Letters to the Editor: Adding Truck Weight, Carrier Failures, Peters on Gas Tax
These Letters to the Editor appear in the July 21 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Adding Truck Weight
The EPA has mandated equipment on our trucks, which adds weight. Why not allow the carriers the chance to recoup the payload? Adding a third axle to the trailer would prevent any possible load damage to highways while improving braking. (TTNews.com, July 10, "Trucking Executive Calls for Higher Weight Limits," click here for previous online article.)
The good congressman from Minnesota, Rep. James Oberstar, is mistaken about the larger truck being harder to control (7-14, p. 1; click here for previous Premium Content story). The heavier trailers could be restricted to a 70-foot overall length limit to ensure the ability to get around.
Tom Welles
Truck Dealer Sales
Detroit
Simply go to Michigan, where they run 100,000-pounds-plus and look at the roads. Interstates 94, 96, 75 and 696 and Route 23 are all in shambles because the nine-axle rigs running and ruining the roads up there.
Keep it at 80,000 pounds, as YRC has been cubing out pups for years at that weight.
Dennis Turkette
Owner
Mickey’s Transportation
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Please do not forget the straight trucks. We have 24-foot straight trucks and 11RX22.5 tires with a gross vehicle weight rating of 33,000 pounds. The trucks can hold another 10,000 pounds. I would support raising the weight limit for straight trucks.
Andrew Gross Jr.
Chief Executive Officer
Instant Again
Rochester, N.Y.
Carrier Failures
As the wife of an Alvan driver out of the South Bend, Ind., terminal, I am absolutely appalled at how this closure took place (7-7, p. 8; click here for previous TTNews.com article).
My husband has worked his tail off 12 to 14 hours a day, and then to receive a phone call at 6 p.m. on Sunday night telling him not to report to work is absolutely wrong. Our monthly income went from $6,000 to $2,000 overnight.
Alvan had to have known this was coming and should have given employees enough notice so they could plan. We have four children — one in college and three in high school.
I blame the government more than Alvan for putting our country in the position we are currently in. No one is stepping up to the plate to fix things. People are continuing to lose their jobs and their homes, yet our government continues to send billions of dollars to other countries in need.
Our money needs to stay at home. We need to be fixing our problems and taking care of our own people. Our government is failing the American people, and now it’s hit home even more because now my family is being seriously affected.
We’ve always been very generous in giving money to people in need. Funny, isn’t it, because now we’re becoming those people.
On top of everything else, because Alvan chose to file bankruptcy, my husband has not received his last two weeks of pay. Something is definitely wrong with this whole picture.
Terri Davidson
Mishawaka, Ind.
Jevic has done their dedicated employees dirty. We received a letter via FedEx on a Monday morning stating that Jevic was closing all terminals immediately and, as of midnight that day, we would no longer have any medical benefits.
We were left in the cold and kicked in the pants for all the years most drivers put in. I had been a driver for nine years with Jevic. They also took all our vacation pay and any extra we had coming. Their comments were, “Clean out your truck.”
I have a sick wife, who now has no medical benefits. I have gotten another job but have to wait for benefits. Does Jevic care? No.
They could at least have said they would carry our benefits until May 30 and give us the vacation pay we deserved to hold us and our families over until we can get another job. They had promised vacation pay by June 30, but nothing has been paid out — and we have talked with many other drivers about this.
John Pena
Lordstown, Ohio
Peters on Gas Tax
I want to make Transportation Secretary Mary Peters’ position on the gas tax perfectly clear.
Contrary to what a recent article inferred (7-7, p. 3), she does not, has not and will not support raising the gas tax. Period.
She does not support an increase because it would be bad policy combined with poor economics, and would do little to ease congestion or help end our dependence on foreign sources of oil.
Melissa Mazzella DeLaney
Press Secretary
U.S. Department of Transportation
Washington
