BREAKING NEWS… NEW HOS RULES PUBLISHED
Posted on December 23, 2010
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I will give you my take on them when I finish reading them…..
CSA 2010 Website Turned On
Posted on December 13, 2010
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FMCSA has turned on their CSA 2010 website. Here is the link: http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS/Data/Search.aspx .
It’s running extremely slowly, if at all, as everyone tries to get in. I’d try it tonight, then there will be less traffic. Plus, I wouldn’t be surprised if some areas of the website do not operate at all, as this is Day One of their new site, so it’s bound to have problems.
EPA Delays Tougher Boiler Regulations
Posted on December 10, 2010
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This was in yesterday’s (December 9) New York Times. The Obama Administration has delayed regulations which were scheduled to go into effect in January, 2011, which cut industrial emissions from industrial boilers. The EPA has declared it needs until July 2011 to analyze scientific studies of the new rules, and possibly longer.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, while you all don’t have industrial boilers in your trucks, it does give some insight as to what’s going on in the White House right now. President Obama, heretofore an avowed statist, is putting some brakes on his statist agenda. Apparently, he wants what all first term President want: a second term. And he knows if unemployment is still at 10% come November 2012, he’s history. This is why he’s so eager to extend the current tax rates. Tax hikes will kill whatever recovery is happening. Further job-killing regulations will also hurt the recovery.
The DOT’s new hours of service rules are sitting at the White House right now, undergoing final review and approval. Everyone expects they will cut the number of hours drivers can work. They will cost jobs. They should have been released months ago. Yet they are still in the White House. It’s possible, just possible, the politicians are re-writing them as we speak, so they are not so restrictive and onerous. After all, if the President loses in 2012, he, and all his staff in the White House are on the street. The unelected bureaucrats at DOT will still have jobs. We’ll see, but there’s a small chance the new hours of service rules may not be as bad as expected.
Backup Camera May Become Mandatory
Posted on December 5, 2010
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This was in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday December 4. Apparently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a proposed rulemaking Friday which will mandate backup cameras on all new cars by 2014.
Oh my. Where does it end? You read about the out-of-control EPA, and how the GOP is going to stand up to Lisa Jackson and her governing-by-fiat EPA, but the EPA is just the tip of the iceberg. What about Ray LaHood and the DOT? Is anyone going to stand up to him? According to the article, NHTSA estimates there are 292 fatalities from backing accidents every year. This rule supposedly will reduce the number of these fatalities. Nowhere in the article, however, does it quote any sort of data or study proving these backup cameras will prevent these type of accidents. If you are in such a big hurry, that you backup without looking, what makes one think you’d look at a backup camera?
My car has a backup camera. I do not find it useful. I use my mirrors, and look where I am going when I back up. I have never had a backing accident. I don’t need the backup camera, but it came standard with the car. According to the article, these cameras add $400 to the cost of the car. I suspect it may be more. I don’t want or need this camera; why should I have to pay for it?
I have no illusions. I am certain this will become a rule. No one has restrained these executive agencies since… well, as long as I can remember, which would be 1990. Democrat, Republican Presidents…. all sides of the same coin. The executive agencies like DOT, EPA, OSHA, etc. simply make rules, rules, on top of rules, and no one stops them. No one in the White House stops them. No one in the Congress stops them. The courts don’t stop them. The President and the Congressmen don’t run the country. The unelected bureaucrats do.
In a few days, FMCSA (which is a part of DOT), will announce the new hours of service rules. They will be more restrictive. Drivers will not be able to drive as many hours. Carriers will be less productive. They will have to hire more drivers to move the same amount of freight. Existing drivers will not be able to work as many hours, and will probably make less money. These new rules will not save one life. There is no data to suggest otherwise. In fact, the DOT has spent the last 7 years arguing the existing rules are safer and save lives. Now they will argue the opposite, just to keep up the facade this is all about safety. It’s the same deal with mandating the electronic on-board recorders. Again, no link to safety, but argue that anyway, just so this government takeover of our lives and businesses feels warm and snuggly.
