A federal district court in Kansas has issued a ruling on an important issue relating to the motor carrier act (\u201cMCA\u201d) exemption.\u00a0 The MCA exemption provides that overtime pay is not required for \u201cany employee with respect to whom the Secretary of Transportation has power to establish qualifications and maximum hours of service.\u201d\u00a0 Traditionally, this meant that anyone who drove, loaded or rode in a vehicle weighing more than 10,000 pounds was exempt from overtime pay.\u00a0 However, in 2008 Congress narrowed the MCA exemption with the enactment of the SAFETEA-LU Technical Corrections Act (\u201cTCA\u201d). Section 306(a) of the TCA provides that \u201cSection 7 of the [FLSA]…shall apply to a covered employee notwithstanding section 13(b)(1) of that Act.\u201d\u00a0 Section 306(c) of the TCA provides that a \u201ccovered employee\u201d is an employee of a motor carrier whose job, \u201cin whole or in part,\u201d affects the safe operation of vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or less.\u00a0 Thus, in \u201cmixed fleet\u201d cases where a worker drove both large and small vehicles (or a small vehicle with a trailer attached), the court must decide whether such a circumstance satisfies the language of the TCA and takes the worker outside of the MCA exemption.<\/p>\n
A former employee of Doctor\u2019s, Inc. sued the company alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act for unpaid overtime.\u00a0 Doctor\u2019s is a lawn service company and the plaintiff was an irrigation technician.\u00a0 The worker\u2019s duties included driving and transporting equipment on a truck and\/or trailer to job sites.The parties agreed that the plaintiff almost exclusively drove a 2007 Ford F-150 truck weighing 8,900 pounds during his employment. But plaintiff also drove the F-150 hooked to a trailer with a combined weight that likely exceeded 10,000 pounds.\u00a0 The plaintiff admitted to driving the F-150 “pull[ing] a trailer for about six weeks out of the year, or at most from October to December.” The defendant claimed that plaintiff drove the F-150 pulling a trailer during 18 weeks of all the weeks worked. Regardless, the parties did not dispute that plaintiff sometimes drove the F-150 without the trailer within the course of his duties.\u00a0 The court stated that the \u201ckey inquiry is whether defendants have met their burden by showing plaintiff drove a motor vehicle with a gross weight of 10,001 pounds or more. If yes, then the MCA exemption applies and defendants did not have to pay overtime in accordance with the FLSA. If not, then the TCA small vehicle exception applies to exclude plaintiff from the MCA exemption and places him within the FLSA’s coverage as a covered employee.\u201d\u00a0 The Court concluded that \u201c[t]he burden lies with the employer to establish that the MCA exemption applies and that the TCA does not. The court finds that defendants have not met their burden as they acknowledge that plaintiff drove a noncommercial vehicle (the F-150 without a trailer) more than half the time he was employed with Doctor\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
This opinion is important because it shows that in instances where a worker drove a truck with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less, the worker will only be subject to the MCA exemption if employer shows that the worker was exclusively<\/i><\/b> pulling a trailer while driving the truck.\u00a0 If the worker regularly drove the truck without the trailer, the employer cannot meet this burden and the MCA exemption will not apply.\u00a0 This is consistent with the Department of Labor\u2019s field bulletin 2010-2, which it issued after the enactment of the TCA.\u00a0 In the bulletin, the DOL states that \u201c[e]ffective June 6, 2008, the [MCA exemption] does not apply to a driver…in any workweek in which their work affects the safe, interstate operation of certain motor vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or less.\u201d\u00a0 It further states that the DOL \u201cwill continue to use the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) or gross combination vehicle weight rating in the event<\/i><\/b> that the vehicle is pulling a trailer.\u201d\u00a0 This language shows that the GCVW rating will be used \u201cin the event\u201d the vehicle is pulling a trailer – when it is not, the GVWR is used.\u00a0 The district court\u2019s decision in the Crookston case is consistent with the DOL\u2019s guidance and is a correct interpretation of the TCA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal district court in Kansas has issued a ruling on an important issue relating to the motor carrier act (\u201cMCA\u201d) exemption.\u00a0 The MCA exemption provides that overtime pay is not required for \u201cany employee with respect to whom the Secretary of Transportation has power to establish qualifications and maximum hours of service.\u201d\u00a0 Traditionally, this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3895,3896,3897],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}