Opinion: The Weight of the Facts

This Opinion piece appears in the April 21 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

By Bill Graves

President and CEO

American Trucking Associations

In legal proceedings, we often hear about the burden of proof — implying that facts and data are weighty things that can hold a person down.

The truth is heavy. And when the facts aren’t on your side, the truth can weigh you down like lead. The weight of facts that don’t fit your worldview can crush you and make you desperate to change the story, to try to redefine facts.

Earlier this month, our “friends” at the Railway Supply Institute and their friends, the anti-truck crusaders, set out to change the facts. While the Federal Highway Administration does its due diligence, examining the potential impacts of increasing truck productivity, these people released what they hoped would be an indictment of the government’s impartial examination. Instead, policymakers, the media and the public saw it for what it was: a shoddy attempt to distort the record because the facts continue to line up against them.

These groups make an emotional argument, preying on the public’s fears and fomenting those fears over and beyond what the facts dictate. While this tactic can be effective at times, the public is finally beginning to see it for what it is, calling a spade a spade and ignoring the hysterical claims of groups that have been wrong at every turn when it comes to the issues about which they claim to be so passionate and so knowledgeable.

The anti-truck groups are desperate to change some of the facts that weigh them down, but they cannot.

The outdated federal truck size-and-weight rules have not been adjusted in 32 years — but experience in other countries where more productive trucks are prevalent and in states like Vermont and Maine where truck weights on the interstate highway system have been raised with no degradation in safety, no spike in crashes that opponents of sensible truck productivity increases claim will occur.

Even triples, which anti-truck groups like to hold up as the poster child for their myopic campaign, have proved to be among the safest trucks in the 17 states where they have operated for decades.

Examinations of possible increases in truck productivity at the state level — and previous federal studies — have all shown the same thing: More productive trucks will allow the trucking industry to meet the nation’s freight needs more safely and more efficiently. Those needs will continue to grow. As our population grows and our economy continues its revival, we are going to need to move more freight. While other modes contribute their share, the true workhorse of our supply chain is the truck. Our industry’s tractors haul nearly 70% of the nation’s goods, and economists tell us that trucking’s slice of the pie will only get larger.

And how do these anti-truck groups propose we move the food we eat, the fuel we burn and the paper they print their half-truths on? They would put more trucks on the road, increasing congestion and fuel use and, frankly, the risk of crashes, because more trucks mean greater exposure to the motoring public. Or, we can sensibly allow more productive vehicles access to our interstates.

Dozens of states already allow these trucks — either longer combination vehicles or conventional trucks with additional axles — with none of the dire consequences predicted by anti-truck agitators.

This newspaper has been reporting on growth trends in registrations and fleet size for some time. If these agitators really want fewer crashes, the simple solution is to make the trucks we already have more productive.

But these groups don’t really want that.

Organized labor wants more trucks on the road. More trucks means more drivers, and more drivers means more potential members. That’s a self-serving and shortsighted motivation.

Their anti-truck partners, however, have a much more cynical motive.

Over the past several decades, this industry has led the way on safety. Recently, we have pressed for reduced speed, for sensible hours-of-service rules, for electronic logging devices, for improved screening of drivers . . . all to great effect.

Our industry’s safety record has improved markedly — giving our opponents fewer and fewer opportunities to attack, so truck productivity is the last boogeyman standing.

It is the last stick to swing, the last argument to make and, most important, the last big fundraising issue.

So, while opponents of sensible reform continue to distort the facts in an effort to boost donations and membership, we will do what we’ve always done: We’ll look at the evidence presented by study after study that tells us more productive trucks are safe and efficient. And we’ll wait for FHWA to finish its work — work we expect will, once again, reach the same conclusion — opening the door for more productive vehicles to operate on our nation’s highways.

American Trucking Associations, the largest national trade federation for the trucking industry, has headquarters in Arlington, Va., and affiliated associations in every state. ATA owns Transport Topics Publishing Group.