and only addresses settlements tied to the very few catastrophic accidents that occur each year. Even the studies submitted by organizations that support raising the limit found that it’s rare for a crash to exceed the current limit. The Trucking Alliance, a group of seven large carriers that are lobbying to raise the limit, found that only 1 percent of the claims it studied were settled above the current minimum.

ATA and OOIDA both oppose the measure, and ATA’s study of data from two of the 10 largest trucking insurers found that there’s only a 0.7% chance of crash resulting in a settlement above $1 million. The ATA study included ten times as many settlements as the Trucking Alliance’s, and it found that the average cost per crash is $11,229.

To comment on the FMCSA proposal and answer the agency’s questionnaire, go to                 www.regulations.gov.

After nearly a year and a half of asking Congress for it, the trucking industry got its wish Tuesday evening: A potential rollback of some of the more restrictive elements of FMCSA’s 2013-implemented hours-of-service rule for truck operators.

Congress likely will send a bill to the White House in the coming days that includes a provision that will put a stay on enforcement of two key elements of the 2013 rule: The requirement that a driver’s 34-hour restart include two 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. periods and the provision limiting the use of the restart to one time per week. The suspension of enforcement will last at least until Sept. 30, 2015

If the $1.1 trillion spending bill — which prevents a government shutdown and funds most government departments through next September — passes both chambers of Congress and President Obama signs the bill into law, enforcement of those provisions shall be halted immediately, according to the bill.

The Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, as the bill is called, was produced by the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday night, and it has received praise from the Senate Appropriations committee, too.

Large omnibus spending bill is expected to be unveiled early this week, and it’s expected to include the so-called Collins Amendment (introduced earlier this year) as a bill “rider.”

The rider, deemed to be a controversial one for lawmakers working on the bill, would suspend the requirement that a truck operator’s hours restart include two 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. periods. It also would remove the once-per-week limit of the use of the restart.

Major trucking groups like the American Trucking Associations, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the Truckload Carriers Association and trucking associations in all 50 states — along with dozens of other industry associations, says ATA — support the inclusion and passage of the Collins Amendment in the omnibus plan

Department of Transportation head Anthony Foxx, however, issued a letter of his own this week to Congress asking them not to include the Collins Amendment in the bill. The restart provisions, he writes, were “developed based on sound data and analysis. The evidence clearly shows that truck drivers are better rested and more alert after two nights of sleep than one night.”

ATA, however, says the amendment would give the industry “needed relief from unjustified and risk-raising regulations.”

“This isn’t a rider being added in the middle of the night at the 11th hour as some would have the public believe. This reasonable solution allows the government to do the research it should have done ahead of time and gives the industry the flexibility thousands of fleets and millions of drivers are pleading for,” Graves said.

Likewise, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is sending letters to members of Congress drumming up support for passage of the bill with the restart rollback included.

OOIDA notes in its letter that in a membership survey conducted last year, 46 percent of respondents said they felt more fatigued since the new rules took effect in July 2013 and 65 percent said they were earning less money

Why would our government make war on one of the most productive and safest groups in the transportation sector?

While there is no declared or undeclared war on owner-operators and independent drivers by government, it sure feels like it for many of them.  How else can one explain the variety of laws, regulations, and rules that have come out or are pending that may adversely affect them?

Let’s look at what this undeclared war looks like.

First, we have the federal and many state governments seeking to redefine and reinterpret what constitutes an independent contractor in trucking and the relationship between motor carriers and owner-operators.  The independent contractor model and use of owner-operators in the trucking industry has  been in place for more than 50 years, and many of the owners of the largest trucking companies in the country started as independent drivers. While this model is not perfect, it has generally worked well for both independent drivers and companies. Now we have a number of states pushing for these owner-operators to be considered employees instead of independent contractors. This concept fails to recognize that there are thousands of employee-driving jobs available across the country that these talented individuals could accept. Instead, they choose to be  owner-operators because of the freedom it provides them and the opportunities (and risks) of being their own boss and running their own small business. Unfortunately, this push by some state governments and other interest groups has had a chilling effect as some companies reconsider the use of owner-operators for fear that they may be subject to unwarranted investigations and fines.

In the end this push by government acts to limit the opportunities for owner-operators and independent drivers.

Second, there are the new hours of service (HOS) rules, which have disproportionately affected many owner-operators. The timing of these rules is particularly frustrating as those independent drivers, who recently survived the country’s worst recession in our generation and are still struggling, now face another  blow to their financial well-being. Probably even more vexing is that the new rules are not based on sound science and offer little benefit in their eyes in the way of safety.

While the new HOS rules are disconcerting, more regulations are on the way. The recent federal highway reauthorization (MAP-21)  requires FMCSA  to complete 29 new safety regulations within 27 months. Included in this list are several that will affect owner-operators, including rules for electronic logging devices, a national clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test results, new guidelines for safety inspections and others. While many of these proposed regulations and rules may have value in improving safety, the sheer volume of them will pose a further challenge for owner-operators in the way of costs and trying to stay compliant.

