The Owner Operator Independent Drivers Assn. last week accused Yellow Corp. of being more interested in longer, heavier trucks than in safety with its recent announcement of a push for 65-mph speed limits for trucks.

Last week, Yellow Corp. Chairman and CEO William Zollars announced that Yellow would lobby for a nationwide 65-mph speed limit for trucks.
"The real issue regarding speed limits is this,” said Todd Spencer, executive vice president, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn. “There's no correlation between safe driving and what's posted on a sign.” In addition, Spencer points out that studies have shown that safety is actually compromised when there's one speed for trucks and another for cars, and said the group would be “vehemently opposed” to such split speed limits.
"But it would be a mistake to think this new position has anything much to do with safety,” Spencer said in the online version of OOIDA’s Landline magazine. “This is pure spin, or corporate double talk, to advance a bigger and heavier truck agenda. A relative handful of very large trucking companies hope to convince lawmakers that longer combination vehicles with weights of 120,000 pounds and more should be operating in every state. For these carriers and their associates to be in a position to claim we run safe and slow makes their position easier to sell -- even if it's totally untrue."
Just a few days before Zollar’s Washington, D.C., press announcement, a plan was introduced on Capitol Hill that would build special, tolled truck lanes on interstate highways that would allow longer, heavier trucks but would keep them separated from cars.
The Reason Foundation, a Los-Angeles-based think tank, says toll truck lanes, separated from car traffic by concrete barriers, would significantly reduce the number of car-truck accidents and cut the nation’s trucking costs by as much as $40 billion per year.