“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand, we apply too late the remedies which might have affected a cure. There is nothing new in this story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind.” — Winston Churchill.

So, here we are, staring at a three month window within which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) must come up with rules to replace the soon-to-be-extinct 11-hour daily driving limit and 34-hour retart provision of current hours of service (HOS) regulations. Hopefully, the new rules won’t make an appearance at the 11th hour on the 11th day (Dec. 27) when those provisions expire as ruled by the U.S. Courth of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Then again, the way things have been going in trucking lately, anything is possible.

Take current HOS rules. These actually represent FMCSA’s ‘Plan B’ package because its first attempt at reform back in 2000 by creating five DIFFERENT sets of HOS rules died a fast and ugly death, forcing the agency to cobble together something on the fly. The trucking industry initally cried woe and doom when the ‘Plan B’ rules were announced in 2003, saying they’d ruin productivity, efficiency, yadda, yadda, yadda. Yet here we are at the end of a long battle by the industry to KEEP the parts of those very same rules it didn’t like the first time around.

So-called safety groups such as Public Citizen never liked any of the HOS reforms FMCSA formulated right from the start and waged a long — and ultimately successful — campaign in the courts to oust these rules, and will no doubt gear up again to fight whatever FMCSA comes up with as a replacement. Joan Claybrook, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and president of Public Citizen since 1982, has publicly stated that she wants driving time for truck drivers dialed back to eight hours a day maximum. So it’s a good bet she’ll fight tooth and nail against anything over that number.

All of this back and forth, of course, directly impacts an industry responsible for moving 80% of the nation’s freight. That’s a cold fact that doesn’t seem to resonate at all with anyone outside transportation. Look at just some of the issues affecting the trucker’s workday.

For starters, there aren’t enough truck drivers to haul all that freight — we’re short 20,000 a year now, but by 2015 that’ll be up to about 100,000 annually. Massive congestion on our roadways is slowing down freight, killing the miles drivers need to accrue to get paid — and their pay, by the way, ain’t good for the work they do. Then throw in the shippers and receivers, who make trucks wait for hours and hours, then force many drivers to load and unload trailers without adequate compenstation — something Public Citizen never addresses in its safety efforts, by the way.

Here’s what I think: let’s get radical. Let’s go ahead an lobby for an eight hour drive-time limit, with a 10-hour on-duty period. Make it part of the regulations that drivers CANNOT load and unload their trailers, period. Mandate fines for shippers and receivers that make trucks wait more than two hours — say, $1,500 an hour. Maybe $2,000 an hour. Since we’re tracking trucks by satellite and cellular networks today, that clock would be easy to monitor, too. Also restore the split-sleeper berth provision to drivers so they can take a break.

Now, everyone with say ‘This is impossible: are you crazy??!!” No, it’s not impossible — fleets will need to recalculate their routes, of course, as well as driver pay rates. But it can be done — shippers and receivers will see their freight bills skyrocket, of course, but hey! They’ll adjust. So will we, the consumers. Everything will cost more, efficiency will suffer, but the world won’t collapse — and trucking will be allowed to do its work, without all the regulatory back and forth.

I mean, what’s to argue? The safety groups WANT these kinds of work hours established — I say give it to them. And let them do the fixing if it boomerangs. As long as the industry keeps improving its safety profile, makes a decent profit and drivers make a living, that’s what matters .

“A man’s greatest enemies are his own apathy and stubborness.” –Frank Tyger

There’s been a huge amount of debate — much of it couched in violent terms — about immigration, especially what to do about illegal immigrants. This is an extremely important debate for our nation to engage in, but doubly so for trucking ,as this industry struggles to find people willing to get into the driver’s seat.

I am NOT proposing that trucking engage in the wholesale hiring illegals here, nor that we put new Americans behind the wheel that lack a working knowledge of English or proper driving skills (though that’s been happening quite a lot, I am disgusted to say). But what’s been lacking in the entire debate over illegal immigration is context — the critical fact that EVERY American is an immigrant. We all came to this country from somewhere else, more often than not fleeing economic malaise, war, hunger, second-class citizenship, etc. And a very large segment of our people came here without a choice, as slaves — a blot upon our nation’s history that will never go away.

