FMCSA Tests Two Hours-of-Service Changes
When it comes to hours-of-service regulations, one dramatic change between both Trump Administrations and the Biden Administration when it comes to guidance from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has been flexibility. Whereas the Biden Administration had a focus on keeping things straight and narrow, Trump’s FMCSA approach has been to test the boundaries to find ways to make truckers’ jobs easier without compromising safety. These two pilot programs prove just that.
Details
Over the past few months the FMCSA has been testing with hundreds of drivers, totalling 256 drivers for each program before the results are finalized, across two programs. Those are the Flexible Sleeper Berth Pilot Program and the Split Duty Period Pilot Program.
The Split Duty Period Pilot Program allows drivers to pause their 14-hour driving window once each day for up to three hours during qualified non-driving periods. These include pickup, delivery, traffic congestion, and intense weather conditions. This would mean a driver could be on the clock for 17 hours in a day provided that the 3 hours are low-intensity standby phases such as waiting for a finished delivery to finalize paperwork, or having fun waiting at a port.
The Flexible Sleeper Berth Pilot Program would split the ten-hour off-duty hours into any two periods, provided the larger period of waiting time is spent in the sleeper berth. The potential for truckers only getting five hours of sleep each night could lead to some problematic implications.
As it stands, both programs are in their pretesting period to refine the rules before expanding in 2027.
Conclusion
As interesting as all of this is, it will be some time before the data finalizes and we learn whether or not it is reasonably safe for truckers to split their 14-hour daily driving times into two sections and split their breaks as well. Though the Trump Administration is more bombastic than its latter and former compatriot, it still hopes to get this right before setting millions of drivers loose on the road with the new regulations. We will have to wait and see what the final results bring to the table.
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