They're not burning drive hours, they're burning on-duty hours which are also limited. You are limited to 14 hours of on-duty time. You are also limited to 11 hours of actual driving time out of those 14 hours. So, I guess if you are delayed more than 3 hours (minus breaks) you are kinda eating into drive hours because of the on-duty limit of 14.
Sounds like as well as mandating limited on-duty time government needs to mandate pay for waiting time is same as pay for driving. This would reduce the incentive for drivers to drive more hours.
This is not so straightforward when drivers are paid by the kilometer. In such cases government could mandate minimum waiting pay rate is average equivalent hourly pay rate of driving hours from same shift, or such like.
I was just reading Arriving Today[0] which mentioned that people have studied pay-per-mile for US truckers and come up with pretty clear payment rates that are needed to support safe driving behaviors. I think it was about 60c/mile was majority safe speed and length of drive, but the average is 30c/mile and for individual truckers contracting out, it pushes down towards about 20c/mile.
