Congress Ignoring Trucking’s Offer on Highway Funding, Graves Says

This story appears in the April 7 print edition of Transport Topics.

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Congress is ignoring trucking executives’ willingness to pay higher taxes despite a dual funding crisis threatening the nation’s transportation system, American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said.

Given that it is an election year, lawmakers appear willing to “kick the can” down the road, refusing to address the funding crisis until some emergency happens, Graves told attendees of the Truckload Carriers Association annual meeting here March 26.

The Highway Trust Fund is expected to have a $19 billion shortfall as early as July, Graves reminded the audience.

“Here we are as an industry offering solutions,” Graves said, reiterating trucking’s willingness to pay higher fuel taxes or, perhaps, higher sales taxes on trucks.

“Tell us what we can do to pay more to shore up this user-funded system, and they won’t take us up on that offer,” he said.

Graves participated in a panel discussion with ATA Chairman Philip Byrd Sr. of Bulldog Hiway Express, TCA Chairman Shepard Dunn of Bestway Express Inc. and TCA President Chris Burruss.

If lawmakers start talking about “the extension of the full-blown highway bill for five or six years, then all of a sudden the number grows to well over $100 billion,” Graves said of the shortfall.

That $100 billion, however, would only sustain current construction levels, which are well below what they need to be to rebuild the nation’s highway infrastructure, Graves said.

The current funding law, MAP-21, expires Sept. 30. Without a new bill or an extension, the federal government will not be able to collect fuel taxes or send highway construction money to the states.

A special committee Byrd created to explore ways trucking can help Congress find new revenue convened its first meeting March 22 before the start of the TCA meeting.

“Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. So we’re looking for ways that we can go to Congress and build a bridge, a vehicle by which they can get behind us and support us for funding our highway system,” Byrd said.

He and Dan England, the committee’s chairman, said they expect to have funding ideas to announce in May.

The panelists also discussed the driver shortage, agreeing that the issue is preventing the industry from growing.

“One thing I think we’ve got to do in our own businesses is look around and make sure that we’ve got an environment that’s good for drivers,” Dunn said, asking, “Are they happy,  do they have good home time, are wages where they want to be, are their families happy?”

Regarding pay, Burruss said: “I think we would all say and agree that driver wages need to increase, but I think a lot of people would say I understand that, but I don’t have the rate structure to get that done.”

Byrd responded that carriers need to evaluate how they compensate, incentivize and benefit drivers. Rather than automatically saying wages are an expense to pass along to shippers, he said, carriers must “look inside our own businesses and say, ‘What does it cost us to hire a driver? What does it cost us to turn over? How can we minimize that cost?’ ” That way, savings can be directed to compensating current and future drivers.

Graves connected the shortage to transportation funding, too, saying eventually federal or state lawmakers will find ways to upgrade highways and ease congestion.

That, in turn, will affect drivers’ wages and quality of life by making it easier to get “from point A to point B in a more expedient and convenient and safe manner.”