TESTIMONY OF

TODD SPENCER

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

OWNER-OPERATOR INDEPENDENT

DRIVERS ASSOCIATION 

BEFORE THE 

FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION 

HEARING ON HOURS OF SERVICE OF DRIVERS 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 2000 

 

 

Todd Spencer, Executive Vice President

Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association

Post Office Box 1000

Grain Valley, MO 64029

816-229-5791

816-309-4168

HOURS OF SERVICE

COMMENTS

Good Morning.

 

My name is Todd Spencer and I am the Executive Vice President of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.  OOIDA is the trade association for commercial vehicle drivers, owner-operators and small truck fleets.  Our views most accurately reflect the concerns of those men and women behind the wheel in large commercial trucks.  Our membership currently is 53,000.  Collectively, those members operate in excess of 80,000 trucks.

Those members are significant by themselves, but on this very important issue we are discussing today, the concerns we have with the current hours of service proposal are common with hundreds of thousands of additional truckers.

One of the goals of our organization, that dates back to 1973 when it was formed, was to see real reform of these 1937 rules that pre-date most of us in this room, that pre-date today's usually quite nice commercial trucks, and that pre-date most of the roads that truckers use to satisfy the needs of our nation.  These are rules that could never have conceived of cross country truck travel measured in days and hours, not weeks, and rules that never met or comprehended the human factors of the people driving those trucks.

For finally coming up with a real proposal for change, we salute the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration but that's as far as the accolades go.  I'm here today to ask the agency to go back to the drawing board.  The proposed hours of service in the current form will satisfy the needs of virtually no one involved with or dependent on truck transportation.  It will not produce a meaningful (perhaps even measurable) improvement in highway safety and it will snuff the spirit and the soul right out of hundreds of thousands of hardworking, conscientious, safe truck operators throughout the nation.

In my 24 years in this industry, first as a full-time owner-operator and then as a representative of the people that drive those trucks, I have never seen such emotion as what I am seeing now associated with any rulemaking or legislative undertaking.  The Hours of Service regulations significantly impact everyone of us because we all depend on the services of professional truckers far more than we imagine.  The people that I'm here representing are the people that make this system work, but much of what is being proposed could change that in ways that will benefit no one.

It's past time that professional truck drivers had hours of service regulations that would help them do their jobs better.  Having said that I will also tell you our organization is not asking for or hoping for an extension of time on this rulemaking.  Truckers need hours of service regulations that will allow them flexibility to drive when they are alert and to sleep when they are tired without fear of being fined or fired for making an intelligent decision.  Some would ask you to believe truck drivers aren't capable of making such decisions.  They do it everyday and they would continue to make intelligent, safe decisions even if the government didn't see the need to tell them when its bedtime.

The rules need an update, but the end product must be reasonable in meeting the needs of drivers as well as other effected parties.  Unrealistic demands or expectations, no matter how well meaning, will extract a heavy toll.  Like I said, I have never witnessed such emotions from drivers - good, safe, professional drivers - that are ready to chuck it for good.

Who is the culprit here?  Some people view the government as the enemy.  Unreasonable and unrealistic proposals reinforce that feeling.

I hope this one can be saved.  We aren't impressed or convinced by the safety data used to justify this proposal.  Some of the conclusions reached defy common sense.

What does the Essex study of line haul drivers in terminal-to-terminal operations tell you about long haul drivers that traverse the country and sleep better in their bunks than most people do in their beds at home and far better than any motel room.     

The current rule says single drivers cannot split their sleep time in a bunk while a truck is parked, yet team drivers can split their sleep time in a moving truck.  Does that make any sense?  Drivers hear this and they know instantly you know little about their profession.  Splitting sleep time makes absolute sense for many reasons that relate to scheduling, weather, traffic and more.  Additionally, one of the very experts that provided fatigue data for this proposal told me that splitting your sleep can result in greater overall alertness.  That has certainly been my experience and an one hour nap for me this evening may well mean I cannot go to sleep before midnight or even later. 

Am I different than other people?  Probably not much.  Truckers need flexibility with their time to do what needs to be done.  We asked for flexibility, but I do not see it in the current proposal.  Trucking is a 24-hour day industry.  That is what shippers and receivers demand.  Just-in-time delivery does not mean between eight and five, and even if it did, could you imagine all those trucks driving into rush hour traffic every day.  That is not realistic and I can tell you that truck drivers do not want to drive in rush hour traffic anymore than absolutely necessary.

