Eld exemption for livestock and agricultural commodities extended to June 18

Yea well by free market rules shouldn't I be allowed to decide how many my hours my is open each day? And yes that is what it ends up being

 

So the idea that cow haulers are special is a moot point. Exemptions should not apply.

 

As stated earlier, livestock is cyclical. You wouldn’t be able to support team driving week to week, let alone year around. You could go a few days or a week without needing another driver in your truck. If you’re a husband and wife, sure, but you wouldn’t be able to employ another person full time.

Labor and trucking rates would barely cause a shift in meat prices. I don’t recall meat being sky high back in 2012-2013 when we were all running for 4.00-4.25 a mile compared to the price now.

The easiest solution is to rest them, but salebarns are filthy and you’d have cross contamination that will result in sickness. If the salebarns has to pay someone to clean pens after each load then it would cost more to rest them.

As it stands now with the MAP-21 exemption they basically get the first 150 miles free, which pushes them out to 8-900 miles legally depending on where they’re running. Why not require the eld but if you’re loading you can continue your run. Once empty you’d have 2 hours to get somewhere to park. When you’re empty you have to follow the hours of service. And they have to obide by the 70 hour rule. To me that seems pretty reasonable.

 

I'd much rather have up to 16 hours on, with 8 hours off, without the 60/70 hour limit. The 30 minute break I don't care for, but if every other industry is required to give employees lunch break, then it should be left up to the driver. It really doesn't matter what you're hauling. If you need to be available 24/7, you run team.

 

Once again you can not run team for 90% or better of the cattle loads you'll have two people going broke instead of one making money.

 

It’s not so much being available 24/7 as it is you don’t know where you’re going. Buyers work on commission and often have orders from multiple people. They call and say they’re going to have a load for sure and at the end of the sale it could be 200 miles or 1000 miles.

I got out of livestock because I knew it was going to be a giant cluster. Everyone knew it was coming and nobody did anything to prepare.

 

Right do you know why they don't haul cows on trains anymore? Because people thought you could leave them parked for however long in whatever weather so they would all die, same thing happens if you leave them on the truck too long or load and unload more times than is really necessary

 

Most people i know who are doing livestock seem to be buying older trucks and using paper logs. I don't see the 99 and older exemption lasting more than a couple years at this point

 

“If worse comes to worst and your truck full of corn has to sit on the side of the road for 10 hours, it’s annoying but it’s not the end of the world,” Formica said. “It’s not a truck full of pigs or a truck full of cattle.”

This person is part of the National Pork Producers Council, who lobbied for the ELD exemption. I'd say that if someone never ate meat again, it'd be annoying but it's not the end of the world. But I'm convinced it's not what you say, but how much is in your wallet while you're saying it.

 

Even if you had to pay an extra $100,000 per livestock truck per year to account for a 2nd driver and loss in productivity so you wouldn't have "2 going broke instead of one" you put that cost across how many pounds of finished meat? If they do 100 loads at 40000 each that's 4 000 000 pounds. Or a whopping 2.5 cents per pound. Even if you work those numbers you come up with what .10 per pound? Only a very thin slice of the population would refuse to pay it. The cost of trucking is only one very small % of the cost of any finished product.

I don't think the 99 and older exemption is going away anytime soon. In reality it is a very small portion of the trucks on the road. Over time they will eventually become unusable. I see it way more likely the gov says something to the engine manufacturers something to the tune of "you will not build any new engines without emissions". Keep rebuilding the old blocks but no new ones. Same thing - over enough time they will all die. Or make it prohibitively expensive. Want a new one? $120,000 tax up front. Still want one?

 

They don’t get hauled once and then end up on someone’s plate, so your math isn’t as simple as you stated. And it wouldn’t be the packers sending out the finished product dealing with the increased transportation cost it would be the producers who wouldn’t be able to afford it. The majority of fat cattle loads going from feedlot to packing plant fall under the MAP-21 exemption already because those are generally shorter loads. It’s the 3 or 4 or 5 times they’re hauled before that point that it would get expensive and then it wouldn’t be worth it for the ranchers anymore because they’re wouldn’t be money in it.

An all out exemption from eld’s would kill the rates in that segment because everyone that doesn’t want one will decide its time to learn how to haul livestock or drag a hopper. I no longer have a dog in that fight so at this point I’m pretty indifferent. But without ever being around it and knowing what all is involved from the time that calf hits the ground until it’s served up on your plate it’s hard for people to see that the solution can’t simply be to run team or stop eating meat.