The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn. (OOIDA) went on record Thursday as saying the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's new hours of service rules will have minimal impact on truck driver fatigue.

"Not until truck drivers are no longer regularly pressured to meet unrealistic delivery deadlines, and they are no longer forced to perform uncompensated work for as many as 33 to 44 hours per week, will we see a significant reduction in fatigue issues," OOIDA said in a press release.
"Whether or not the federal government allows a trucker to drive 10 or 11 hours a day makes no difference to many shippers and carriers, whose only concern is that their loads are delivered on time. Drivers who refuse to make deliveries on unrealistic and illegal time schedules demanded by shippers are routinely denied business or forced from their jobs."
Jim Johnston, president of OOIDA said, "After almost 65 years of working with regulatory controls that should have been declared obsolete decades ago, this is a pretty sorry excuse for a revision to address today's problems."
The association said shippers routinely make truckers wait from between two hours to two days before they are allowed to load or unload their trucks. Some even require drivers to unload their truck and perform warehouse work such as restacking pallets. "Shippers do not pay for this time and work, and have no incentive to treat drivers differently. Not only is this work unpaid, but it steals the time that drivers have under the rules to do the work they are paid for: driving the truck."
The OOIDA statement did offer its gratitude to FMCSA "for abandoning the most disturbing parts of its initial hours of service proposal, especially the proposal for 24-hour-a-day electronic surveillance of drivers."
It then encouraged regulators to "understand the limited safety improvements that can be made through this rule. Not until shippers and carriers stop pressuring drivers to break the rules, and drivers are paid for all the work they do, will the hours-of-service rules have their intended effect."
Founded in 1973, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn. is made up of more that 94,000 owner-operators, professional drivers and small-business truckers from all 50 states and Canada. OOIDA represents the interests of more than 350,000 small-business trucking professionals in the United States in the legislative and regulatory processes at both federal and state levels.