Editor's Note: The following is a weekly column covering technology and regulation within the supply chain and logistics industries.
The Denham-Cuellar-Costa amendment is a mixed bag for truckers
The American Trucking Associations told Congress yesterday that truckers need uniform, federal meal-and-rest break regulations, and if it's up to states to decide on their own separate rules, that will only hamper truckers and create confusion in the industry.
That's what the Denham-Cuellar-Costa amendment to Rep. Bill Shuster's FAA reauthorization bill (H.R. 4) would do: restrict states' ability to set break regulations by requiring truckers to follow the Department of Transportation's rules first, and also require trucking companies to pay truckers on a per-mile basis.
The Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association, however, is against the amendment, saying it will prevent truckers from getting the breaks and rest they need. The OOIDA also said it prevents truckers from being paid for other tasks that are part of the job: if truckers are only paid per mile, then they won't be paid for time spent on safety inspections and paperwork tasks, FreightWaves reported.
Yesterday the FAA bill with the Denham-Cuellar-Costa amendment passed the House.
The Reaction: This amendment has the potential to roil the trucking industry to a boiling point, with ELD implementation still very bumpy and truckers saying morale is dropping.
The ELD limits hours of service for truckers, and if this amendment passes and truckers are only paid per mile, not hourly, it will create substantive difficulty and confusion as truckers figure out a new workflow that allows for non-driving related tasks. On the other hand, uniform break rules could help eliminate some of that confusion for truckers crossing state lines.
Democrats don't like how the NAFTA negotiations are going
The New Democrat Coalition wrote a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer yesterday reprimanding him and the Trump administration for focusing on the wrong issues in the NAFTA renegotiation with Canada and Mexico.
Here's what the New Democrats are concerned about:
- Canada's pricing program that "undercuts American market access to both Canada and Mexico"
- Protecting American intellectual property rights (IPR)
- "Unenforceable human rights provisions in the original NAFTA have allowed forced labor and other human rights violations in Mexico to fester"
- American auto industry competitiveness
- Improving market access and certainty to better serve American workers and business
- "Canada and Mexico’s de minimis thresholds [that are] sixteen to forty times lower than our own which adversely impact the ability of U.S. companies to sell to our closest trading partners."
The Reaction: The New Democrat Coalition raises legitimate concerns, but the NAFTA deal may be closing soon according to reports from Bloomberg and The Hill. It's still unclear what exactly the terms of the new arrangement will be, or whether it will really address the concerns the Trump administration has on the previous agreement.
Tesla's tech is impressive, but Model 3s are poorly made
Bloomberg reported that Munro & Associates, a firm that tears apart cars and analyzes them, looked at a Tesla Model 3 and decided while the advanced technology should scare big automakers, the production quality of the car is terrible.
Early buyers have experienced bad quality Model 3s already, but Tesla has been eager to accommodate their complaints and fix the problems, so Munro & Associates' analysis is nothing new. Tesla has experienced many setbacks with Model 3 production, but is currently meeting its production goal of 2,500 Model 3s per week, according to Bloomberg's tracker.
The Reaction: Supply Chain Dive has reported that Tesla's supply chain is a bit of a mess because it's a young auto company — so we're not surprised that some Model 3s are of lackluster quality. Tesla's production is likely to improve as the company continues to ramp up (in fact, that's exactly what happened with the Model S).
Tesla is betting on the long-term game that electric vehicles (EVs) are the future. The kinds of bumps and hiccups the company experiences now are normal for startups in new spaces, especially in such a competitive, landed industry like auto.
As an aside, Munro & Associates does have a bias: they counsel auto companies on their production, so take what they have to say with a grain of salt.
In case you missed it...
The EU wants more U.S. beef, according to POLITICO, which could strengthen trade relations between the U.S. and the EU despite U.S. difficulties with other trading partners.
DHL announced a partnership with Magento, a cloud-based e-commerce platform, "to help online merchants go global."
Also, Amazon wants to deliver packages to your car. Never mind that we don't get packages delivered to our cars now — Amazon thinks we should.
Looking ahead
The FAA bill with that controversial Denham-Cuellar-Costa amendment has yet to pass the Senate.
In other news, there's no movement yet on an infrastructure bill from Congress.