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Nevada bans all cell phone use while driving

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a new law June 17 that prohibits talking or texting on a cell phone while driving.

The law makes Nevada the 34th state to prohibit texting behind the wheel and the ninth to prohibit all handheld cell phone use while driving.

The new Nevada law makes it illegal to text or talk on a handheld cell phone while driving. Under the new law, violators face a fine of up to $100 for the first offense, up to $200 for the second offense and up to $250 for the third offense. In addition, third-time offenders also can have their driver licenses suspended. The law is due to become effective on Jan. 1, 2012; law enforcement officers will begin issuing warnings on Oct. 1.

With the addition of Nevada, 34 states, the District of Columbia and Guam have banned text messaging by all drivers. Nine states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have prohibited all handheld cell phone use while driving.

States that haven’t yet banned texting while driving are Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia. Some localities in those states have passed their own distracted driving bans, but Florida, Mississippi, Nevada and Oklahoma prohibit localities from enacting such laws.

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EPA seeks SCR alert system

The Environmental Protection Agency has updated its guidance for certification of truck engines using selective catalytic reduction to reduce emissions, calling on SCR engine makers to develop warning systems that alert drivers when the truck’s diesel exhaust fluid tank is nearly empty or filled with a liquid other than DEF.

The new guidance, mostly in response to claims made by Navistar Inc. that SCR technology can be circumvented, also urged OEMs using SCR to research methods that would inhibit tampering with SCR system operation and incorporate further inducements for drivers to comply.

Concerns about SCR’s environmental compliance were brought to EPA’s attention by Navistar, which uses a competitive technology, exhaust gas recirculation, to meet EPA 2010 regulations. Navistar had sued both EPA and the California Air Resources Board over their acceptance of SCR technology without stronger measures to prevent engine operation without DEF or an operational SCR system. The truckmaker last year settled both lawsuits by garnering a commitment for further review.

Navistar representatives contended that independent test findings showed new commercial vehicles that must contain liquid urea to meet federal NOx emissions standards continued to operate effectively when urea was not present. At such times, Navistar said, the vehicles threw off levels of NOx as much as 10 times higher than when urea was present.

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Trucking reps hit hours plan

The title, “Do Not Enter: How Proposed Hours of Service Trucking Rules are a Dead End for Small Businesses,” summarized the June 14 U.S. House subcommittee hearing.

The Small Business Committee Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight and Regulations heard testimony from trucking company leaders against the HOS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

Subcommittee Chairman Mike Coffman, (R-Colo.) convened the hearing to explore the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposal. It would reduce the daily driving limit, decrease the maximum on-duty time limit, require mandatory breaks and change the current 34-hour restart provision.

Truck-related crashes have dropped more than 40 percent since the current HOS rules were implemented in 2003. But the FMCSA created the “complicated and cumbersome” NPRM, based on outdated truck-related crash figures, Coffman said.

“Even more disturbing is that it is estimated that there will be a cost of $2.5 billion annually on the industry if the proposed hours of service regulations are finalized,” he said.

James Burg, president of James Burg Trucking Co. and an American Trucking Associations board member, said the proposal would restrict productivity and increase congestion and emissions. It would force Burg to add drivers and trucks, making it necessary for his 75-truck Michigan-based company to try and increase retained earnings by between 20 and 25 percent.

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Truckers Unhappy With Pricing Model

Less-than-truckload carriers are broadly dissatisfied with LTL pricing models, but not at all optimistic about changing to a new method for matching prices to freight.

That’s one of the findings of an LTL pricing survey conducted by Auburn University for SMC3 unveiled at the SMC3 Connections Conference in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

The survey conducted over the past year found 52 percent of LTL carriers were dissatisfied with the decades-old and much-maligned tariff and freight classification pricing model.

That compares with 25 percent of shippers and 38 percent of logistics providers who are unhappy with the densely complicated system, said Professor Joe Hanna, chair of Auburn’s supply chain management department.

The study, sponsored by SMC3, was launched last year after the collapse of LTL rates during the recession. It is the first LTL pricing study to include 3PLS, or freight brokers.

The trucker dissatisfaction reflects decades of discounting off base rates that divorced pricing from the actual costs of transporting LTL freight, Hanna said. Carriers, 3PLs and shippers questioned in the survey’s first phase said discounts “are getting ridiculous, and as a result the base rates are ridiculous,” said Hanna.

Far fewer shippers were dissatisfied with the pricing model, but most said they had “adapted” to what they saw as an imperfect system.
“Is the marketplace ready for change? There’s no consensus,” said Hanna.

LTL truckers were the least optimistic that the shipping industry is ready to change.
More than 60 percent of the truckers surveyed in the second phase of the survey said the market isn’t ready for re-indexing base rates or a density-based pricing.
Shippers were more positive, with 60 percent saying they were ready for density-based pricing, and almost 60 percent saying they were ready for re-indexing.

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Shippers’ lot improves

Shipping has multiple meanings. It can be a physical process of transporting goods and cargo, by land, air, and sea. It also can describe the movement of objects by ship.

FTR Associates on June 14 reported a significant reversal in its Shippers’ Condition Index from the prior month.

FTR says the healthier environment for shippers is due to a slowdown in freight demand growth thanks to the current lull in economic activity, as well as further delays in implementing new federal trucking regulations.

The SCI sums up all market influences that affect shippers. Larry Gross, FTR senior consultant, said the current “soft spot” in the recovery is providing some breathing room for shippers as the growth in freight has slowed.

