Articles Posted in Trucking Rules

We are seeing more concerns raised about safety of Mexican trucks coming into the US. Among the points raised recently are: •  Full access has not been granted to the Mexican license record database.  Border facilities have this access, but more than 15% of the time the records are missing entirely. •  The Department of…

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has stayed until the end of the year enforcement of its July order striking down the current FMCSR  hours of service rule.  This has been a point of controversy for years.  In 2003, the FMSCA first released a set of rules that would allow truck…

We’ve seen a lot of controversy lately about the on again – off again commencement of the FMCSA program to allow Mexican trucking companies to operate nationwide in the U.S. under the terms of the NAFTA treaty.  Now,  according to a recent Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration enforcement memo, the FMCSA may actually start to…

An article in Saturday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper highlights some of the systemic problems with hours of service and driver fatigue in over the road trucking.  A few of the key points: The Shigley Law Firm  represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the…

The American Trucking Associations is asking Congress to authorize and fund a centralized clearinghouse for positive drug and alcohol testing results of commercial motor vehicle drivers to ensure that motor carrier employers are aware of previous positive test results during the hiring process. The ATA notes that with between 2 percent and 2.5 percent of…

Usually reader comments appear in a blog just as an attachment to the blogger’s post, and sort of get lost in the shuffle.  However, this morning I received a comment from a seasoned truck driver named Andrew about the recent court ruling on hours of services rules that should stand on its own.  As a…

Thanks to alert reader David Warren for calling this to my attention. A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday threw out a the 2005 rule allow long-haul truckers to drive for up to 11 hours straight. For 60 years, truckers could drive for 10 hours at a time. Since the 2000 election, the…

Police in Kings Mountain, NC, say a driver’s lack of understanding of the English language appears to have led to a violent wreck between a train and a tractor-trailer.  Truck driver Ricardo Ercia was crossing several train lines in town at South Battleground Avenue and Oak Street when he didn’t obey a traffic sign calling…

Two decades ago Alabama adopted the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations for intrastate trucking operations. Last week, the Alabama legislature voted to exempt most farm trucks from the regulations. My friend and co-counsel who is a member of the Alabama legislature voted for it.  It’s hardly a shock.  Georgia already did that.  However, if you…

As I have discussed several times in this blog, the US Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration significantly increased truck drivers’ hours of service last year.  Under the current hours of service rule, truckers may drive 77 hours in 7 days or 88 hours in 8 days – a more than 25 percent increase from the…