The Lauderdale County School District is struggling to find bus drivers due to new guidelines from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

At the beginning of the school year, the LCSD incorporated combined routes to get students to school efficiently, but now the issue is finding drivers.

The FMCSA has instituted a program of electronic logging devices and hours of service training (ELD T), which is an early driver training program to enhance safety.

Though the program aims to make roads safer for all drivers, Tim Moore, the transportation director for Lauderdale County Schools, said it’s become harder to hire drivers under the new guidelines.

“We are in need of drivers,” Moore said. “Previously, we just held a pre-driver training at our location, and the Mississippi Department of Education sent over one of their instructors, which consisted of a four-hour training course with a hands-on driving test.”

“But with this federal mandate, it’s much more time-consuming and intensive training,” he said. “It’s made it kind of hard to get people that will have the time to do the training and meet those requirements.”

The FMCSA now requires potential drivers to have at least eight to 12 hours of classroom instruction with an undetermined amount of driving time before getting tested by the Mississippi Department of Education to obtain a bus card. 

An ELD is a device that synchronizes with a vehicle’s engine to record a driver’s off-duty and on-duty time automatically and securely transfers this “hours of service” data to a safety official for review.

This change is the FMCSA’s latest step to address fatigued driving among drivers of large trucks and buses.

“I would recommend this position for retired or semi-retired individuals,” Moore said. “If they’re any individuals interested in making a steady income for a limited amount of work, we’ve got a good opportunity here.”

“We look forward to getting some response and hopefully get some people involved in helping us get our students back and forth to school,” Moore emphasized.

The LCSD plans to optimize bus routes within the Southeast and West Lauderdale school zones to be sure each bus is getting an accurate number of students, and if the shortage continues, they will be prepared, Moore said.