On May 14, 2020, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (“FMCSA”) published a final rule updating hours of service rules by adding more flexibility. These updated hours of service rules were proposed based upon thousands of comments the FMCSA had received, including comments from MITA, the Aggregate Carriers of Michigan and ARTBA, to reform these rules.
The law firm of Sullivan and Leavitt (Martin and Michael Leavitt specifically) advise that the four major changes to the hours of service rule that may affect your businesses are as follows:
- The on-duty limits for short-haul operations will increase from 12 to 14 hours and from 100 air-miles to 150 air-miles. This change will certainly help our industry, especially during busy months of construction. Because of this change, the exemption from FMCSA log keeping requirements will also increase.
- The adverse driving provision would extend the driving window two hours (from 11 hours up to 13 hours) if the driver encounters adverse driving conditions while operating over the road.
- For over the road truckers, in addition to splits of 10/0 and 8/2, drivers would be allowed a split-sleeper option of 7/3.
- The 30-minute break provision would be modified to require the break after 8 hours of driving time (instead of on-duty time) and on-duty/non-driving period to qualify as a required break. Remember the 30-minute rule does not apply to the short-haul driver exemption, which most of our industry businesses fall under.
Please be advised that the final rule is expected to be published in the federal register this week. The rule will go into effect 120 days after it is published to allow ELD manufacturers to implement programming changes.
If you have any questions, please contact Glenn Bukoski, Vice President of Engineering Services at glennbukoski@thinkmita.org, or Rachelle VanDeventer, Vice President of Industry Relations, at rachellevandeventer@thinkmita.
