摘要: |
For an industry that's nearly entirely deregulated on the economic side, trucking faces any number of forces emanating not only from the regulators in Washington, D.C., but also from safety, economic and environmentalists in state capitals around the country. By far, the biggest regulatory story in trucking is California's Assembly Bill No. 5 regulation-better known as AB 5-covering independent contractors. Originally designed to benefit "gig" employees who drive for Uber and Lyft, the law has been interpreted by the courts to also affect some of California's estimated 70,000 independent owner-operators who work in trucking. David Heller, vice president of government affairs for the Truckload Carriers of America, says that AB 5 is one of those rules whose long-term impact has yet to be determined. In the meantime, the Supreme Court's early summer decision not to review the California AB5 ruling has left the trucking industry scrambling to be in compliance and still maintain some sort of operating arrangement to use owner-operators-who are vital to supplying capacity when hiring year-round employees is not practical. |