The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said today it is inviting public comment on proposed changes to rules governing a commercial driver's hours-of-service, the first suggested changes since the current version of the rules took effect five years ago.
In a statement, FMCSA outlined four possible changes: Expanding the current 100 air-mile (or 155 statute mile) "short-haul" exemption to the rule to drivers with 14 hours of on-duty time, up from 12 hours, so as to be consistent with the rules for long-haul truck drivers; extending the current 14-hour on-duty maximum by up to two hours when a driver encounters adverse driving conditions; revising the current mandatory 30-minute break for truck drivers after 8 hours of continuous driving; and re-instating the option to split up the required 10-hour off-duty rest break for drivers that operate trucks equipped with a sleeper-berth compartment.
In its advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, FMCSA said it has established a 30-day comment period to determine if hours-of-service revisions "may alleviate unnecessary burdens placed on drivers while maintaining safety on our nation's highways and roads."
FMCSA said the new mandate requiring virtually all commercial fleets to equip their rigs with electronic logging devices (ELD), has "brought focus to HOS regulations, especially with regard to certain regulations having a significant impact on agriculture and other sectors of trucking." While the comment may sound vague, those in the industry see it as validation of a long-held belief that the ELD mandate, which took full effect earlier this year and is designed to monitor compliance with hours-of-service rules, exposed flaws in the rules that those who drive for a living already knew existed.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), which represents hundreds of thousands of owner-operators and micro-fleets, has argued for years that the country's truck drivers would be better off having the hours-of-service rules refreshed to reflect the current-day driving environment rather than having the ELD mandate forced on them. OOIDA has bitterly opposed the mandate from the start.
"Our members have continuously told federal officials that current regulations are overly complex, provide no flexibility, and in no way reflect the physical capabilities or limitations of individual drivers," OOIDA President Todd Spencer said today in reaction to the FMCSA announcement. The current hours-of-service rules "need to be updated to match the realities of freight movement and to truly improve highway safety," added Spencer.
Under the current rule, a driver can be behind the wheel for 11 consecutive hours—including the 30-minute rest in the first 8 hours—of a 14-hour workday.
Soona Lee, director of regulatory compliance-North America for EROAD, a New Zealand-based information technology consultancy to the trucking industry, said in an e-mail today that the advent of the ELDs has "provided a strong momentum for pragmatic revisions to the HOS rules." ELDs, which monitor drivers' hours-of-duty status through equipment attached to an engine, can be "leveraged for a better understanding of how drivers encounter their daily shifts and the impact of HOS rules on operational efficiencies, driver well-being and safety," Lee added.
Lee applauded the FMCSA's actions, saying the four areas it has identified are widely viewed as causing problems for drivers. "It's clear that FMCSA is asking the right questions," she said.
The first in what is planned to be a series of public listening sessions on the proposed rulemaking will be this Friday in Dallas, Texas, at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.