Somewhere in the last 50 years, we became way too comfortable with the government telling us what to do. Where does it say the government has the right to tell me what kind of safety equipment I have to buy? Where does it say the government can force a business to utilize a GPS-based tracking system on its vehicles? Yeah, I know, the statists all whip out their copies of the Constitution and say, see, says here in Article I, Section 8, the Congress has the power to regulate commerce. It doesn’t matter if the other 4 pages of the Constitution contradict that commerce clause, all they see is “Congress has the power to regulate”, which they interpret to mean, “Congress has the power to regulate without restriction. That’s not what it was intended to mean, and if we keep letting the unelected bureaucrats steal our freedoms, we will all be poorer for it.
ATA is ‘Alarmed’ About the Pending Hours of Service Changes
Posted on December 2, 2010
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This comes to us from TruckingInfo.com. It is an article dated today, December 2, 2010. The jist of it is that the American Trucking Association is ‘alarmed’ at the changes about to be made to the hours of service rules.
Without recapping the entire saga of the hours rules, in the not-too-distant past, FMCSA surrendered to the Teamsters and the safety advocacy groups, agreeing to redo their hours of service rules, which have been in place since 2003. The only question remaining is… how much more restrictive will they be? ATA anticipates they will make it a 10 hour driving rule instead of 11, an extension of the 34 hour reset (maybe now 48 hours?), or an elimination of the reset, and God knows what else. The new rule is finished, the White House is reviewing it, and it will be released any day now.
ATA has established a new website to present their position that the existing rules should remain in place. http://www.safedriverhours.com/index.html. It looks like the new website isn’t quite finished, as there seems to be a good deal of gobbledegook on the site. Anyway, in this case, I wish ATA luck, as the existing rules should stay in place. They won’t, but they should.
Another Thought About the Potential EOBR Law
Posted on November 30, 2010
Filed Under HOURS OF SERVICE, IN THE NEWS, POLITICS | 1 Comment
Something else about this Commercial Driver Compliance Improvement Act which is sitting in the Senate. I don’t know there’s any statistics showing these EOBRs reduce crashes. I’m almost sure of it, just because I don’t see the word “safety” in the name of the law. Oh, I suppose the EOBR manufacturers can produce statisitics, but then again, I bet you could find statistics to argue just the opposite. My gut tells me the EOBRs will do exactly nothing to reduce crashes. As I mentioned previously, I have two customers who have installed the EOBRs. They have not seen a reduction in crashes. They have seen an increase in moving violations though. I suppose drivers are rushing more than ever in order to get everything done in 14 hours.
It seems similar to the cameras at redlights. The politicians tell us these cameras are for safety, when everyone knows they are for revenue. The statisitcs show, if anything, there are MORE crashes at the red light camera intersections, as drivers slam on the brakes, run into each other, speed up to beat the light, and other un-natural driving, just to avoid the camera. Or, the story I posted about states who have no-texting laws, who are seeing more accidents, as drivers now hide their phones while texting, instead of holding them up so they can see where they’re going. There are limits to how much you can regulate human behavior. Well, I guess we’ll see what happens; the EOBR debate is just beginning.
Question About EOBRs
Posted on November 30, 2010
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I recently received a question from a good customer. He came across information about the Commerical Driver Compliance Improvement Act, which is a Senate bill, S. 3884. It was introduced by Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn). If made law, it will require all commercial motor vehicles to have electronic on-board recorders.
So what do we know about this bill? Well, reaching back into my high school civics knowledge, all bills not made law by the end of a 2 year Congress die. This Congress ends in less than a month, thank God. So, this bill would have to pass the Senate before the end of next month. Not likely, seeing as they are trying to pass some kind of regulatory overkill law about food safety, give illegals free college, and maybe extend the current tax rates. Then a matching bill must be passed by the House. I don’t think there is any matching legislation pending in the House, and it is very unlikely there will be any before the end of the Congress. So, it’s very unlikely it will happen in this session of Congress.
What about in future Congresses? Maybe. It would have to pass the Republican House, where I would like to think this kind of job-killing legislation would be DOA, but you never know. I note that Lamar Alexander, one of the co-sponsors in the Senate is a “Republican”. I put that in parenthesis, because as anyone who follows politics knows, Alexander is a RINO, that is, Republican In Name Only. So, if a bunch of RINOs in the House, join the Democratic minority, it could happen.
