Hours of Service of Drivers: R.J. Corman Railroad Services, Cranemasters, Inc., and National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, Inc.

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FMCSA-2019-0056]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hours of Service of Drivers: R.J. Corman Railroad Services, Cranemasters, Inc., and National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, Inc.</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of provisional renewal of exemption; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> FMCSA announces its decision to provisionally renew for six months the exemption requested by R.J. Corman Railroad Services (R.J. Corman), Cranemasters, Inc. (Cranemasters), and the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association Inc. (NRC) from the prohibition against driving a property-carrying commercial motor vehicle (CMV) beyond the 14th hour after coming on duty and driving after accumulating 60 hours of on-duty time in 7 consecutive days, or 70 hours of on-duty time in 8 consecutive days. The exemption renewal is applicable to employees of R.J. Corman and Cranemasters operating CMVs in response to unplanned events that occur outside of or extend beyond the subject employees' normal work hours. FMCSA requests public comment on the application for exemption renewal. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This renewed exemption is effective March 4, 2025, and expires on September 4, 2025. Comments must be received on or before April 9, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by Federal Docket Management System Number FMCSA-2019-0056 by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> See the Public Participation and Request for Comments section below for further information. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Dockets Operations, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> West Building, Ground Floor, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. E.T., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. Each submission must include the Agency name and the docket number for this notice (FMCSA-2019-0056). Note that DOT posts all comments received without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information included in a comment. Please see the Privacy Act heading below. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments, go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> at any time or visit the ground level of the U.S. Department of Transportation, West Building, at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 366-9317 or (202) 366-9826 before visiting Dockets Operations. <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> In accordance with 49 U.S.C. 31315(b)(6), DOT solicits comments from the public on the exemption renewal request. DOT posts these comments, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed under the “Department Wide System of Records Notices” at <E T="03">www.dot.gov/privacy/privacy-act-system-records-notices.</E> The comments are searchable by the name of the submitter and are posted without edit. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Bernadette Walker, Driver and Carrier Operations Division; Office of Carrier, Driver and Vehicle Safety Standards; FMCSA; (202) 385-2415; <E T="03">Bernadette.walker@dot.gov.</E> If you have questions on viewing or submitting material to the docket, contact Dockets Operations, (202) 366-9826. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation and Request for Comments</HD> FMCSA encourages you to participate by submitting comments and related materials. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Submitting Comments</HD> If you submit a comment, please include the docket number for this notice (FMCSA-2019-0056), indicate the specific section of this document to which the comment applies, and provide a reason for suggestions or recommendations. You may submit your comments and material online or by fax, mail, or hand delivery, but please use only one of these means. FMCSA recommends that you include your name and a mailing address, an email address, or a phone number in the body of your document so the Agency can contact you if it has questions regarding your submission. To submit your comment online, go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> insert the docket number (FMCSA-2019-0056) in keyword box, and click on this notice, click “Comment,” and type your comment into the text box on the following screen. If you submit your comments by mail or hand delivery, submit them in an unbound format, no larger than 8 <FR>1/2</FR> by 11 inches, suitable for copying and electronic filing. FMCSA will consider all comments and material received during the comment period. Comments received after the comment closing date will be filed in the public docket and will be considered to the extent practicable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Confidential Business Information (CBI)</HD> CBI is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. If your comments responsive to the notice contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private, that you actually treat as private, and that is relevant or responsive to the notice, it is important that you clearly designate the submitted comments as CBI. Please mark each page of your submission that constitutes CBI as “PROPIN” to indicate it contains proprietary information. FMCSA will treat such marked submissions as confidential under the Freedom of Information Act, and they will not be placed in the public docket of the notice. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Brian Dahlin, Chief, Regulatory Evaluation Division, Office of Policy, FMCSA, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001 or <E T="03">brian.g.dahlin@dot.gov.</E> At this time, you need not send a duplicate hardcopy of your electronic CBI submissions to FMCSA headquarters. Any comments FMCSA receives not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket for this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Viewing Comments and Documents</HD> To view comments, as well as any documents mentioned in this preamble as being available in the docket, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> insert FMCSA-2019-0056 in the keyword box, select the document tab and choose the document to review. To view comments, click this notice, then click “Browse Comments.” If you do not have access to the internet, you may view the docket online by visiting Docket Operations on the ground floor of the DOT West Building, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., ET Monday through Friday, except federal holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 366-9317 or (202) 366-9826 before visiting Dockets Operations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Legal Basis</HD> FMCSA has authority under 49 U.S.C. 31136(e) and 31315(b) to grant exemptions from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs). FMCSA must publish a notice of each exemption request in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (49 CFR 381.315(a)). The Agency must provide the public an opportunity to inspect the information relevant to the application, including the applicant's safety analyses. The Agency must also provide an opportunity for public comment on the request. The Agency reviews the safety analyses and the public comments and determines whether granting the exemption would likely achieve a level of safety equivalent to, or greater than, the level that would be achieved absent such exemption, pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 31315(b)(1). The Agency must publish the decision in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (49 CFR 381.315(b)). If granted, the notice will identify the regulatory provision from which the applicant will be exempt and the effective period and will explain all terms and conditions of the exemption (49 CFR 381.315(c)(1)). If the exemption is denied, the notice will explain the reason for the denial (49 CFR 381.315(c)(2)). The exemption may be renewed (49 CFR 381.300(b)). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Current Regulatory Requirements</HD> Under 49 CFR 395.3(a)(2), drivers are prohibited from driving after a period of 14 consecutive hours after coming on-duty following 10 consecutive hours off-duty. Under 49 CFR 395.3(b)(1), drivers are prohibited from operating a CMV for any period after having been on duty 60 hours in any period of 7 consecutive days if the employing motor carrier does not operate CMVs every day of the week. Under 49 CFR 395.3(b)(2), drivers are prohibited from operating a CMV for any period after having been on duty 70 hours in any period of 8 consecutive days if the employing motor carrier does operate CMVs every day of the week. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Application for Renewal of Exemption</HD> R.J. Corman is a full-service railroad construction company, Cranemasters is a railroad contractor, and the NRC is a trade association for railroad contractors, suppliers, and the railroad and rail transit construction industry. The applicants request a renewal of their exemption from the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━