“At the same time, we have moved back our forecasts for regulation-based tightening of the supply of trucks, as the federal government has delayed the implementation of new driver regulations,” Gross said. “This is a temporary respite in our view.”

Gross sees the SCI starting to deteriorate once again as the economy begins to re accelerate later this year. As the new trucking regulations begin to kick in, shipping costs will increase through 2012, with transport costs such as fuel, equipment and labor rising faster than the general rate of inflation, he forecasts.

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Bill would close drug/alcohol

Nearly half of all Americans over the age of 12 are consumers of alcohol. Although most drink only occasionally or moderately, there are an estimated 10 to 15 million alcoholics or problem drinkers in the United States, with more than 100,000 deaths each year attributed to alcohol. Among the nation’s alcoholics and problem drinkers are as many as 4.5 million adolescents, and adolescents are disproportionately involved in alcohol-related automobile accidents, the leading cause of death among Americans 15 to 24 years old.

STOP! DRUG/ALCOHOL

“For over 15 years, commercial drivers have been required to submit to drug and alcohol testing to ensure they aren’t impaired while on the highway,” says Bill Graves, ATA president and chief executive officer. “However, a loophole in the system allows drivers who test positive to evade the consequences of their actions by failing to disclose their complete work histories and positive test results to prospective employers. This important legislation will close that loophole and will improve the safety of our highways.”

ATA says the Government Accountability Office and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration both have found that a centralized clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test results is preferable to the current system that relies both on drivers to self-report their failed tests and on previous employers to provide test results to future employers. Currently, these prospective employers only learn of test results when drivers disclose the names of past employers for whom they tested positive.

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FMCSA seeks Comments in EOBR Harrassment

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is asking for additional comments on whether its proposed mandate for electronic onboard recorders sets up the possibility of driver harassment.

FMSCA said it believes it reasonable address that constitutional requirement in both itsEOBR rule-making proceedings, but in light of recent litigation brought by Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

The suit was brought by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association against last year’s rule requiring any carrier that violates the hours of service rules 10 percent of the time to install EOBRs in its trucks. In its suit OOIDA raised concerns about the potential for EOBR harassment.

The safety agency is looking for comments on the proposal it published earlier this year that would expand the EOBR requirement to most of the industry rather than just the 10 percent violators.

The agency is required by law to consider the possibility of harassment – defined as an invasion of driver privacy – in drafting an EOBR requirement. The agency notes that the same law permits EOBRs to be used to monitor driver productivity, and there are rules that prohibit carriers from using EOBRs to harass drivers for productivity reasons.

for the meantime, The American Trucking associations announced its membership endorsed an EOBR mandate but that it believes the regulation or law several issues including:

–>Cost-effective device allowing for accurate recordings of driving of hours.
–>Access in order to protect privacy.
–>Relief from current burden of retaining additional documentation.

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Fewer drivers

Trucking’s well-publicized driver shortage will grow next year and beyond because of fewer new hires to replace retiring drivers, a smaller number of illegal aliens and regulations removing truckers, said an FTR Associates economist at an online meeting today, June 9.

Saying it will be “very negative” for finding new drivers, Noel Perry, an FTR senior consultant, noted that with the end of the Baby Boom generation, the number of people available to trucking to replace those retiring will drop to about 500,000 a year from 1.5 million previously. He added that tougher immigration laws will keep many other potential drivers out of trucks compared with the last decade. In addition, many truckers who were laid off during the recession have either left the industry or found jobs with other carriers, he said.

“It’s going to be fundamentally harder to recruit people before we talk about anything else,” Perry said.

Take away about 300,000 drivers who will be forced to the sideline because of poor driving records and the driver shortage will grow from about 150,000 positions this year to 300,000 next year and almost 350,000 in 2013, he estimated.

Perry said that productivity gains, primarily by shippers and receivers making changes in their operations, could absorb a large piece of the impact of the driver shortage. Yet, he said, many shippers aren’t convinced of the problem’s size and haven’t acted. That could change quickly if shortages begin appearing.

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Great West Truck Show seminars

The Great West Truck Show will feature a broad range of educational seminars and panels June 9-11 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Included will be sessions on Compliance, Safety, Accountability; hours of service; and how to pass a U.S. Department of Transportation audit. Partnering on the presentations will be representatives from the California Trucking Association.

Overdrive will host a free two-hour Partners in Business program presented by Kevin Rutherford June 10. Rutherford, an accountant, small-fleet owner and satellite radio host, will discuss how to increase revenue and reduce costs. He will be joined by a representative from financial service provider ATBS. The show begins at 2 p.m.

Attendees will receive refreshments and a copy of the 2011-2012 Overdrive Partners in Business manual for owner-operators.

Also on hand will be Custom Rigs’ Pride & Polish truck beauty show, part of the National Championship Series.

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Trucker News

FMCSA proposes intermodal defect report rule

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has proposed to delete a requirement for drivers operating intermodal equipment to submit and intermodal equipment providers to retain driver-vehicle inspection reports when the driver has neither found nor been made aware of any defects on the intermodal equipment used.

FMCSA’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking responds to a joint petition for a rule from the Ocean Carrier Equipment Management Association and the Institute of International Container Lessors. FMCSA previously had extended until June 30, 2012, the compliance date of the requirement for drivers and motor carriers to prepare a no-defect DVIR while it considered the groups’ joint petition.


FMCSA said that all other requirements concerning drivers’ preparation of DVIRs to report damage, defects or deficiencies to intermodal equipment providers remain in effect, as well as for intermodal equipment providers to take action in addressing the safety issues identified by such reports.