The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has issued a waiver for trucking impacted by the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Maryland. Meanwhile, the outlines of a possible return to at least partial service at the port of Baltimore has been sketched out by the state’s Department of Transportation.
The FMCSA issued the waiver late Thursday night. Most prominent among the changes is adding two hours to the allowed hours of daily driving under the 14-hour on-duty limit. That current law allows 11 hours of driving in a 14-hour day; some of the key waivers granted by FMCSA will extend that by two hours.
However, it does not completely suspend Hours of Service rules, as other waivers have during other crises.
The two-hour extension will apply to “commodities rerouted from the port of Baltimore.” But the definition of commodities is broad. It includes most of the key products that had been regularly imported into Baltimore: shipping containers (though Baltimore is a relatively small intermodal port), fuel, and most importantly automobiles and other “roll-on/roll-off” commodities such as farm equipment.
On a practical basis, as Maryland Motor Truck Association President and CEO Louis Campion noted, the additional two hours can take away some anxiety for a drayage driver based in Baltimore who might need to shift their operations to the port of Norfolk while operations in Baltimore seek to resume.
“This gives him some flexibility,” Campion said in an interview with FreightWaves. A driver who had been on duty for awhile but needs more time can still take their mandatory breaks “and still feel like he can make that round trip.”
Campion said Norfolk is four to five hours away from Baltimore, depending on location.
HOS waiver also for local fuel deliveries
The additional two hours extended under the HOS rules apply also to fuel deliveries coming out of the Curtis Bay terminal in the port of Baltimore. Curtis Bay is outside the part of the port blocked by the collapsed bridge. Ten Maryland areas, including the city of Baltimore, are covered by the additional two hours.
FMCSA’s waiver does lift all HOS rules on vehicles working specifically on cleanup operations at the bridge. Trucks are granted that waiver, according to FMCSA, if they are “transporting equipment and supplies related to immediate repairs to the roadways and navigable waterways,” or if they are removing debris from there.
Campion said another aspect of the FMCSA waiver is permitting drivers that are not now under an ELD mandate, such as a drayage driver that sticks to a small radius around the port, to not need to install an ELD if it ventures further from its normal area of operation. Paper logs will suffice, according to the waiver.
The waiver is effective until May 8 or the end of the emergency declared by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, whichever is earlier. Waivers can be extended; the sweeping waiver on trucking related to COVID-19 was extended from the start of the pandemic to October 2022.
A timeline for restoration of some port service also became visible Thursday when the state’s Department of Transportation and its Port Administration laid out the first dates for when limited service to the port might be restored: late April.
According to the Port Administration’s statement, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers believes it can open a “limited access channel” that would be 280 feet wide and 35 feet deep “within the next four weeks.”
The key comparison is with what is normal: 700 feet wide and 50 feet deep.
What will be able to move at first
Not all types of freight movements would be able to access that channel, according to the statement. “This channel would support one-way traffic in and out of the Port of Baltimore for barge container service and some roll on/roll off vessels that move automobiles and farm equipment to and from the port,” it said.
Lt. Gen. Scott A. Spellmon, commanding general of the Corps of Engineers, described the timeline as “ambitious.” “Adverse” weather or additional information about “changes in the complexity of the wreckage” could change the date when the channel might be opened. ““We are working quickly and safely to clear the channel and restore full service at this port that is so vital to the nation,” he said in the statement.
Even with the good news about a partial reopening of some operations in Baltimore, Campion said that among the trucking community and the ports, the prospect of some traffic never coming back to the city remains a “huge concern.”
“There are some ocean carriers that I know have committed to coming back to Baltimore, at least verbally,” he said. “We know that freight is going to move into the country. We prefer that it moves to Baltimore and not the surrounding ports.”
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