The American Trucking Assns. and ATA President Bill Graves said the six-year, $286.4 billion highway spending bill approved by Congress late last week addresses a host of the trucking industry’s critical needs.

“While Congress included several initiatives that we believe will improve highway safety, we are disappointed that they failed to codify hours of service regulations as the Administration requested. We remain concerned that Congress’ inaction on hours of service will negatively impact overall highway safety,” said Graves, “and force the revision of a rule that took eight years to write and is successfully serving its intended purpose.”
Despite support from ATA and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the new highway spending bill does not codify the current hours of service rules, which set driver work and rest limits. However, the bill includes language to clarify the agricultural exemption to the federal hours of service regulations. The bill will make the exemption permanent in federal law, provides standard definitions of agricultural commodities and farm supplies to be used by commercial transporters of agricultural commodities during the planting and harvesting season in each state.
Especially important for truck drivers and others sharing the road is a new funding source for law enforcement in each of the 50 states to enforce traffic violations by other motorists around large trucks. ATA also expects improvement in the safety of intermodal shipping container chassis as equipment owners, generally ocean carriers and railroads, will now be responsible for their equipment meeting highway safety operating standards.
The industry can also now electronically check the safety records of prospective truck drivers, a key ATA safety priority.
Elsewhere, ATA successfully blocked a mandatory fuel surcharge that would have increased consumer costs for everything shipped by truck.
ATA successfully worked to revise the process by which commercial truck drivers with hazardous materials (hazmat) endorsements to their commercial drivers’ licenses are screened. The new bill directs the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to develop a system for notifying carriers if drivers fail to meet security criteria. It also requires TSA to initiate a rulemaking to eliminate duplicative federal background checks. Canadian and Mexican operators transporting hazmats will be required to undergo a similar background check as their U.S. counterparts.
The legislation allocates $5 million for truck driver training as part of efforts to increase the number of people entering the profession. These funds come at a time when the trucking industry is experiencing a nationwide shortage of 20,000 professional long-haul truck drivers. That figure is expected to increase to 111,000 by 2014.
ATA is concerned that the bill continues to allow a limited number of tolls on existing interstate highways. ATA believes that tolls are an inefficient funding mechanism that double-taxes motor carriers and causes substantial diversion of traffic to other less-safe roads.