This month, we have seen Hurricane Ian continue to grow and shift its path of destruction. It currently looks like it will have some serious impacts to the state of Florida as many airports, businesses, and other services have announce at least 1-2 days of closure.

Many of those businesses have also put in a caveat that it could be longer depending the extent of the damage caused once they are able to asses it.

Due to this impending hurricane, Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that he is utilizing a declaration of emergency to allow him to relax some of the trucking regulations in the state. Here are a few of the changes that they have made:

• Hours of Service Requirements: Motor carriers are subject to requirements around the amount of hours they are allowed to be on the road for. This declaration has waved those requirements if the driver is carrying emergency equipment, services, supplies, and agricultural commodities.
• The declaration also has waived the freight size or weight as long as it falls within any of the aforementioned categories.
• Road shoulders were also in the process of being cleared to create emergency corridors if needed.

It is incredible to think how truckers have proven to be the heroes over the past few years from the pandemic to being one of the only non-emergency operators in major disasters. Drivers have shown themselves to be the backbone of the supply chain and are necessary for many to function daily.

We encourage any drivers that might be facing the hurricane directly or indirectly from the storms this will produce across multiple states to continue to exercise safety and caution.

If you are driving any emergency supplies, we will try to keep our blog updated with any changes around the rules and regulations changing or being relaxed over the next week.