But here we all are — and aside from Native Americans (who through an unlucky accident are almost universally known as ‘Indians’) we all come from immigrant stock. So before we so self-righteously condemn illegals in this country, we should pause and reflect that, you know, maybe our own ancestors might have shaded the truth here and there to get over the border. Yes, the tide of illegals is rising and that must be addressed, and yes they include criminals and other n’er do wells that are putting a strain on our society. But there are also countless upon countless others that are seeking the universal dream — a better life — and are frustrated by the beaurecratic nightmare that is our government’s immigration policy.

It is also a huge testament, I think, to us as a polyglot people that’s getting slammed every day in the global media and our own journalists here at home for countless crimes and errors (more immagined than real most of the time) that people STILL want to get in here — no matter what the risk. Because this country still offers anyone willing to learn and work hard unlimited opportunity.

Look at Johnnie Bryan Hunt, who recently passed away — could a chicken farmer’s son, and a fifth grade dropout to boot, create a billion-dollar trucking enterprise like J.B. Hunt … in England? Or France? Or Russia? And THOSE are what we call ‘developed nations,’ yet they are places where social and economic class distinctions still put restrictions on people.

My own family came from what was considered the ‘lower rungs’ of society, escaping not only poverty but incarceration and possibly death. For example, my dad’s mom (my paternal grandmother) came from Roscommon on the west coast of Ireland from a family of poor farmers. At the time she emigrated, British mercenaries — the hated and feared ‘Black & Tans’ — were combing her part of the countryside looking for Irish rebels. Then there’s my mom’s dad (my maternal grandfather) whose family WALKED from Kiev, Ukraine, to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1905 to escape the Czarist pogroms against the Jews. My great-grandfather himself was a Rabbi, meaning his family was right in the crosshairs for all kinds of unpleasentness. But they were lucky — they left before the Nazis came.

So, yes, debate immigration policy and yes let’s find a way to deal with illegal immigration — preferrably using deportation as a weapon of last resort. There are countless millions of immigrants — like my forebears — that only want a chance to make something for themselves and their families, which will rub off for the good on our country. Send the criminals and related bad apples back whence they came, but let’s get the rest started on citizenship so they can help keeping making our country one of the best in the world.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” — W.B. Yeats

Though I am quoting from Yeats’ poetical masterpiece “The Second Coming” here, I am NOT saying that Armageddon is just around the corner. But I feel, at least, that the now-floundering effort by Virginia to levy bigger fines against REPEAT traffic offenders — the worst drivers, mind you, the ones driving drunk or 20 mph over the speed limit — shows that the general public is losing its sense when it comes to highway safety issues.

I’ve mentioned Viriginia’s effort to boost fines in this space before, but again let me repeat what the beef is over: new civil penalties for going 20 mph over the speed limit are now $1,050, plus $61 in court costs PLUS a fine that is typically about $200. A first-time drunken driver faces a $2,250 civil penalty, plus fines and court costs that typically run about $500 or more. Driving without a license? That’s a mandatory $900 civil penalty, in addition to the ordinary $100 for a fine and court costs. These charges ONLY apply to in-state residents, by the way, and Virginians must pay them in three installments over 26 months or lose their licenses.

Once the rules were put in place, of course, the public bleating began — screams about infringing on ‘constituional rights’ and how these fines would unfairly burden the poor. Over 100,000 Virginians signed an electronic petition on the Internet calling for their repeal and several local newspaper editors hinted darkly that these new fines were part of a conspiracy concocted by real estate developers and their political cronies to get the public to pay for road improvements for new subdivisions.

Spare me all of this crap, please.

Look, here’s the deal: these fines ONLY apply if you SEVERELY break the law. It’s not for going 1 mph over the limit. It’s for 20 mph, as in 45 mph in a 25 mph zone or 85 mph on a highway posted for 65 mph. Or drunks. Or people that do NOT have a license. In other words, these fines target the worst of the worst — the folks that cause the accidents that run up our state and local tax bills for the damage and hurt THEY cause.

One reader took me to task over my support for these new fines because, in his words, punitive measures have not worked in the past, so why would they work now? This is true — maybe they won’t change the behaviors on the part of bad drivers. But then the state gets more money from THEM if they don’t, meaning the REST of US don’t get our taxes raised to fund road improvements (Virigina estimated these new fines would generate $65 million a year. We must have a LOT of bad drivers in my state.)

Again, all the hand wringing overlooks some very blatant facts — you do NOT pay a DIME if you do the following: DON’T SPEED, DON’T DRIVE DRUNK, DON’T DRIVE WITHOUT YOUR LICENSE. I mean, people! How easy is this? Are we THAT far gone in this country?

