CTA applauds HOS announcement

OTTAWA – After 12 years of meetings and negotiations with elected officials and bureaucrats, the Canadian Trucking Alliance will finally see a new hours-of-service regime in place in Canada.

“We finally have a regulation that incorporates scientific principles and at the same time attempts to accommodate the needs of drivers and carriers,” said CTA CEO David Bradley. CTA and its provincial trucking association partners played a pivotal role in the development of the new rules, providing input on a multitude of operational, economic and safety issues to government throughout the process, said Bradley.

As TodaysTrucking.com reported yesterday, Transport Minister Jean-C. Lapierre announced the completion of the final rules, which will be published in the Canada Gazette Part II on Nov. 16. The rules, which take effect Jan. 1, 2007, now need to be mirrored in provincial regulations to provide a uniform regime across the country.

“At long last, we’ve gotten past the complex, often misunderstood concepts that were sometimes twisted out of proportion by a few groups whose primary concern was denigrating the trucking industry — not promoting safety. We said all along that we were being guided by an emphasis on safety, the science of fatigue, and alertness management principles. At the same time, the business needs of trucking companies and their drivers had to be taken into account,” Bradley said. “We’ll have to see the fine print, but we anticipate that the new regulations will include CTA recommendations like 13 hours daily driving, the 36-hour reset; 48-hour averaging of off-duty time; and cycles of 70 hours in 7 days and 120 in 14.”

Bradley acknowledged that in light of recent developments in the US — which changed its sleeper berth rule to a minimum of eight consecutive hours off — one of the most important provisions will be the ability for drivers to split off-duty time in a sleeper berth.

“It is important for the industry that this matter be put to bed,” said Bradley. “The uncertainty that has been overhanging carriers and drivers for so many years has made it difficult to make operational planning decisions. We’re almost at the point that we can move ahead. While not everyone will be happy with the new regulations, we think they strike the proper balance between restriction and flexibility.”