The concert was set to begin, but the court said it wasn’t time for the Fat Lady to sing
The orchestra was all tuned up, but had to go home before it got to perform.
By LYNDON FINNEY
The Trucker Staff
11/2/2007
We were all ready for a concert.
The concertmaster had the orchestra all tuned up.
The Fat Lady was in the wings warming up, preparing to sing an aria in the oratorio, “Hours of Service.”
Only problem was, some of us forgot to turn the page and look at the chorus that followed.
It was titled “Not So Fast There.”
So while many of us in the media and many industry stakeholders were expecting some type of major development prior to the Sept. 14 issuance of the mandate overturning the 11-hour rule and the 34-hour restart rule of HOS, if we’d read the words to the chorus, we’d have learned that the ruling by the court last July had all sorts of built-in delay possibilities.
And now, the court tells us, they’ve moved the issuance of the mandate to Dec. 27, thanks to a motion filed by the American Trucking Associations.
So orchestra members have packed up their instruments and word has it that the Fat Lady has gone to Chicago to sing at Wrigley Field — once again.
And we’re all left to wonder, what’s next?
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is responsible for writing and implementing HOS rules, once again finds itself in the middle, caught between the image-conscious bureaucrats at the highest level of the executive and judicial branches of government and the so-called public advocacy groups who will assuredly file suit regardless of what the next HOS rule looks like.
Against this background, rest assured that, despite having little to say since the July court ruling, we strongly back John Hill and the folks at FMCSA, who are trying their dead level best to come up with some that is fair to all segments of the industry, easy to understand, easy to implement and easily defendable in court.
If you didn’t read it last issue, let me repeat what Hill told us:
“The FMCSA takes very seriously the current situation concerning the HOS regulations. We are collaborating with the Department of Justice and Solicitor General to determine our next steps. We don’t want anyone to perceive us as cavalier about this situation. We view it very seriously. We must support any future decisions on sound safety data. Also, the data must support every procedural step we complete to make it acceptable to the court.”
We’ll keep a close watch on what happens between now and Dec. 27 and let you know when it’s time to send the Fat Lady back to the warm up room.
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The other hot topic in trucking today is the Mexico truck demonstration project. We’re probably received more calls on this issue that any other this year.
First conceived in the 1990s as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the movement of Mexican trucks into the U.S. and vice versa is mandated by law.
Don’t go jumping on the Department of Transportation and FMCSA for this one. They are only implementing what the Congressmen you elected then passed and then-President Clinton signed into law.
The only way the program can be stopped is new legislation. Congress can pass all types of bills to deny funding for the program, but we suspect that if the issue ever reaches the Supreme Court, trucks will roll across the border on a permanent basis.
If you’re upset, it’s OK to call us or write a letter to the editor, but the best thing you can do is call your Congressman and ask him or her to legally undo the program through new NAFTA legislation.
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We suspected that there are some real baseball fans among our audience, so last week we decided to find out who they felt would win the 2007 World Series.
We also suspect that most of you got it right, since the highest percentage of votes (24.29 percent) went to the Boston Red Sox.
And if you think truckers don’t know baseball, the lowest percentages of votes went to the Los Angeles Angels at Anaheim and the Philadelphia Phillies, both of whom were eliminated in three straight games in the league division series.
And for those 15.71 percent who said the Chicago Cubs would finally fly a World Championship pennant over Wrigley Field, wait until next year.