If at first you don’t succeed, the oft-repeated phrase encourages you to “try, try again.”
Colorado Huntsman Transport is putting the old adage to the test as the prisoner transportation company is again asking the FMCSA for an exemption from hours-of-service regulations.
In 2025, the company asked the agency for an exemption from the regulation that limits non-daily motor carriers to 60 hours of on-duty time within seven consecutive days. The company, which asked for the limit to be 80 hours, said the exemption would reduce the risk of violent prisoners escaping and lower the tax burden.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rejected the request this past February, saying that Colorado Huntsman Transport failed to demonstrate how it would maintain safety standards. The agency added that the 80-hour proposal “permits dangerously long work hours without proper rest or oversight, increases risk of fatigue-related crashes and conflicts with science-based safety standards.”
Now, Colorado Huntsman Transport is trying again.
Last week, FMCSA published the company’s latest attempt for an hours-of-service exemption.
Huntsman now asked for a 10-day on/10-day off schedule with a maximum seven-hour daily driving limit, as well as an exemption from commercial motor vehicle marking requirements.
The company said that “granting this exemption would allow us to operate without the prominent name and USDOT markings, thereby reducing public misidentification and the associated safety threats.” Huntsman added that its drivers and vehicles would continue to be fully identifiable through registration documents, electronic logging devices, USDOT numbers and GPS tracking.
“Compliance with standard hours-of-service rules would force our drivers into unsafe and insecure practices,” the company wrote in its latest exemption application. “It would also provide them with a worse quality of life on the road because they would have to be away from their families for more than 10 days to reset their hours of service to complete the route.”
How to comment
FMCSA will accept comments on the exemption request through Aug. 17. To submit a comment, click here or go to Regulations.gov and enter FMCSA-2024-0317-0006. LL
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