Federal DOT nixes truck rules for farmers
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — Potato growers — and farmers in general — won’t be subjected to new federal regulations after all as the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has decided not to impose commercial truck rules on farmers.
Proposed federal regulations would have forced farmers who operate farm equipment on public roads to the requirements of a commercial driver’s license (CDL), including acquiring additional documentation, maintaining health records and travel logs, and complying with driving age restrictions.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ranking member of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, said she was happy with the DOT’s decision.
“I am very pleased that the federal Department of Transportation decided not to pursue imposing onerous federal regulations on farmers whose livelihood depends on their ability to operate farm vehicles and agricultural equipment,” said Collins in a press release. “Earlier this month, I joined 21 of my colleagues in the Senate to express my concern on the unfair and expensive burden that would require farmers to obtain commercial driver’s licenses.
“All of us who grew up in Aroostook County, or live there now, have seen farmers on the side of the road driving a tractor or hauling a digger. They operate safely,” she said.
After reconsidering the potentially harmful burdens that would result from mandating that farmers obtain CDLs to operate their farm equipment, the FMCSA is now encouraging states to use “common sense” in setting exemptions for commercial driver’s licenses, making it clear that they do not intend to impose any new federal regulations.
“We have no intention of instituting onerous regulations on the hardworking farmers who feed our country and fuel our economy,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in a prepared statement.
In her initial response to the FMCSA’s proposal to require farmers to obtain commercial driver’s licenses, Collins joined a bipartisan group of Senators earlier this month in sending a letter to the Administrator of the FMCSA in opposing the proposed regulations.
“Farming can certainly be a dangerous occupation and we strongly agree that safe transportation of agricultural equipment on roads and highways is of utmost concern. However, it is our collective opinion that the FMCSA-proposed rule changes would provide no quantifiable benefit; but only serve to excessively and unnecessarily overburden U.S. agriculture producers who are already strained by cumbersome federal regulations,” the senators said in the letter to Anne S. Ferro, administrator of the FMCSA.
“At a time when many individuals and small businesses are facing economic uncertainty and unemployment remains high, we cannot afford to place additional burdens on our nation’s producers of high quality, safe, and nutritious food,” the senators wrote. “We have heard from many farmers and ranchers across the country who have already been encumbered with an abundance of new federal regulations. We are concerned that these new proposed requirements are simply additional attempts to further burden one of our nation’s most essential industries.”
Don Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board, said the decision not to impose commercial truck rules on farmers was a good one.
“When we first heard about the proposed regulations, we had some concerns as to what they may be going to do and what the impact was going to be,” he said. “If you look at trying to require commercial driver’s licenses for the operation of farm equipment and trucks, in our industry and agriculture as a whole, most operations don’t have a lot of full-time people. They bring on extra people during planting and harvest.
“To say that those people are all going to have to have a CDL and have to draw from that kind of pool would be very restrictive,” said Flannery. “Some of these part-time people come in and fill in for three or four days or a week, and to require them to have a CDL would have been a little over the top. They have since said that was not their intent, and we’re very glad of that.”
Flannery said he will continue to follow the DOT on this matter.
“We’re not taking this off our plate just yet,” he said. “We’re going to wait until the ink dries and keep an eye on it to make sure that what they say their intent is is what they actually do.”