Third, the changing standards for vehicles have increased costs while posing a challenge in reliability. The 2014 engine standards are estimated to increase costs for a tractor by thousands of dollars. Based on the fact that large fleets buy significant numbers of new trucks, their costs will be substantially less per truck than those of an owner-operator buying one vehicle. Unfortunately, these new engines come on the heels of the 2010 models, which have had their share of problems from a reliability standpoint. New standards for brakes and other safety features will further push up vehicle costs in the near term, creating an even greater cost gap between owner-operators and fleets.

Finally, there is the staggering number of new state and local regulations targeted at trucking. These include local air quality regulations, idling standards, parking restrictions, noise ordinances, new fees and etc. The changes created by these new regulations are usually poorly communicated to the trucking industry and even more so to independents. In many cases, the fines for violating one of these laws can be very steep, as local governments equate big trucks with big income. In many cases independents only find out about a new regulation after they have been fined for it, which may wipe out the entire profit from a run for an owner-operator.

How do we get to a truce in this undeclared war? As in any battle, one stops firing the weapons. In this case, the weapons happen to be regulations and laws that are ill-considered and lack input from the people most affected. We need the government at all levels to “disarm” by curtailing new regulations and rules and reconsidering some of the existing ones, such as the new hours of service. Owner-operators and independent drivers have helped to build the trucking industry in our country into the most efficient freight operation in the world. Let’s not strangle these industrious and hardworking individuals with voluminous rules which are long on paper and short on benefit.

Pointing to a blog post by Anne Ferro, a truck driver trade association is claiming that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration administrator is biased against truck drivers and should be asked to step down from her post. The Owner Operator Independent Driver’s Association sent a letter to the secretary of the Department of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, asking him to call for Ferro’s resignation. In the letter, OOIDA argues that the tone of Ferro’s June 3, 2014, post to the “Fast Lane” blog, owned by the DOT, is antagonistic toward drivers and carriers. The association also says that by calling upon Congress to reject a motion to defund part of the hours of service rule, Ferro violated a federal law that prevents the use of federal money and resources for lobbying purposes. “OOIDA’s board of directors, made up predominately of men and women who spend their days on the highway driving a truck, has concluded that the FMCSA can no longer perform its regulatory and enforcement duties impartially, and we have thus lost confidence in Administrator Ferro’s ability to conduct her responsibilities (which go far beyond simply regulating and enforcing truck safety rules and regulations) effectively,” reads the letter from OOIDA. The group goes on to point out that the FMCSA has proceeded quickly with rulemakings opposed by carriers, such as the HOS rules and a pending rule to raise the required levels of insurance carriers much hold; in contrast, it has virtually ignored calls from the industry for minimum training standards for new drivers. “The quick action on the insurance issue, while training continues to be a non-priority for FMCSA is a clear sign of Administrator Ferro’s inability to properly prioritize the tasks before the agency that will result in real safety improvements,” says OOIDA’s letter. Secretary Foxx has not replied to the letter, but DOT spokesperson Meghan Keck told Overdrive that the DOT “does not think a letter like that deserves a statement.” The letter coincides with a high-profile semi-truck crash last week in which a member of comedian Tracy Morgan’s team was killed, as well as the passage of a bill through a Senate committee that would allow the current HOS restart provision to be rescinded.

Next week, FMCSA will publish a final rule extending the requirement for interstate commercial drivers to have paper copies of their medical examiner’s certifications with them when operating a commercial motor vehicle. An advance copy of the rule has been posted to the FMCSA’s website. This requirement will stay in effect until January 30, 2015. This requirement applies to any drivers with either a commercial driver’s license (CDL) or the commercial learner’s permit (CLP) who must be medically certified under 49 CFR part 391. Please note that drivers are still required to certify their status (e.g., interstate or intrastate, exempt or non-exempt) with the State Driver License Agency (SDLA) before January 30.2014 and to provide the SDLA a copy of any new medical certificate received after January 30,2012.
FMCSA also extended the requirement for interstate motor carriers to retain copies of their driver’s medical certificates in their driver qualification files. This extension of the requirement to carry a medical certificate card was needed to ensure that all SDLA’s are prepared to accept and transmit the medical qualification of CDL and CLP holders on the Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS) driver record.  CLICK HERE to visit FMCSA’s website for more information

Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) Drivers and Carriers:

Did you know an important law affecting you goes into effect May 21, 2014?

To keep America’s interstate CMV drivers healthy and our roads safer, all interstate CMV drivers will soon be required to have their medical examinations performed by a Certified Medical Examiner listed on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners.

If you’re an interstate CMV driver, you already need a valid medical certificate signed by a medical examiner. The only change is that after May 21, 2014, you’ll need to go to a certified medical examiner for your medical certificate. If you’ve already had an exam and have a current certificate that certificate will be valid until its regular expiration date.

You can find certified medical examiners in your area—or anywhere in the country—easily by following

1.       Visit the National Registry Web site and search by Zip Code, State, or examiner name.

2.       Choose a certified medical examiner from the list and call to make an appointment.

3.       If your preferred health care professional isn’t on the list, simply refer him or her to the Certified Medical Examiners page to learn more about getting certified.

Please spread the word and encourage your fellow CMV drivers to find a Certified Medical Examiner by May 21st. They can find more information in the Fact Sheet for Drivers or by going to the National Registry Web site, so pass it along!

Thank you for keeping America moving and for your commitment to safer roadways.