Letters to the Editor: Speed Limits; Maintenance Issues

These letters appear in the April 23 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Speed Limits

If the truckers have a mandatory speed limit, I think this should absolutely be mandated of every vehicle on the road, including sport utility vehicles and all other cars, which cause most accidents on the freeway.

I service the transportation industry as respects to their insurance, and I don’t find any agency or government defending the truck drivers.

Yolanthe S. Yarger
Insurance Broker
Cass & Johansing
Pasadena, Calif.

If safety is so important to the general public, they need to understand that a dual speed limit is really a hazard to their welfare. Having a truck doing 62 mph and a car doing 75 mph is asking for trouble.

To start with, look at two trucks doing a top speed of 62 mph. Passing each other is the most dangerous position two trucks can be in. When one truck rides beside another, the two trucks are an accident looking for a place to happen.

When the government regulates all trucks to a top speed of 68 mph, the highways will be a congested mess, and safety goes out the window. Trucks won’t be able to pass if there is a need. I can see miles of trucks running one behind the other at 68 mph, with cars passing and jumping in front of them.

If trucks are going to be regulated, all automobiles need to be regulated at the same speed. I could go on, but I believe that someone who knows trucks needs to be in charge of making laws that pertain to trucks.

I have been in the trucking business for more than 30 years, and I have seen a lot of changes during that time. I believe we are at a point where the federal government wants to control the trucking industry and is doing its best to put small owner-operators out of business — or have them leased to a larger, publicly owned trucking company.

Either way, the owner-operator is going to be broke and out of business.

Cecil Williams
Owner/Operations Manager
Independent Trucker
Dillon, Mont.

Maintenance Issues

In response to the letter about maintenance issues in your April 9 print edition, what is really needed is more financial regulation within the industry, not more laws against trucks and their operators. (Click here for previous letter.)

In the years since deregulation, fuel and maintenance costs have tripled and quadrupled, while big companies and some brokers still think that, when they offer owner-operators and small independent carriers $1 to $1.30 per mile, they are giving them the world on a silver platter.

I bought my first truck in 1988. Back then, my fuel cost was between 20% and 25% of my gross revenue and maintenance costs were pocket money. When I left the last carrier I was leased to in July 2006 to go on my own, my fuel cost had risen to between 40% and 55% of my gross revenue. The little bit of maintenance I could afford had taken up about 13%, and my truck was falling apart.

Had I been able to afford to fix everything that needed fixing, you could add another 10% onto that, leaving me about $24,000 to pay for the license, insurance and myself for driving about 100,000 miles a year.

So, if anyone out there thinks not enough is being done to have safe trucks on America’s highways, they’re absolutely right.

But before you start asking for more laws to correct this problem, do a little homework and some research and know what you’re talking about. More laws are definitely needed, all right, but not the kind most people think of when they’re on the subject of unsafe trucks. If a guy only has $200 at the end of the week and he’s forced to choose between feeding his family and fixing his truck, most decent people will choose their families.

Floyd Kiesow
Owner
Floyd T. Kiesow LLC
Fort Atkinson, Wis.