Any hope the 34 hour rule will get repealed?

No, I mean free enterprise business.

I am not saying all business. I have been exposed to the environment where I worked and the 3,000 clients we had dealings with. I saw the management advice to these business and their stance on the benefits of the employees.

I guess it made me cynical. But, for the most part you found 10. How many trucking companies are in that list?

 

Funny how it's foreign companies that value their employees, while "home-grown" companies (Walmart, {b}Lowes) are the ones that treat their people the worst.

 

The only reason manufacturing went overseas is the businesses first bribed Congress to let them do it, then went to the nation of the highest bidders in the bribe wars.

Had the US maintained some sort of import regulations, most of our manufacturing would still be here, we'd have a healthier economy, and everyone would be much better off, instead of this plutocratic cesspool we poor folk are slowly sinking into, thanks to the greed of the "open market".

 

Let me guess:

 

Got a message on qc from my company today. Bill has been passed to suspend the overnight and one per week provision thru an appropations committee. Will suspend them one year for review. Still has to pass thru Congress.

 

The "8 and 10" was sweet, but I doubt we'll ever see it again.

You're talking about 10 driving hours per day! Twelve hours downtime in 24 might sound tidy to someone who never drove, but it's:

1) A formula for economic disaster. Go tell Moyes, the Knights, the Schneider family, all the other ATA guys, and every lease operator and owner operator to park their trucks for half of every day a truck is under a load; trucks cost money even when they're not running. You'd have to almost double the size of the nation's truck fleet just to meet current domestic shipping and delivery needs; forget about surge capacity. Carriers can't find enough drivers to fill the trucks they've got now.

2) Still telling drivers to rest when they're not tired, and to just sit for half a day. Drivers aren't paid enough to do that. As I've said elsewhere, drivers are out there to get around, not sit around.

3) Unrealistic for irregular OTR, where back-to-back loads generally have different schedules, lengths of haul, and pick-up/delivery times. You'd still be trying to impose a regular framework on an irregular activity. Then there are delays for weather, traffic, loading and unloading issues, breakdowns.

For a deeper understanding, read Michael Belzer. Read Lawrence Ouellet. Read Bryan Di Salvatore and Marc F. Wise.

That said, I'd like to see both the 34-hour reset and that most absurd two-consecutive-nights-1-am-to-5-am rule stricken from the regs, but I know that even if Collin's bill passes both House and Senate, that FMCSA will play games, conduct flawed studies, falsify data, ignore what drivers know to be true about the job and their own Circadian rhythms, and generally try to justify their own government paychecks--that's been their pattern all through the years of the HOS revision mess. Anne Ferro is just one in a long, sorry line of cookie-cutter policy wonks.

 

Remember the caveat: It still has to pass thru Congress.
That means the committee that just passed the bill, passes it to the Senate President (Harry "I can be bought" Reid). He, and ONLY he, decides if the bill goes to the floor for a senate vote. He can table it (where it grows dust and is forgotten) he can reject it, he can send it back to committee for 'reconsideration' or he can send it to the floor for a vote.
Ann Ferrow has close links directly to the president. She has made no bones about not wanting this changed. If she contacts the president and says she wants it to stay in place, he simply places a call to Harry Reid and that is the end of that.
Any takers on this actually coming to a vote?

 

Good point, Emulsified. Not me, no.

 

I believe it will come to a vote and we will find it short of votes to pass due to the children in the congress who cannot get along.

 

stupid rule....should be 2 diff rules..1 for company drivers..and 1 for o/o's
as a comp driver..id like to see no more than 10 hr drive time per day...and a lunch break and say a min 12 hr reset before driving again.....