NCC joined dozens of agriculture and transportation groups in sending a letter to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regarding the Hours-of-Service rules for truck drivers.
The FMCSA provided the opportunity to comment on the definition of agricultural commodity, a critical element of the agriculture exemption to HOS rules. Currently, because of the agricultural exemption, the HOS regulations do not apply to the transportation of agricultural commodities by truck drivers operating completely within a 150 air-mile radius. Therefore, work and driving hours are not limited and the driver is also not required to use an Electronic Logging Device (ELD) or keep paper logs.
The letter puts forward a proposed definition for agricultural commodity for the purposes of determining the exemption qualifications for agricultural business activity. Such a definition would provide flexibility needed to handle trucking capacity surges throughout the year.
The letter can be found here.
