Service trucks should be exempt from federal hours of service regulations for commercial vehicle drivers, says the Associated Equipment Distributors.
The AED, representing 460 distributors of construction equipment and related services and supplies, wrote to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Oct. 10 to suggest a “service truck exemption.” The AED letter, from vice-president of government affairs Daniel B. Fisher, was in response to an FMCSA call for “public comment on revising four specific areas” of the current regulations limiting the operating hours of commercial truck drivers.
“Given that operating a commercial motor vehicle is incidental to a service technician’s primary
Most of the time, a service truck, like Randy Bostic’s “Blue Collar,” is working on a job and not being driven
job responsibilities and they do not face the same demands or fatigue concerns as long-haul truck drivers, AED asserts that a blanket exemption from the HOS regulations for equipment service trucks is the most efficient and safest approach,” said a news release from the AED.”
In his letter to the FMCSA, Fisher specifically called for an exemption “from the driver hours of service requirements in 49 CFR Part 395” of the regulations. Such an exemption would place service trucks “on the same regulatory footing” as utility service vehicle drivers and drivers transporting agricultural commodities.
“This is the simplest and most straightforward approach to dealing with these short-haul, professional technicians to ensure their work is not jeopardized due to lack of hours,” Fisher wrote.
Four areas being considered
According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the four specific areas being considered for revision are as follows:
• expanding the current 100 air-mile “short-haul” exemption from 12 hours on-duty to 14 hours on-duty, in order to be consistent with the rules for long-haul truck drivers;
• extending the current 14-hour on-duty limitation by up to two hours when a truck driver encounters adverse driving conditions;
• revising the current mandatory 30-minute break for truck drivers after eight hours of continuous driving; and
• reinstating the option for splitting up the required 10-hour off-duty rest break for drivers operating trucks that are equipped with a sleeper-berth compartment.
The FMCSA’s advance notice of the proposed rule-making also invited comments and relevant data regarding two petitions. One, filed by Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association, pertained to the 14-hour on-duty limitation; the other, from TruckerNation, responded to the 10-hour off-duty requirement.
Should the FMCSA not exempt service trucks, the AED supports “certain reforms that will provide some regulatory relief for equipment dealers,” said the AED news release.
These include the following:
• providing one set of HOS rules for short-haul operations that would exempt a commercially licenced driver operating within 150 air-miles of the work-reporting location and who completes the work day within 14 hours;
• eliminating the short-haul rule’s return-to-work-reporting location requirement to allow the driver to establish the origin point for that duty period, as opposed to returning back to the normal work-reporting location;
• flexibility to extend the 14-hour daily duty window by up to three hours in a single off-duty break; and
• allowing two more hours of driving beyond the 14-hour window during adverse conditions, such as inclement weather.
Impact on certain sectors
A posting on the FMCSA website noted that the congressionally mandated electronic logging device rule recently went into effect. It requires most FMCSA-regulated motor carriers to convert their records from paper to an electronic format.
“While compliance with the ELD rule has reached nearly 99 percent across the trucking industry, it has also brought focus to HOS regulations, especially with regard to certain regulations having a significant impact on agriculture and other sectors of trucking,” the FMCSA posting said.
In his letter to the FMCSA, the AED’s Fisher noted that his organization’s members represent companies that manufacture, rent, sell, and service farming, construction, forestry, mining, energy, and industrial equipment.
“AED member companies operate fleets of service vehicles driven by field service technicians who maintain and repair heavy equipment at jobsites,” he wrote.
While some of their service vehicles have gross vehicle weights of 10,000 to 26,000 pounds, many others exceed 26,000 GVW. As a result, all the technicians/drivers are subject to the HOS regulations.
“These field service technicians are highly skilled and trained technicians who typically drive less than 150 miles per day,” Fisher explained. “Eighty percent or more of their duty time is on non-driving activities involving repairing and maintaining heavy equipment and related administrative duties.”
Fisher argued that these driers don’t face the same fatigue demands as long-haul truckers. For service truck driver/technicians, operating a commercial vehicle is incidental to their primary job.
“Although the drivers may work long hours, they are servicing equipment used on projects and job sites within a local area,” Fisher wrote.
Among his other arguments are that the seasonal nature of industries utilizing heavy equipment often requires technicians to work long hours to meet seasonal demand; and that there is a “significant shortage” of technicians.
“The 14-hour daily driving limit presents a particular hardship for these companies during the construction season,” Fisher wrote. “AED field technicians, much like utility service vehicle drivers, spend long days repairing and maintaining heavy equipment and related duties, but often run out of hours and are unable to drive themselves back to the work-reporting location, to their home or to a motel for suitable rest.”
— Keith Norbury