ATA Wants Bigger Trucks, HOS Study in Highway Bill

Bigger trucks and a field study of the hours-of-service restart provision are among items American Trucking Associations said it wants included in any highway bill that emerges from the House-Senate conference committee weighing the legislation.

“The trucking industry has consistently delivered for members of Congress who have asked for our support in advancing a long-term surface transportation bill,” ATA Chairman Dan England said in a May 23 statement.

“So now, we hope the conferees will complete a bill that moves us all towards safer, less congested highways,” said England, who also is chairman of C.R. England Inc., Salt Lake City.

The Senate passed a two-year transportation reauthorization bill that is the basis for the conference negotiations. A five-year House bill lacked enough support to bring it to a vote, so House leaders used a temporary funding measure to begin conference talks.

In a May 11 letter to the leaders of the committee, ATA President Bill Graves listed items crucial to trucking, saying they “will advance the safety and efficiency of our highway system and bolster our still-recovering economy.”

The letter was sent to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.).

On the new hours-of-service rule issued in December, ATA wants the Department of Transportation to do a field study on the restart portion of the rule and send the results to Congress by April 2013.

Currently, drivers can restart their workweek whenever they want after resting for 34 hours. The new rule allows a restart only once every seven days and says that the 34-hour restart must include two 1 a.m.-to-5 a.m. periods.

If the results of the proposed study do not support the restart rule, ATA would like DOT to be required to stay implementation.

Such a restart study was included in Mica’s five-year House Transportation bill. The Senate bill does not call for an HOS study.

ATA also wants the committee to address Compliance, Safety, Ac-countability, the federal government’s motor carrier safety program.

“The conferees should prohibit the secretary from issuing a final rule to assign safety fitness determinations based on CSA scores until peer reviewed research confirms a strong correlation between high BASIC [Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories] scores and future propensity to be involved in crash,” Graves said in the letter.

“Also, the secretary should remove from public view those scores that do not have a very strong relationship to future crash risk” and create a process “for assigning responsibility in crashes involving commercial trucks,” the letter said.

The trucking industry has taken issue with a DOT website that lists carriers involved in crashes but does not say who was to blame for the crash.

Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee of Mica’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told reporters on May 23 that he planned to hold hearings on CSA.

Justin Harclerode, a spokesman for the House transportation committee, said, “No hearings have been scheduled at this point, but this is an issue that we will continue to look into.”

ATA also wants the conference committee to require that states allow larger trucks on highways, a provision included in the now-dead House bill. That provision said states would have to accept — without special permits or route restrictions — rigs with double trailers up to 33 feet each. Currently, double trailers are only 28 feet each.

The Senate bill, however, did not call for larger trucks, something that would probably face strong opposition there.

ATA and the National Tank Truck Carriers also want any compromise bill to prevent DOT from issuing an impending wetlines rule until after a study.

The proposed wetlines rule would require tank truck fleets to retrofit existing equipment to protect wetlines from impact or to install a system to purge the lines of fuel.

Three items on ATA’s wish list — a mandate for electronic onboard recorders on trucks, a national freight program and a curb on incentives for privatizing highways — are contained in the Senate bill.

The proposed freight program “recognizes for the first time the need to focus federal resources on those parts of the highway system that carry significant volumes of freight, but which may no longer meet traffic needs,” the Graves letter said.

The program would make funds available to states for such things as truck lanes to speed the movement of goods.

If the committee does not produce a bill by June 30, funding for transportation runs out, unless the conference agrees to another temporary funding extension called for in a bill that was passed and sent from the House to conference. That bill would extend funding until Sept. 30.