kickin chicken
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Allen Parker tried an experiment. He scrapped his routine of driving his powder-blue rig across the Great Plains for 11 hours a day. Instead, he drove it for 10. That one-hour difference wreaked havoc.
The 24-year veteran of Werner Enterprises Inc. (WERN) had to stop one delivery 15 miles short of the customer. On another trip, he had to cool his heels in a Wal-Mart parking lot for a half-hour because of a mandatory break. He found himself sleeping during the day, waking up at 2:30 a.m. to make early deliveries.
“That’s when people should be sleeping,” said Parker, who lives in Fairbury, Nebraska, a town of 3,942 people in the southeastern part of the state, a little more than an hour from Lincoln. “It just messed me all up.”
The workday of the bearded, 48-year-old Parker and other truckers like him is now at the center of an intense U.S. debate about the extent of government regulation.
President Barack Obama’s administration has proposed cutting the number of hours truckers like Parker can spend behind the wheel each day from 11 to 10. Doing that would save billions in health-care costs and reduced accidents in a profession that is the most dangerous in on-the-job deaths, the administration argues. It’s also projected to add 39,000 jobs.
House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor sent a letter to the president on Oct. 5 demanding that the rule be withdrawn, saying it would add $1 billion in costs to an industry that already has cut driver fatalities. The weak economy makes the timing of the rule especially onerous, the Republican lawmakers said
Tired Truckers Versus Efficiency Is Focus of Regulation Fight - Bloomberg
