LITTLE ROCK — J.B. Hunt Transport Services and four other trucking companies endorsed a proposal Thursday that seeks to prevent tired truck drivers from causing highway accidents by mandating the use of in-cab recording devices, which track a long-haul driver’s time behind the wheel.
The Lowell-based carrier that operates about 10,000 trucks is among five carriers supporting the Commercial Driver Compliance Improvement Act under the umbrella group called the Alliance for Driver Safety and Security, according to a news release from the group.
U.S. Sens. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., introduced the legislation to the full Senate on Wednesday, and passage is anticipated sometime in 2011, said Bill Vickery, a spokesman for the Alliance for Driver Safety and Security and representative of the Arkansas Trucking Association in Little Rock.
Other group members include Knight Transportation of Phoenix, Maverick USA of North Little Rock, and U.S. XPress of Chattanooga, Tenn.
Truck drivers have to comply with “hours of service,” which is the name for the federal rule governing driving time for interstate truckers.
Many carriers use logbooks to track the daily driving limits but insiders say the logs are easy to manipulate and that sometimes multiple sets of logbooks can be kept to skirt rules. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration,which oversees compliance, has already set 2012 as the year when motor carriers found with more than 10 percent behind-the-wheel time violations will be mandated to install the tracking device.
Under the proposal, all trucking companies engaged in interstate commerce would be required to install “electronic onboard recorders” to verify the regulated driving time of their employees.
Electronic onboard recording systems range in cost but can be bought for as little as $350 per unit, said Lane Kidd, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association in Little Rock, who said the expense is about the cost of a good truck tire.
“Trucking is a very capital intensive industry and this is not about price,” said Kidd addressing a chief criticism that small carriers have voiced in the past about the devices. The proposal is “about safety and how trucking has been relying on a mechanism that dates back to the 1930s to prove on duty and off-duty status.”
And a causal link exists between tired drivers and accidents, Kidd added.
Drivers have said the electronic monitoring devices can be tampered with, but Steve Williams, owner and chief executive officer of flat-bed carrier Maverick in North Little Rock, said the rule is the industry’s attempt to support a technology that allows truckers to do a better job of making highways safer.
He said Maverick will have devices in 600 of its 1,500 trucks by the end of the year.
“There will always be people to figure out a way to cheat the system,” Williams said. But electronic onboard recorders “are a much more fool-proof system than the historic paper system that’s been in place for the last 75 years or more.”
Business, Pages 27 on 09/30/2010