Now, one of the arguments against these new fines is that if the state takes away the licences of those who fail to pay, you end up with thousands of unlicensed and uninsured motorists driving on the roads (according to the great state of Michigan’s experience with a similar path of traffic jurisprudence). Well, then, take their cars away too. But what if you need a car to get to work? Take the bus, take the train, ride a bike, or thumb a ride from a co-worker. You prove to be a problem driver, you don’t drive — period. End of story. You don’t have a right to threaten everyone else’s safety out there if you have a lead foot — dangerous driving is not protected by the Constitution.

Look: vehicle crashes cost us as a nation $230 BILLION a year — and that tab is picked up by every single one of us via higher taxes and car insurance premiums. Why not force the problem drivers to shoulder the extra burden, since THEY are the ones causing the problems? I mean, since bad drivers pay higher insurance premiums, why not pay higher fines too? It’s just not fair to those of us that follow the rules to pick up the costs for those that don’t. That’s my feeling on this.

“Originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are truths no longer, but also commence new practices.” –John Stuart Mill

What Mill — the great British philospher, economist and politician — espoused in the 19th century remains true today. We need originality in all our endeavors in order to keep our world moving in the right direction. This holds true in cultural, social, moral, and well as business circles, but particularly for trucking in this country, as we are faced with an enormous variety of challenges, not the least of them dealing with the now-negated hours of service (HOS) rules.

First off — and this is solely my opinion here — I think the whole concept of HOS is pretty ridiculous, from the standpoint that no one set of rules can possibly meet the needs not only of the thousands of different trucking operations here in the U.S., but of the human sleep cycle as well. As one univeristy professor told me back when the current (now thrown out) 11 hour drive time-14 hour on-duty time-10 hour off-duty time rules we’re put in place, “You simply can’t mandate rest and sleep, much less GOOD rest and sleep.”

I myself suffer from chronic insomnia, which means that sometimes — despite having a perfect 10-hour window to get sufficient sleep — I only get one or maybe two hours. And I can tell you from personal experience fucntioning on that small amount of sleep is a HUGE struggle.

Here’s another problem with HOS that get ignored: NO ONE wants to work 14 hours at a stretch, much less the 15 hours mandated under the old rules. NO ONE. I work 14 hours days when I must (at truck shows, ride and drive events, etc.) but that’s not a MANDATED schedule I face every day. Let’s face it: one of the huge problems we have in this country convincing people to become truck drivers is the workday schedule they face right from the get go. Now, there are times when freight’s gotta get there — especially in times of national emergencies — requiring long work hours. But every day? People take one look at that and say ‘forget it.’

Now, I’m not saying HOS rules aren’t necessary — they are. You need HOS to keep people safe, to prevent folks from driving for 36 hours straight and other craziness. But’s there got to be a way to do it so the workday isn’t a crushing burden. Heck, even shift work is 12 hours — a full two LESS than a trucker’s schedule. Most people work 8 hour days across the business world — that’s the norm — making a 14- or 15-hour schedule look even more extreme.

Sure, there’s plenty of people working far longer hours, but ‘workaholism’ is more and more frowned upon in our country — and rightly so. We are coming to recognize — through scientific studies as well as from our pwn experience — that working huge hours takes time away from family and severely impacts physical health.

So with the current HOS rules invalidated by the courts, it’s time to bring originality to the table. We have all these sophisticated freight tracking, routing, and planning systems out there, so we need to find a way to move everything within much saner work hours — ones that will make truck driving a more attractive job as well as one that’s easier on the human body.

There’s more than enough brain power in this industry to find a way to do it — among drivers and executives alike, I might add — so all we need to do is start working on possible solutions. It wont’ be easy, that’s for sure, but it’s not impossible — not by a long shot.

I’m already being taken to task by several readers for backing stiffer penalties and stricter enforcement to help reduce highway crashes in this country — the most pointed comment so far being “What part of ‘the punitive system has not worked for 75+ years; what makes you think it will work now’ don’t you understand?”

Three points I’d like to reiterate here. The first is that the punitive portion of our traffic laws, at the local, state, and federal level, only get enforced on a haphazard basis at best today. Paris Hilton and Al Gore III share the dubious honor of being repeat traffic offenders now, yet will still retain their licenses and ability to drive. I don’t care about their personal life, mind you — but driving while intoxicated and/or at super high speeds on the highway (Al Gore III has been busted twice now for going over 100 mph on the highway) puts everyone’s life at risk on the road, not just theirs. We need to nail the repeat offenders and make the penalties stick — period — for enforcement to work.

