Anti Driver Coercion Laws coming into effect

http://www.joc.com/trucking-logisti...cking-environment-shippers-told_20150323.html

Tired of being told to push past your hours or shippers saying be early or you're SOL...Well not for much longer.

Shippers, Carriers, & Brokers will be liable for forcing drivers to go past their HOS.

 

ORLANDO, Florida — Shippers are being warned to prepare for major and potentially costly changes in the way they contract or hire trucking companies to move freight across the U.S., as economic, regulatory and legal pressures reshape the transportation landscape.

The days when a shipper or consignee could tell a trucking company to deliver a load within a certain narrow time window or face penalties or loss of business are coming to an end, speakers at the Transportation and Logistics Council’s 41st annual conference here said.

Under a driver coercion regulation now on the federal drawing board, that shipper or consignee could be accused of “coercing” the truck driver to violate federal safety rules in order to make that on-time delivery, and coercion will carry stiff financial penalties.

“The driver coercion rule-making could be the most significant change we’ve seen in transportation in our lifetime,” Mike Regan, chief relationship officer at TranzAct Technologies, told the more than 200 shippers, carriers and brokers at the conference.

“How many of you are now prepared to verify that when a truck driver pulls up to your dock, he has the hours available to move your freight?” Regan asked. No one in the audience, which included more than a few receivers and shippers of freight, raised their hand.

Not being prepared could be costly. The rule-making in question would hit offenders, including motor carriers, logistics operators and shippers, with penalties of up to $11,000 per incident, and possible revocation of the operating authority of a carrier, freight broker or forwarder.

The rule-making, mandated by Congress in the last highway bill, would extend the regulatory authority of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration well beyond the motor carriers who operate trucks and hire or contract with drivers, to brokers, forwarders and shippers.
If put into effect as proposed, the coercion rule would open a Pandora’s Box of legal questions and issues, Regan and other speakers at the T&LC conference said. What’s more, shippers would need to make substantial changes to supply chain processes.

Shippers could have no good choices, said Robert Voltmann, president and CEO of the Transportation Intermediaries Association. “If you ask a driver if he has enough hours (of service) left to deliver your load and he says ‘no,’ and you refuse him the load and ask his company to send another driver, that could be considered coercion,” Voltmann said.

Not asking the driver about his or her hours and expecting the driver to stick to a contractual delivery time could lead to a charge of coercion as well, he said. In effect, the FMCSA is asking shippers to enforce regulations — and that’s the agency’s job, Voltmann said.

The driver coercion rule-making is just one part of a larger trend in regulation and governance that could have far-reaching and long-lasting effects on transportation. The Compliance, Safety, Accountability, or CSA, initiative came under fire, with speakers and attendees calling the FMCSA’s release of a smartphone app sharing CSA scores “a poke in the eye.”

Transportation organizations, including TIA and the American Trucking Associations, consider the scores unreliable, an opinion shared by the Government Accountability Office.

The use of those CSA scores in accident litigation could have the most significant and widespread impact. “We’re going to see the whole way we contract with carriers change as part of a paradigm shift,” said Hank Seaton, an attorney with the Seaton & Husk law firm.

The days when a freight broker or shipper has thousands of small carriers to choose from and a one-size fits all procurement contract are numbered, Seaton suggested, because brokers and shippers face greater liability in negligent hiring lawsuits following accidents.

“Courts are treating shippers who hire their own motor carriers more like brokers, and brokers may be responsible for motor carrier negligence,” said Ronald L. Bair, a shareholder in the Bair Hilty law firm who has defended companies against negligent liability lawsuits.

Bair believes the increasing vicarious liability of shippers, as well as concerted union-backed efforts to change national worker classification laws, spell an end for the use of owner-operators by motor carriers and brokers “as we know it today” within 10 years.

Seaton also said the coercion rule-making will force changes in shipper practice. “Prepare to pay detention charges and accommodate carrier unloading on arrival,” he said. “A lot of receivers say ‘if it’s not here on time, we’ll reject it,’ ” Seaton said, but not for much longer.

“The concept of ‘reasonable dispatch’ (delivery within a reasonable time, depending on conditions) is really what shippers are going to have to live with,” he said. “That whole dynamic is going to come into play as a result of the regulatory focus on safety.”

If that’s the case, shippers may have to build a lot more slack into lean supply chains.

 

I agree, but I hear a lot of stories of guys getting pushed beyond for the company and at the end of the day it really only hurts the driver. This way everyone will feel the pain.

I am wondering if shippers will no longer be able to kick you off site anymore either. say they take too long loading/unloading and you run out of hours.

 

Which is why it won't be done lol