ATA Leaders See Reasons for More Optimism

This story appears in the March 1 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — Officials attending American Trucking Associations’ Winter Leadership Meeting here last week said they were more optimistic about the future than they were a year ago, because the economic fortunes and political winds appear to be changing.

Members of ATA’s board of directors heard Feb. 23 that the political winds are shifting favorably for trucking, and they visited with representatives on Capitol Hill to press the industry’s concerns.

They also heard the Obama administration’s top truck-safety official outline several key regulations affecting the industry, including the new safety program, Comprehensive Safety Analysis, or CSA 2010 (click here for story).

ATA’s leaders had a “tremendous enthusiastic spirit, like they had really accomplished something” said Tommy Hodges, ATA chairman and head of Titan Transfer Inc., Shelbyville, Tenn.

He said optimism expressed during the Feb. 22-23 meeting was a departure from last year, when members came to Washington fearing the possibility of sweeping changes in a deep recession and from a new administration.

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies told ATA’s leaders that there was mounting evidence of a “correction election” with the possibility of significant Democratic Party losses in November, and Hodges said that prospect contributed to a brighter outlook. “There was a lot more apprehension last year,” he said.

“We were awfully concerned last year about the new administration and their agenda and their approach to regulating and oversight of our industry, and that was probably fueled by more unknowns than knowns,” Hodges said in an interview with Transport Topics.

Still, despite recent setbacks for the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, there has been a “paradigm shift” toward regulation, forcing ATA to shift its focus, he added.

“We have refocused some of our energies from a legislative ap-proach to a regulator approach,” Hodges said, “because now the administration seems to be attack many of the issues through regulatory avenues.”

One of those regulators, Anne Ferro, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, told ATA’s board of directors that new programs on several issues would start up this year.

In addition to CSA 2010, set to launch this summer, Ferro said there would be new rules for trucking dealing with texting by drivers and electronic onboard recorders and a court-sanctioned revision of the hours-of-service rule.

On texting, Ferro said FMCSA was “clearly within our authority” to issue regulatory guidance banning texting, but she said a rule more explicitly banning the practice “would be on the streets before long.”

FMCSA would continue a “broader distracted-driving discussion,” encompassing other in-cab technologies, she added, but “we’re not going to step down on that willy-nilly,” because she “certainly understands the concerns that the industry has about the use of technology.”

Ferro also reiterated that FMCSA was “going to be looking at a universal EOBR mandate” to follow a less comprehensive EOBR rule set to take effect soon.

A broad EOBR mandate would “ensure hours-of-service rules are being abided by . . . because, regardless of what rule you have, if you don’t have a way to monitor it, what is the value?”

Ferro did add that issues related to the uniformity of the technology and other technical aspects of a rule had to be ironed out before a universal mandate could be imposed.

Finally, she said the agency was sifting through much information about the embattled hours-of-service rule as it works to meet the “tight schedule” for revising the regulation.

By court settlement, FMCSA has until late July to send a new rule to the White House for review, and she intends to meet that deadline, she said.

Hodges said the group’s advocacy meeting went “extremely well,” and that ATA members called on more than 240 members of the House and Senate.

“We got to talk to a lot of folks about issues that concern us,” he said.

“We talked about infrastructure,” Kevin Burch, president of Jet Express Inc., Dayton, Ohio,  and the current chairman of the Truckload Carriers Association, said about his meeting with his congressional representatives.

“We all know that the roads are deteriorating . . . and we want to be fairly taxed,” Burch said, “so I told my reps we wouldn’t mind paying more. We just want to make sure it goes to roads and highways and bridges.”

Hodges said the delayed highway bill was a key issue for members but that if renewal of the transportation spending authority wasn’t going to happen, Congress should do something on truck safety.

“We talked about safety issues and perhaps pulling the safety title out of the highway reauthorization to see if we can go ahead and get that moving, so we can address things like electronic onboard recorders, hazmat issues and other safety issues,” he said.

“Our message to the Hill is: We are operating safer than ever and recognize that we still have work to do,” said Timothy Lynch, senior vice president of federation relations and strategic planning, “but that the combination of many years of things like the commercial driver’s license, the current hours-of-service rules, the addition of technology, training and business practices and a culture of safety, and all of these things are starting to pay off.”