The Office of Management and Budget received a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from the
Department of Transportation regarding the regulations governing working hours. According to
Elaine Chao, there are advancements about the NPRM, though the contents of the same are not
in public domain yet. He claimed that their main interest was flexibility which they have heavily
put into consideration. However, he dodged the idea of going into details over the NPRM.

Ray Martinez, FMCSA Chief, was adamant that he had no prior judgment to what he expected of
the Office of Management and Budget, in terms of their reaction, but Martinez reiterated that he
was quite adamant that there would be positives from them. Martinez has now been in
administration for a year. He was quite clear on the essence of attending events that hosted
truckers to show them that the agency has the listening boots on and care about the people they
regulate.

The ATA spokesperson, Sean McNally said that the association was quite impressed with the
fact that the push for changes on the rules governing hours of service has quite been going well.
He added that they also do not know the contents of the proposal, but they have kept tabs on the
same to be well informed. Similarly, the Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association were
also happy about the progress. They are in pursuit of changes to the hours of work for their
drivers. OOIDA president, Todd Spencer, was in dire need to see to it that the safety on the
highways is well dealt with.

Before coming up with the NPRM, the FMCSA had done quite some research by going through
plenty of comments and other inputs they had been gathering. Initially, they had issued an
Advance NPRM which entailed the issue of rest for drivers. The ANPRM resulted from over 5,200 comments. The ANPRM addressed these four main areas; First, the issue of the 30-minute break for the drivers. Second, flexibility in adverse driving. Third, the issue of putting back in
place the split of the 10 hours off duty rest that is allocated, for the sake of trucks with a sleeper
berth. Lastly, expansion of short-haul exemption from 12 hours to 14 hours on duty, to be unified
with long-haul drivers.

Most drivers claimed to be comfortable if the 30-minute rest break would be removed. They
were also in agreement that they would be comfortable sharing the 10 hours off duty rest in the
sleeper berth rather than being off the entire 10 hours straight according to responses from
comments. Reports from the American Transportation Research Institute show that the
recommended breaks are capable of reducing congestion. Those who commented also advocated
for additional two hours that would come into play in case drivers encounter adverse conditions.
OMB is expected to review the proposal, which will take months, later the NPRM will be
published to open room for comments according to Joe DeLorenzo.