We support creation of a 24-hour clock, but at the same time, it should not be so rigid that it is a punishment for drivers.  The first day of my week may occasionally start at midnight or 1:00 a.m..  Depending on how long the trip is I might like that, but if I do not, I should not be locked in to those hours until a weekend break.  And surely you have thought of my dilemma if the facility I'm delivering to cannot take my load until 4:00 p.m..  As a one truck operator I cannot deliver until I can restart my workweek.  Looks to me like this is freight that can no longer be hauled by a small business trucker - no matter how safe or dependable that trucker may be.  And what of the costs of this proposal.  They will be far higher than projected here and they will come in many ways.  The recorder technology required will be a significant expense.  We note that most of the industry has yet to be able to recover the increased costs of fuel over the past six months . . . and fuel price  volatility will be with us for quite some time.

Lost productivity on the part of drivers.  You estimate that roughly half a million drivers will travel fewer miles resulting in a loss of earnings to them of just under ten percent (10%).  As you might expect drivers are not excited about that.  And the loss of income will apply to far more than the 480,000 drivers cited in the proposal.  Among owner-operators, our most recent cost and income data shows them at about $6,500 less per year than the dollars mentioned in the proposal.  They do not have an extra ten percent (10%) to lose.

The proposal relies on market forces to come into play so drivers see their compensation increased to previous levels.  I'm apprehensive - even skeptical.  Driver compensation is the biggest issue in attracting and keeping safe, dependable drivers.  If market forces could really boost driver earnings to any significant degree, why has it not over the past 15 years?  This one dearly needs a nudge by including truckers under the Fair Labor Standards Act and paying them overtime.  And lost time at home will be significant.  The proposal mandates weekends of a length that will allow a body to compensate for any sleep debt that might build up.  How can you possibly have a sleep debt ever when you are off duty for 12 hours everyday?  It's not possible.  Of course, drivers want time off and they need time off, but they want it at home, not in a truckstop. 

We asked one of our members to apply the new proposed hours formula to a trip he routinely makes from Boise, Idaho to Houston, Texas to Sunnyvale, California and then back to Boise.  Under the proposed rules he missed his Houston unloading appointment by two hours.  He missed his Sunnyvale, California appointment by 24 hours.  He was four days late in making it home for his last delivery, primarily due to an 80-hour weekend spent a day away from home.  He could have been an hour from home.  Additionally, under the current rules, this driver never drove a full ten hours per day.  I said this was an emotional issue with drivers.  One letter we received just last week is illustrative of this point when he had to stop for the weekend.  The driver wrote, "If the federal government thinks they can keep me at a truckstop two hours from home for a short or a long weekend, they'll have to have me in jail."

Drivers need flexibility.  They want home time and they do not want their time off anywhere else.  If you can get them there, fantastic.  But I do not see that happening with this proposal.

MANDATORY ON-BOARD RECORDERS

The system of laws and regulations in the United states is based first on the presumption that those laws and regulations are reasonable and are beneficial to society as a whole.  Second, it is presumed that the vast majority of citizens are honorable, trustworthy members of society and that they will voluntarily comply with those laws.  If  it were otherwise, no amount of law enforcement could assure compliance with laws and regulations that the majority viewed as unreasonable and refused to comply with voluntarily.

DOT's proposal for electronic monitoring (surveillance) systems for purposes of enforcing the compliance of professional truckers with hours-of-service regulations completely overturns these basic principles of our legal system for once class of citizens.  It seeks to brand professional truckers as less than honorable, untrustworthy members of society who must be subjected to the most extreme measure of enforcement imaginable.  That is constant, twenty-four hour-a-day, electronic surveillance to assure their compliance with the laws.

This is an outrageous attempt by government to circumvent the freedom and constitutional rights of hundreds-of-thousands of honest, hard working professional truckers.  If this heavy-handed, overzealous attack by government bureaucrats on the constitutional rights of professional truckers is allowed to stand unchallenged, whose rights will next fall victim to the heavy-hand of government swinging the club of rapidly developing new technologies capable of intruding into the private lives of every citizen of this country?

If the U.S. Department of Transportation is allowed to exercise this extraordinary power specifically prohibited by the constitution, then which government agency will be next to swing the club, the Department of Labor, OSHA, the Federal Trade Commission, or the Internal Revenue Service?  The time to put the brakes on the overzealous and intrusive government use of these electronic technologies is now!  OOIDA will seek to have the requirement for mandatory installation of electronic systems dropped from the DOT Hours-of-Service proposal prior to their final adoption.  If we are not able to accomplish this, we will most definitely challenge this outrageous intrusion on the rights of professional truckers through the court system, or through any other means at our disposal.

OTHER ISSUES

Parking - There is no place to park now.  The truckstops are full.  In rest areas, how can you have 10 hours off when the cops and the tickets come after two hours.  What is the biggest fatigue issue in trucking.  It is certainly not the driving, it is the burdens that ultimately fall on drivers in loading and unloading situations.  That is what needs to be fixed.  And I do not see it in this proposal.  Again, the agency seems to be totally relying on market forces to somehow provide a remedy.  I do not see that happening without a specific cost tied to these situations for the shipper or receiver and reasonable compensation paid to drivers in all instances.