trucking industry

Hours of Service, Who, What and Why

Friday, October 21st, 2011

In the trucking industry, time is everything. So, when your time is being closely watched it is important to know exactly what is going on. The Hours-of-Service regulations (HOS) greatly impacts truck drivers in many ways, by keeping track of and regulating the hours they are allowed to drive.

With the constant watch of the HOS on their log books, drivers need to understand what it is and why they are doing it. To help answer a few questions, this article includes a very basic who, what, and why of the HOS regulations.

Who: The HOS is a product of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which is a division of the United States Department of Transportation. The regulations pertain to any and all commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers and motor carriers.

What:The Hours-of-Service regulations are rules that place limits on when and how long CMV drivers may drive. They are based on a number of studies completed by the FMCSA and other transportation organizations the focused specifically on fatigue and other related areas.They cover the responsibilities of both drivers and their employers, and vary slightly depending on the type of CMV driver you are. For example, passenger carrying vehicles such as buses or trains have different rules than property carrying vehicles such as trucks.

For commercial trucks there is an 11-hour driving limit. This limit must come between 10 consecutive hours of down time, during which truck drivers must also meet certain requirements.  Drivers need to spend at least 8 consecutive hours in their sleeper berth along with 2 consecutive hours off duty. The 2 hours of off duty time can be spent either in the sleeper berth or elsewhere, just as long as the driver is not working.

To make sure drivers are following the HOS, their hours are tracked and those who are not keeping the rules are penalized. Penalties vary depending on what the driver has done, but in some cases drivers were penalized with temporary suspensions to make up for the time they were supposed to be off.

Why: The HOS was implemented to decrease the number of commercial accidents caused by drowsy driving. So far, the HOS has proven to be an asset to the transportation industry and has helped to prevent a number of commercial accidents.

 

More information on the HOS can be found on the FMCSA’s website. On the website, you will be able to read a detailed description of each of the rules and how it pertains to your role in the transportation industry.

The trucking industry is booming and truck drivers are placed under a great pressure to be on time and always ready to go. With this pressure, it is important to remember safety first. Safe driving comes from a number of arrangements, including making sure you are awake, alert and ready for a long drive. If you are tired, pullover. No load is worth your life, or the lives of others.

The HOS webpage can be found at http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/topics/hos/index.htm.

Trucking Jobs Going Green: Part Two

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

The People of the United States are in need of something to hold on too, to gain hope from. The on going issue with America and its economy, is the fact that we use everything, save nothing, and expect things to be ok. We only realize failure once our back is against the wall. One of these times it is going to be too late to fight our way back to success. By starting with trucking industry this administration is focused to making changes. They understand that we are so entrenched in our ways as a society that it is going to take generations to get back on the right foot again. Over the last couple of years the majority has felt the huge steps back that this Administration has created. On the other side this was necessary for our country to break its old habits of a smoky exhaust pipe and start to breathe fresh air again.

With the new approach the wheels start to turn in the right direction. The transportation industry is the largest industry in the United States. It accounts to 9% of the workforce that our nation is struggling to employ. It makes sense to start the snowball effect that renewable and more efficient ways to produce energy can manifest. The current backdrop that has been pulled over everyone’s eyes is gasoline and oil. We are crippling ourselves by settling for less.

First, the biggest fallacy is that oil and gas are going to run out any time soon. If you believe this than you and millions of others need to turn off the television and pick a science journal. If we want to use gas and oil for the next one hundred years we can and will. The faster we use this method of destroying resources to produce energy the faster we find more resources to destroy. With everyone out there pointing fingers and being captain obvious, why can’t we see through this thick smoke screen of smog?

If you really care and you really want to see something happen then please take a step back and see how we got to this point. For generations we have used what once seemed to be an endless supply on energy. The lakes of oil where the first to go; before we knew what happen we had already invested in the infrastructure needed to make exponentiation growth as a power house nation that always is in need of more power. What has happened a century later; everybody new would come, but no body wanted to be the first to make the changes that we are forced to change now.

What we use to fuel our live styles with is directly correlated to inflation. Inflation is the massive kink in the hose that we are faced with today. As the price of fuel and cost to make energy increased over the past generations the price of everything inflated to the unjustifiable prices we are faced with today. The energy bubble is about burst. To relieve the pressure that is building up on our economy we are going to have to create value. To create that value you are going to need energy to move the products of value we have created to where they need to be. We are going to need energy to produce the product we need to move forward. This is the snowball that we are slowly starting to pack.

With current technologies that have been neglected, advancements in the way we power our society can take hold. We can start to produce sources of energy that become free after its initial investment. With each investment made, jobs are created and the true 500-pound gorilla in the room; our nations energy-crisis, can start to be tamed. Starting with our trucking jobs and trucking industry. America can catapult its self back among the world’s elite. We are already lagging behind so do not hold back, Germany already receives 80% of their electricity from wind power, France is 80% nuclear powered. The transition form our nations fall; back to the top, starts with Trucking.