<img width="150" src="http://www.automotive-fleet.com/fc_images/news/m-uscapitolarchitectofthecapitol-1.jpg" border="0" alt="
Image: Office of the Architect of the Capitol
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Image: Office of the Architect of the Capitol
">The subcommittee draft for the next House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill features several riders favored by trucking interests, including a long-sought measure that would preempt states from enacting laws dictating meal and rest break requirements for truckers. A similar rider is attached to the reauthorization bill covering DOT that was advanced last month by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
For several years now, trucking lobbyists have been seeking a legislative provision that would prevent individual states from enacting their own meal and rest break rules for CDL drivers, as well as to prohibit states from requiring that those drivers be paid certain types of added compensation, such as detention pay. That effort failed on Capitol Hill no less than three times last year.
Proponents of this reform have been pushing hard for Congress to more directly address state preemption of federal driver rules ever since a Supreme Court ruling in May 2015 upheld a California statute requiring a paid 10-minute rest break every four hours and a paid 30-minute meal period every five hours for truck drivers.
The House bill would also prevent the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from advancing a safety-fitness determination rulemaking until the DOT Inspector General has issued certain certifications required by law.
The back story on this rider is a bit more complex. Earlier this year, the Federal Motor Carrier Administration announced it was scrapping its proposed rule on a revised methodology for issuing safety-fitness determinations for motor carriers. The agency had issued its SFD notice of proposed rulemaking back in January of last year.
FMCSA explained in a March 23 notice in the Federal Register that despite having recently announced it would next issue a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking, it had decided
