The Clock Strikes Midnight Are You Ready?

摘要

With new federal regulations limiting truck drivers to 14 hours of work per day, everyone in the food and consumer packaged goods supply chain will be watching the amount of time that truck drivers have to wait at loading docks. "Where drivers have to spend time at docks waiting to get loaded or unloaded will really challenge the laws," predicts Dave Osiecki, vice president for safety and operations at the American Trucking Associations in Alexandria, Va. "Dock time has been a challenge for truckers all along, and it becomes more so now under these new rules." The law governing drivers' hours of service was set to take effect Jan. 4. Put forth by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), it will change allowable on-duty time to 14 consecutive hours a day from the current 15 non-consecutive hours. It also creates a ceiling of 60 hours a week on a seven-day scale or 70 hours on an eight-day scale, with a minimum of 34 hours off duty before resetting the clock.