Members of the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) have adjusted smoothly enough to the disruptions at the Port of Baltimore that a conference call among its members scheduled for Thursday — the latest in a series — was canceled because a great deal of initial concern among TCA members has disappeared.
“A lot of the shock we had was in the first two calls,” David Heller, the TCA’s senior vice president of government affairs, told FreightWaves when asked about the scheduled meeting. “We want to keep those lines of communication open, and we’ll continue to forward information to our membership as we go along.”
But for now, particularly with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s recent waiver of some hours-of-service rules, Heller said he’s hearing from TCA members that they’ve adjusted to the diversions as a result of the port’s closure following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26.
With the port potentially reopening by the end of May, Heller said TCA’s members see “light at the end of the tunnel.” There’s a sense in the trucking community that has been servicing the port of Baltimore that “the worst of the worst is over.”
“One thing about our industry that has proven itself time and time again is the flexibility that can happen, which is what makes trucking so valuable in the first place and why it is the optimal mode of freight transportation in this country,” Heller said.
The change in the HOS regulation promulgated by FMCSA added two hours of allowable driving time to the 11 hours now permitted in a 14-hour on-duty day.
Heller said that move is adequate to compensate for additional time on the road, such as a drayage driver who remains based in Baltimore but needs to begin moving containers in and out of ports such as Philadelphia, New York/New Jersey or Norfolk, Virginia.
Asked why the HOS waiver wasn’t more sweeping, such as those often handed down by FMCSA to deal with hurricane cleanup and reconstruction, Heller noted that the two hours is equal to the “adverse conditions” provision in the HOS rule.
“It’s almost like putting the adverse driving conditions of the HOS regulations into effect in a more permanent way,” he said, while stressing that they clearly are not permanent. “Now, if you can claim adverse conditions, you can get an extra two hours, and lo and behold, I’ve given you two hours in the regulation.”
To illustrate how adverse conditions might work, Heller described something that might have occurred in the immediate wake of the bridge collapse: a gigantic traffic backup before travel patterns shifted to accommodate for the loss of the bridge. That sort of backup, Heller said, could be cited as an “adverse condition” that would get a driver an additional two hours of driving time.
Heller added that the reality of HOS is that the average driver racks up six-and-a-half to seven hours per day, so the additional two hours should be considered with that in mind.
The push for expanded hours of service did not come solely from the industry, Heller said. “FMCSA was very, very proactive in opening those avenues to get questions asked, which was great on their part,” he said, one of several instances during the interview when he praised the work of the agency.
“FMCSA is very open about getting aligned and setting up an avenue in which we can ask questions, and then they’ll search for answers,” Heller said.
Shifting traffic from Baltimore to other ports does create other issues, Heller said. For example, while companies servicing Baltimore need the same Transportation Worker Identification Credential card that is used in other ports such as New York/New Jersey, that latter port, which is likely to see a significant increase in traffic diverted from Baltimore, also has a SeaLink pass. The NY/NJ port describes it as its “uniform truck driver identification system,” and a drayage driver who works mostly out of Baltimore would not necessarily have one.
Heller said the NY/NJ port has been dedicating additional personnel to smoothing the process for Baltimore-based drivers to obtain that credential.
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