Federal Mandate Could Mean Less Road Time for Truckers
Truck monitoring designed to increase safety, called costly
Weary drivers who clock hours of illegal overtime to make faraway deliveries and some who
alter their paper logbooks to hide violations of regulations meant to reduce their risk of crashing.
“When a truck’s not moving, a driver isn’t making money,” said Trendell Dixon, a driver for Houston-based Leedy Logistics. “I see drivers just go, go, go.”
Some truckers skip or shorten mandatory rest periods structured to
keep fatigue in check, creating a hazard on freight-heavy corridors like those that run through San Antonio. Because most drivers record their hours in paper logbooks, it takes only a few strokes of a pencil to conceal the extra time on the road.
Oversight of drivers is increasing as companies across the country, including
W.W. Rowland in San Antonio and
Reynolds Nationwide in Von Ormy, begin to replace their paper logbooks with digital ones in advance of a federal mandate.
Large Truck Crashes and Inspections
Last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration(FMCSA) published a rule that requires most long-haul drivers to
start using digital logbooks by the end of 2017. When the mandate takes effect, it will be easier for roadside inspectors to determine whether drivers are in compliance with hours-of-service regulations, set by the FMCSA in an attempt to cut down on large truck crashes.
Though the data suggest most truckers stick within their time limits, those who don’t are more likely to cause a serious accident. Using crash and violation data to model projections, the FMCSA has estimated electronic logbooks could help prevent about 1,850 crashes and 26 fatalities each year.
It is hard to predict how the mandate will affect the number of crashes. FMCSA data show Bexar county’s total crashes involving large trucks rose from 567 in 2011 to 762 in 2014, mirroring an increase in traffic.
Last year’s total fell to about 490 crashes, according to the FMCSA. The
Texas Department of Public Safety recorded 44 carriers with hours-of-service violations during the same period. Many had multiple citations, and two had been involved in a crash at the time of inspection.
Improving Compliance
The paper logbooks that truckers for decades have used to record when they stop and start driving have made it difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor hours-of-service regulations — or time limits — set by the FMCSA in an attempt to reduce commercial vehicle crashes.
The regulations allow interstate truckers to be on duty for 14 hours following a break of least 10 hours.
While on duty, they’re allowed to drive for 11 hours and must take a break of at least 30 minutes within the first eight hours on the road.
The digital equivalents of paper logbooks, referred to as
electronic logging devices, or
ELDs, automatically track where a truck goes and how many miles it travels in a given period, creating a permanent record that company and law enforcement officials can more easily check.
“What’s going to happen is drivers are going to be more readily caught,” said Nick Wingerter, CEO of San Antonio-based consulting firm
Truck Safety 1. “The (ELDs) enhance the ability of highway enforcement officials because they don’t have to do manual inspections of a driver’s handwritten log book. That’s where it’s really great in helping the safety of the highways.”
The FMCSA expects the mandate will reduce
fatigue-related crashes by holding drivers and their employers accountable for their time at the wheel, but the total level of noncompliance within the industry is largely unknown. The agency noted the scope of the problem is difficult to measure because it cannot continually monitor every carrier and violators have incentive to hide their behavior.
The agency’s inspection data provide some insight into the extent of the noncompliance. Last year, inspectors discovered about 893,200 violations nationwide, about 15 percent of which involved time limits. Serious logbook offenses, including false records, lack of records and failure to retain seven days’ worth of records, accounted for about 10 percent of all violations.
In Texas, where thousands of trucks drive each day to or from Laredo, Houston and other major freight hubs in and around the state, roughly the same percentage of violations related to serious logbook offenses, while only 6.1 percent related to hours-of-service.
National Attention
Though fatigue is only one of many factors in large truck crashes,
logbooks have come under scrutiny in a number of high-profile incidents. The
National Transportation Safety Board(NTSB), which put electronic logbooks on its 2016 “most wanted” list of safety improvements, has identified fatigue as a central factor in about a fifth of the crashes it investigated between 2001 and 2012.
In January, the board cited fatigue as the probable cause of a 2014 crash in Illinois involving a truck driver who had slept for less than 4½ hours in the 37 hours before the incident.
The driver crashed into two stopped vehicles — a state police car and a tollway vehicle — on Interstate 88 one night in January. The collision killed the tollway worker and caused the patrol car to burst into flames, seriously injuring the officer. It was later discovered the truck driver had a history of falsifying his
logbook.
The accident bore some similarity to one that happened near Dallas in Sulphur Springs a decade earlier. In June 2004, a truck driven by a fatigued driver collided with an SUV stopped in traffic on Interstate 30, pushing it forward into another tractor-trailer, which then hit the car in front of it. The pileup caused a fire and killed the four occupants of the SUV and the fatigued driver, who was also found to have falsified his logbook on multiple occasions,
according to the NTSB.
Several companies, particularly those with large fleets, began installing the devices well before the rule was published.
Some, like
W.W. Rowland, are banking on better safety ratings on the FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety and
Accountability database. Within the last two years, drivers for the company have been inspected about 760 times and cited for 91 violations involving time limit or logbook issues, according to agency data.
The database scores help the FMCSA determine which carriers ought to be monitored or audited.
W.W. Rowland contracts with about 280 owner-operators, independent drivers who have their own trucks and often drive for multiple carriers.
Reynolds Nationwide employs drivers to man its fleet of 340 light-blue trucks, which haul milk, tequila and a range of other products. As of February, the company had nearly completed installing the devices in its trucks.
The company, which has been preparing for the mandate for the past two years, spent $630,000 to purchase the devices and plans to spend $15,000 a month to operate them, Nester said. During that period, company drivers were inspected 463 times, 81 of which involved time limit or logbook violations.
Not all truckers are eager to go paperless. Luther Forest, a driver for Houston-based
Trinity Victory Trucking, said he thinks the devices are unnecessary, especially for drivers who can’t readily afford to
install them.
Industry Impact
It might not be as easy for other owner-operators and small carriers to adopt the devices. While the FMCSA drafted its rule, many opponents of the mandate raised concerns that installing them will prove too costly for companies without the time and money to operate them.
“Most of the nation’s freight is hauled by very small trucking companies,” said Lane Kidd, managing director for the
Trucking Alliance, a national coalition of large trucking companies that has consistently supported ELDs. “That’s the segment that will be the last to put these devices on. A lot will decide if they can’t fudge those logbooks a little, they’ll just leave the business.”
During 2013-2014, more than 2,000 small carriers left the business, and Donald Broughton, of Nashville-based Avondale Partners, said more will likely follow. He anticipates companies will make about 5 percent less money from their assets when the mandate takes effect.
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Commercial transportation is a major U.S. industry with a vested interest in limiting corporate liability in truck accident cases. Many large companies maintain rapid response teams of trucking company attorneys, accident investigators and insurance adjusters who are on call 24 hours a day to respond immediately in the event of a serious or fatal truck accident. They have one goal: Minimize the ability of victims to seek the compensation they may be due.
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