Hours of service (HOS) rules require long haul truckers to get creative in predicting where they will be and at what time the wheels must stop turning. Imagine having to forecast every day exactly where you will need to stop without fully knowing what your next trip is, or how long the wait may be to get through the gate at a particular distribution center to drop your trailer, or what traffic and weather will be.
Predictive software can only get you so far. At some point, you might need to stop short of the goal line knowing that the next possible stopping place is likely too far given your remaining legal drive time. I equate this with planning a trip to the grocery store with just enough gas in the car to get there and back, but then encountering traffic, road construction, animals crossing the roadway, etc., and then having to divert to a gas station to solve my range anxiety, knowing that the extra out-of-route miles and time mean I will miss an appointment with a contractor showing up at my home to repair something.
That’s just an example, but it highlights the fact that life for truck drivers is a lot more complicated than getting from here to there. There are plans, and then constant readjustment of the plans, as the real-world interferes with those plans. The goal is to get the freight to its destination when it’s supposed to be there without violating any rules or endangering anyone.
When you see a truck randomly parked on the side of an exit ramp, it’s most likely not the result of a breakdown, but rather compliance with HOS rules. Would you feel comfortable randomly parking overnight on a remote exit ramp or in a high crime area? As consumers of freight, we are invariably asking drivers to do that because we expect our overnight shipment to be on our doorstep in the morning.
Drivers are often penalized for late deliveries, irrespective of what caused the delays. They often are not paid for wait time at facilities, when their wheels are not rolling because the distribution center is backed up with traffic or slow to load a trailer.
Think about how frustrated you might be when you go to a health care facility for a scheduled appointment, only to have to wait a few hours because the doctor got tied up with someone else’s emergency. Or when you arrive at the airport only to find weather in another time zone has delayed your flight for hours. Truck drivers deal with these challenges every day.
When you are paid by the mile and the truck isn’t moving, that is lost income. When you have to park 100 miles before a scheduled delivery because HOS would expire in those last few miles – and you wind up getting penalized the next day for a late delivery – that is lost income. When a distribution center ties you up in detention for an hour or two because they are slow, that is lost income.
