U.S. HOS proposal would make paper logbooks obsolete, OMCS leader says

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nov. 4, 1999) — The still-unpublished American proposal on driver hours of service will include a provision for on-board recorders that will obsolete paper logbooks, Julie Cirillo, head of the U.S. Office of Motor Carrier Safety, said in an interview.

Cirillo spoke with the editors of the U.S.-based Heavy Duty Trucking magazine following a speech at the Truckload Carriers Board meeting at the American Trucking Associations annual convention in Orlando, Fla. Her brief presentation outlined the organization and the objectives for OMCS, which was recently moved out of the Federal Highway Administration and put directly under the Secretary of Transportation.

But what held the members’ attention were Cirillo’s comments about the basis for the proposed hours of service regulation.

The proposal is complete, but will not be published until it has been through the review process. In fact, said Cirillo, she is forbidden to reveal any of the substance of the proposal until it has completed the review. Then it will be published, possibly by the end of this year, with a 90-day comment period.

That timetable may slip: her agency has already missed earlier deadlines of August and September, so it may be next year before the proposal is made public. That may well delay the final rule until 2001.

She commented that the proposals are based on good science that would address fatigue issues. They “will not suit those who want an eight-hour driving day, and they won’t suit those who want no change,” she said.

However, she feels that the agency has come up with a proposal that will satisfy most of the industry, confirming that it is not a “one-size-fits-all,” but rather a proposal that will address different needs of different types of trucking operations.

She was not specific about that, though she did say that the differences would not be based on carrier size or whether it was a truckload or less-than-truckload operation. She hinted that differences in type of haul and time away from home would be the sort of differences that the proposal would accommodate. A carrier that got drivers home every night would be different from a long-haul operation, for instance.

Enforcement of the proposed regulation would involve technology, Cirillo said. When asked how this would manifest itself, Cirillo said it would not be the sort of “black box” the National Transportation Safety Board has expressed interest in. Rather, the technology favored by OMCHS would be a recording device. She said that didn’t mean a tachograph, necessarily, since the agency didn’t want to limit the industry’s options.

She did say that the on-board recording devices would make conventional paper log and logbooks obsolete.