The second is that stricter enforcement will only work if common sense reigns supreme on the part of law enforcement. Example: in 1998, Washington D.C. passed one of the first primary seat belt laws in the U.S. Then the police department got this bright idea: on the day the law goes into effect, let’s establish check points on several major highway bridges DURING RUSH HOUR, so we can write tickets, make some money, and snarl commuter traffic for HOURS. Inching along by carpool, as a 30 minute commute stretched into 1 and 1/2 hours, I watched several of my compatriots leave choice messages in the voice mail boxes of their Congressmen. That one day justifiably created loads of resentment against seat belt laws and nearly got them repealed. Not the best idea when you are trying to improve highway safety.

OK, point number three, and the one that sticks in a lot of people’s craw: higher traffic fines mean more money for local and state coffers. Nothing irritates people more than that thought. But let’s look at it another way: if people are going to speed and drive drunk or drugged, regardless of the law and fine structure, they should be the ones to pay for our road maintenance needs. And make sure ALL the money collected in fines goes into road maintenance funds, nowhere else. I mean, why tax everyone? Why not make the habitual offenders pay up? That’s my opinion here.

Virginia, my home state, is taking a big step this July in terms of levying bigger fines to make the roads safer. Some may call these new fines draconian or just another way to pick the taxpayer’s pocket for more road maintenance funds, but I am going to cheer this effort wholeheartedly (and make damn sure I drive the speed limit so I don’t have to fork over any cash!)

The USA Today new newspaper did a superb wrap up on Viginia’s new civil charges (which ONLY apply to in-state residents, by the way) so I will repeat the guts of that story here. Overall, new penalties will now range from $750 to $3,000 and be added to existing fines and court costs.

For example, the civil penalty for going 20 mph over the speed limit will be $1,050, plus $61 in court costs and a fine that is typically about $200. A first-time drunken driver will face a $2,250 civil penalty, plus fines and court costs that typically run about $500 or more. Driving without a license? That’s a mandatory $900 civil penalty, in addition to the ordinary $100 for a fine and court costs.

Virginia’s new traffic penalties are expected to raise $65 million a year and are part of an effort to improve the state’s roads without raising taxes, state officials say, and again, they only apply to Virginia residents, not out-of-state drivers. Virginians must pay in three installments over 26 months or lose their licenses.

I love the following quote from Lon Anderson, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, in the paper’s article: “These penalties are harsh, but normal fines haven’t gotten people to drive sanely. Maybe this will,” adding that these new fines should help reduce the nearly 1,000 traffic deaths the state records annually.

Here’s another thing all the hand wringing overlooks — you do NOT pay a DIME if you do the following: DON’T SPEED, DON’T DRIVE DRUNK, DON’T DRIVE WITHOUT YOUR LICENSE. Hey, it gets no simpler than that — and frankly, why should everyone pay more in taxes to fix the roads if we can ding the repeat offenders who put ALL of our lives at risk out there every day? I mean, take their money, their license and their car — not mine.

Driving the speed limit isn’t rocket science, people — and frankly, with Virginia’s highway speed limit of 65 mph, you don’t NEED to drive any faster! That’s plenty fast enough. So now let’s see if these new penalties make our highways a safer place. Go get um, Virginia!

“Hope is not a method.” — General Gordon Sullivan (Ret.), U.S. Army

I think Sullivan’s quote is quite applicable to the siutation we face on our highways. According to preliminary numbers published by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), there were 43,330 deaths overall on U.S. highways in 2006, down only slightly from the 43,443 killed in 2005. While there are some positive trends showing up once the statistics get sliced and diced (more on that in a minute) the staggering fact remains that more people are dying EVERY YEAR on our roadways than the population of where I live (Springfield, VA). In a year an half, more Americans die on our roads than in nine years of fighting in Vietnam.

These are frightening numbers — and the worst part is, most are preventable if we just took the whole business of driving far, FAR more seriously.

But first, let’s look at some of the positive signs. Nonfatal crashes are projected to drop below six million for the very first time. Fatalities from large truck crashes dropped by 3.7%, from 5,212 to 5,018, with pedestrian deaths also making a slight decline.