What makes it more likely to happen is, a number of mega-carriers, like US Xpress (from Tennessee, hence Alexander’s involvement), JB Hunt, Schneider, Maverick, and Knight are pushing this. They are doing so, of course, because they have all installed the EOBRs, and they want to force everyone else to do the same. I do not believe ATA has come out in support of this mandate yet, but that is only a matter of time.
My comment to the smaller carriers is, unless you want to be forced to pony up for EOBRs, you’d better pay attention, and make sure you let your Senators and Representatives know how you feel. The big carriers want to force you to have them, and they have the politicians on speed-dial. You’d better involve yourselves, or write a check for equipment you don’t want. Don’t think the mega-carriers already have this won. Despite the huge size of these mega-carriers, the smaller carriers vastly outnumber the mega-carriers.
In the News
Posted on November 9, 2010
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So, what’s been happening lately? Well, CSA 2010 is almost here, you probably knew that. Next month, FMCSA will supposedly turn on their website, so everyone can see everyone else’s CSA 2010 scores. We’ll see. The White House is still reviewing FMCSA’s proposal for changing the hours of service rules. Any day now, any day. Like I said before, I guess it will be 10 hours driving, 14 hour rule stays the same, and the 70 hour rule goes to a 48 hour reset.
The GOP, aided by the Tea Party took the House of Representatives, and gained a few Senate seats in the election. That may slow down the tide of regulations coming out of FMCSA; maybe not. There is a bill in the Senate called the Commercial Driver Compliance Improvement Act, which will require all trucks in the U.S. to install EOBRs on them after 3 years. This bill has the backing of JB Hunt, Knight Transportation, Maverick USA, Schneider, and US Xpress. I imagine, it probably as the backing of ATA as a whole. Maybe not…. some ATA members may be against EOBRs. Anyway, speaking as a Tea Party member in good standing, I hope this is Dead-On-Arrival in the House. It probably is. After all, we didn’t put them in there to expand government even further, we put them in there to do the opposite.
More CSA 2010 Thoughts
Posted on October 11, 2010
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Well, this isn’t totally related to CSA 2010, but I’ve discovered if you use the words CSA 2010 a lot, it makes you show up higher on the search engines. So CSA 2010, CSA 2010, CSA 2010. Anyway, I’ve noticed that some of my customers’ Out of Service rates are staying fairly steady over the past 30 months, yet their Safestat scores are going up. Safestat and CSA 2010 operate on the principle of comparing you against all the other motor carriers with DOT numbers. The worst performers in terms of violations and accidents gets audited. CSA 2010 is just like Safestat in this regard; it’s just using a new methodology.
If my Out of Service percentages are staying the same, but my Safestat score are going up, it can only mean one thing: everyone else is getting better. It means I’d better get better too. For example, if I’m hitting .300, and the rest of the team is hitting .250, I’m the best hitter on the team. If next year everyone else is hitting .350, and I’m still hitting .300, I’d better pick it up, or I’m going to be benched or cut.
This could make sense. In the area of logbooks, more carriers are utilizing the electronic logs, which drastically cut down on the number of logbook violations a carrier receives. Also, with the advent of EZPass technology, and scanning kiosks at truckstops, there is probably less paperwork for a DOT cop to inspect in the truck at the time of a DOT roadside stop. Less paperwork means less chance of being nailed for a false log. All this means, there are less driver violations being cited on the roadside. This means you have to get your drivers to be cited less, too, to keep up with the Joneses.
Another analogy (I love analogies) is driving on the road. You are running at 75 mph, with a pack of other cars. You are with the flow of traffic, your chances of getting stopped are small. Suddenly the pack slows down, but you’re still going 75. Your chances of getting nailed have now increased greatly. You do not want to be nailed with a DOT audit.
Flying Dog
Posted on October 11, 2010
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My webmaster told me once the site looks much better with a liberal number of graphics. Any graphics. So, I will insert the flying dog, to spruce up the front page. I believe I will name this dog, “CSA 2010″.
