Many of you know I used to own a trucking corporation.  It was a captive- in other words, we used our authority (trucking registration) to haul our own products and raw materials.  We operated up and down the East and West Coasts, and radiated out to and from the Midwest.

There were many issues we had to handle.  I won’t even bother discussing the needs to deliver to our customers when they wanted the product- or how the product needed to be delivered.  No, I am talking about avoiding traffic and  routing our drivers near rest areas,  hotels, cheap fuel, as well as service areas.  Oh, and insuring that our drivers never drove more hours a day than allowed, maintained their log books, and paid our road taxes (which meant we needed to do some fairly complex calculations).

And, now, the government is overhauling driver hours again.   This time cutting the work week dramatically.  Instead of being able to drive a maximum of 82 hours a week, the weekly maximum will now be 70 hours.  And, with a new definition of work week.  It used to be that a work-week reset anytime our drivers were not driving (or loading) for 34 consecutive hours.  Now, the work-week is clearly defined at any 7 day period.

Let me explain what this means.  Most of our drivers (crew 1) loaded their first haul around 5 pm on Sunday.  And, drove their allotted hours, getting as far as they could before they called it a night.  They slept for a few hours, and then continued on their way.  For some of our drivers, this meant they reached their destinations Monday morning, slept, made their deliveries, and then slept again But Tuesday, they were back at the plant. (Others reached their destinations Monday afternoon, and were picking up raw materials late Tuesday.  Some of these drivers did not return until Wednesday afternoon.)

Another set of  crew (2) was ready to load the truck and repeat the sequence to return Friday.  The trucks that returned Wednesday were reloaded and went out to finish the week, returning Friday night.  Crew 2 took the Sunday trip the next week, with the cycle repeating.

A third set of crew (L) delivered product on the way to the next plant- to drop the empty trailer (perhaps, with some raw materials on board for plant production).  This 2 man team could leave almost immediately from the plant  with a full load for the return trip.

Crews 1 and 2 never drove more than 75 hours a week; Crew L (long distance), which was comprised of 2 men drove about  60 hours each for the week.  And, everyone was home by Friday night.  Which left them 40 to 48 hours to “reset” their driving clocks.

The fines for violating “hours of service” were steep.  Now, they are up to $ 11K for trucking firms like ours and $ 2750 for the driver fines. (That’s each offense!)

The new rules are supposedly derived to reduce- and, hopefully, eliminate- sleep-related crashes.  But, one thing is certain- it is going to make it more difficult to ship materials by truck- and lower the compensation of drivers.  It would have made our operation impossible.

Most truck drivers in America are what are called owner-operators; they own their own trucks, are in business for themselves, and farm out their services to the highest bidder.   Even so, they typically paid per mile of load.  (Our drivers did not own the trucks- we did- and were paid by the mile, by the delivery, and with extra compensation when customers rated their performance outstanding.)

Moreover, most drivers don’t operate solo- they are like our Crew L.  There is a second driver in the truck- who drives while the other sleeps.  (Truck cabs are well-appurtenanced- radio, cellular phone,  A/C and heat, of course, but the sleeper portion has a computer, wireless internet, TV, and a bed.)  So, no one really has to drive sleepy.  It’s typically the short-haul driver who is not frequently monitored by the regulatory authorities who pushes the envelope.

The Department of Transportation does not record fatigue-related crashes with heavy trucks (carrying 40K pounds or more), but there is a study claiming that 13% of truck crashes are fatigue related.  And, different data indicates that truck drivers average 6.2 to 7 hours of sleep a night- hardly a sleepless bunch.

Oh, and these rules are claimed to save some 19 lives, 1400 crashes, and 560 injuries a year.  At a cost of about $ 1.4 billion to the trucking industry.  (Some of that cost is related to the fact that more day-time driving, encountering traffic delays will result from these new rules.)  A cost that consumers will pay.

Unless the freight is hauled by trains- where engineers, brakemen, and the like have no limit on the number of hours they can work each week- but are limited to operating only 12 hours a day.  (That’s 84 hours a week, by the way.)  [That is the reason why the engineer locked his engine on the hill, the engine that destroyed Lac Megantic in Quebec.]   Obviously, the DOT also doesn’t worry about those trains that hit vehicles at railroad crossings, due to sleepy personnel.