Yet the bad news is BAD. Overall alcohol-related fatalities increased 2.4 percent from 17,525 to 17,941 — this after years and years worth of efforts to reduce drunk driving in schools, the workplace, etc. Motorcycle fatalities also increased for the ninth straight year and show no signs of easing, largely because mandatory helmet laws remain stalled almost everywhere — only 20 states have them and Louisiana is the only one that enacted a new one in the past decade.

Aside from the human toll contained within these horrendous numbers, there’s a big economic one, too. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters highway notes that highway crashes cost our society $230.6 billion a year, or about $820 per person — almost three times the amount of money needed to fund our ongoing military effort in Iraq.

There are several problems here, I think. The first is that we seem to keep “hoping” things will turn around. I’ve been hearing about the evils of drunk driving for 30 years now, yet it is still the leading cause of highway deaths — responsible for more than 30% of them. Another problem, and one harder to deal more directly with, is that we as a nation take driving for granted — it just IS, like walking or breathing. And until we realize that, hey, we’re accelerating tons of steel to high velocities every time we leave the driveway, making a serious dent in highway fatalities will remain impossible.

Here’s what I think we need to do.

Primary seat belt laws. Every state needs them — and, just like when we boosted the drinking age to 21 years of age, if you don’t have them, you lose highway funds. You wear your seat belt every time or your fined $100 or more — period. No ‘I was just going to the store’ excuses anymore. Seat belts are the primary safety device in a car; people must use them.

Lower speeds, stronger enforcement. We go back to 55 mph on the highway and if you speed, you get big fines — $500 or more. Now, truck drivers worry this will cut their pay as slowing down relates to fewer miles traveled and thus less money earned. Fleets must compensate for this. And no, this does NOT mean state troopers get to hand out big tickets for people going 57 mph. Common sense doesn’t get thrown out here — people will need to drive at 60 or 62 mph to pass other vehciles quickly and safely at times. That’s a given.

Declare war on intoxicated drivers You drive drunk or drugged up, you are done driving. First offense $1,000 and 30 day license suspension. Second offense $5,000 and six month suspension. Third time, you go to jail for a year plus a $15,000 fine. And yes, your CDL is suspended or removed if you drive drunk or drugged in your personal vehicle. Repeat offenders don’t get breathalyzers attached to the ignition of their car — they don’t get a car and get to wear prison orange. Drunk driving kills people, it’s a conscious act, and we need to treat it as such.

My feeling is it’s time we stop hoping highway fatalities go away on their own and really do something about it. And really, as trucking is a profession that relies on highway safety to get the job done, we as an industry should be taking the lead to see that all the necessary safety measures get put in place to make that drop happen.

I got a good email the other day from a reader asking about what’s going with hazmat security. He wanted to know if his hazmat trucking fleet would be required by federal mandate at some point to install satellite tracking systems on his equipment.

The short answer is ‘no’ at least for now — depsite a report from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recommending such a mandate, along with other security steps (Check out the FMCSA’s HAZMAT Safety and Security Technology Field Operational Test report at www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety-security/hazmat/fot/index.htm for more information).

The last legislative attempt to put such a mandate in place came in 2004. The U.S. Senate nixed funds for Transportation Security Agency (TSA) — part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — to investigate and implement GPS-based tracking systems on board commercial trucks carrying hazardous materials . New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer killed the idea via an amendment to the 2005 DHS appropriations bill.

A good analysis of this defeat is an article by Glenn Gibbon in ‘GPS World’ — a magazine devoted to the high tech market. Gibbon rightly points out that “Ironically, for years, a rapidly growing number of trucking companies have been outfitting their fleets with just the kind of capability that American Trucking Association [ATA] dismisses as an expensive, vulnerable, and cumbersome mandate — [adopting such tracking] primarily because of the increased productivity that results.”

He also rightly notes that the Defense Department already performs this kind of ‘national hazmat’ tracking so it’s not hard to do — the Defense Transportation Tracking System (DTTS) is a centralized facility for monitoring Department of Defense (DoD) transport and monitors more than 47,000 arms, ammunition, and explosive shipments by commercial motor carriers each year in the continental United States. DTTS continuously monitors in-transit status of shipments, providing GPS-derived location reports and coordinating emergency response efforts for accidents and other incidents.

So, for now, mandatory tracking for hazmat truckers at least is dead in the water. Whether it gets taken up again under this new democratically controlled Congress is open for debate, but it’s worthy to note a democratic senator — the senior senator from New York, no less — killed the effort the last time around.