Trucking regulations should account for livestock impact

ONE recurring problem with government bureaucracy is that officials often rush to enact regulations and only consider feasibility after the fact. This seems to be the case with some Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration mandates, including one requiring that all truck operators begin using an electronic logging device by Dec. 18.

The idea is to make it more difficult for drivers to alter or falsify their logs in ways that allow them to exceed hours-of-service limits. Current rules limit driving time to 11 hours in a 14-hour shift after a driver has been off-duty for 10 hours, as well as 30-minute rest breaks every eight hours, and other restrictions.

The defensible goal is to ensure large commercial trucks with sleep-deprived drivers aren’t on the road endangering other drivers. Yet a hard-and-fast application of those rules can have other effects federal officials didn’t consider. One major flaw is that some cargo — livestock — can’t simply be unloaded to allow for 10-hour rest breaks for long-haul truck drivers.

“There was no thought given to the living, breathing commodities,” Steve Hilker of Kansas-based Hilker Trucking told The Fence Post, a Colorado-based publication focused on agriculture. Hilker dismissed the proposal as “a giant one-size-fits-all mandate.”

That’s one reason U.S. Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Cheyenne, recently urged passage of legislation that would delay the electronic logging device rule for drivers who haul livestock.

In a letter, Lucas and other members of Congress noted, “Time spent on a truck can be stressful for cattle. Unnecessary stops or multiple loads and unloads add additional stress resulting in potential livestock weight loss and increased animal sickness and death.”

Citing research from Kansas State University, Lucas and like-minded congressmen said the chances of morbidity and mortality increase substantially after livestock have been transported for 30 hours. The associated weight loss of cattle on long trips has financial consequences for sellers all by itself, let alone animal death.

Truck drivers and ranchers are lobbying Congress for a delay of the mandate and an exemption to some rules. Among other things, they argue the 10-hour downtime period should include time spent loading or unloading cattle, time in which the driver isn’t behind the wheel. Currently, that time counts as drive time.

Kenny Graner, vice president of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, told the Tri-State Livestock News in South Dakota that trucks often have to wait up to three or four hours to load cattle at Mandan, North Dakota, sale barns. If the clock is running during that loading time, then drivers have far less time to actually haul cattle to feedlots.

Critics admit the share of drivers hauling cattle long distances who would run afoul of current time limits is relatively small. But that also highlights the need for regulatory flexibility.

No one wants sleep-deprived drivers behind the wheel, especially if they’re driving large commercial trucks. But neither should anyone want arbitrary rules to create economic harm to ranchers and physical harm to animals.