In an open letter dated June 9, 2014, to the United States House of Representatives, Teamsters President James P. Hoffa said, “The Teamsters Union asks you oppose any efforts to delay, revise, or replace the current Hours-of-Service 34-hour restart provision and to reject any attempt to increase truck size and weights, especially the size of double trailers from the current 28 feet to 33 feet.”
In his letter, Hoffa said: “Over 600,000 of our 1.4 million Teamster members start their workday by turning a key to start a truck that travels over our nation's highways, and their safety is of paramount concern to us.” He goes on to say: “Drivers have to be especially alert these days as they have less time and distance to change lanes or stop quickly. It makes little sense, therefore, to shorten even more the time that truck drivers have to rest, recuperate, and get back on the road and to put them in bigger combination vehicles that require greater stopping distances, more difficult lane changes, and longer merging areas to get up to speed with traffic flow.”
Details about the 2013 Hours of Service (HOS) Rules
The Senate proposed legislation, which was generated by the Appropriations Committee, which asks for a suspension for some of the 34-hour restart provisions until more study could be done to back up the rule.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA), based in Arlington Virginia, would also like to see the government roll the restrictions back. ATA’s President and CEO William “Bill” Graves indicated that the 2013 restart rules actually decrease safety by altering the driver sleep patterns and by causing more Commercial Motor Vehicles to be on the roads during daylight hours. Graves mentioned the Tracy Morgan crash by saying there’s no way carriers nor the government action can “dictate what drivers do during that off-duty period.” The ATA “strongly believes that drivers must take advantage of their off-duty periods for rest and that drivers should not drive if they are fatigued.”
Hoffa also says the rules protect drivers from carriers who want to “push their drivers to squeeze every possible hour out of them that they can.”
Interestingly, several senators who voted in favor of the restart suspension objected to the rule because of its regulatory overreach. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana said she doesn’t want the Federal Government’s deciding when people should sleep.
Who’s For and Who's against the HOS restart suspension
FOR:
Sen. Susan Collins
Sen. Roy Blunt
Sen. Mary Landrieu
Sen. John Tester
Todd Spencer - Executive VP Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association
AGAINST:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Joan Claybrook - former NHTSA head
Sen. Cory Booker
Sen. Robert Menendez
James Hoffa - Teamster Head
