LTL Carriers Hope Conference Committee Will Revive Pup-Trailer Expansion Plan

This story appears in the May 21 print edition of Transport Topics.

A House-Senate conference committee working to draft a compromise long-term highway bill may resurrect a proposal to allow longer tandem pup trailers that had been considered dead after the House bill that included it was dropped.

Several less-than-truckload carriers and others are seeking the change, which would increase the allowable length of tandem pups to 33 feet from the current industry standard of 28.5 feet and lift restrictions on their use. They cited increased productivity, decreased emissions and reduced highway congestion as advantages of using the longer pups.

The five-year reauthorization bill that Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, introduced in January, included a requirement that states allow pup trailers to be as long as 33 feet. That bill, however, lacked enough support to pass the House, which approved an extension of existing legislation in order to go to conference on a $109 billion two-year bill that the Senate already had approved.

The Senate bill does not mention the trailer issue. The joint conference committee held its first meeting on May 8.

Speaking only on background, a spokesman for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee told Transport Topics on April 24, “Once we get to conference, we’ll see what’s possible in terms of adding provisions not included in [the Senate bill]. We are extremely interested in moving forward with many kinds of reforms that were included” in the House panel’s bill — including the language on increasing the length of pup trailers.

A congressional staffer involved in the reauthorization on the Senate side, however, summed up the legislative process with, “Everything has gotten very complicated.”

FedEx Freight officials said they already have evaluated experimental versions of a longer pup trailer, with an eye to increased productivity.

“FedEx Freight has been testing 33-foot trailers, and we are very optimistic about the potential for productivity enhancements. The 18% cube difference [between the proposed length and current standard] creates a significant opportunity,” said William Logue, president and CEO of FedEx Freight, Memphis, Tenn. The package-delivery company ranks No. 2 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada.

“FedEx Freight has long been a proponent of productivity enhancements that also offer environmental benefits,” Logue said. “With fewer trucks on the highways, due to increased productivity, there will be reduced fuel consumption and less carbon emissions, as well as reduced highway congestion,” if the 33-foot trailers are allowed.

“The 33-foot trailers accomplish these goals without exceeding current weight limitations or requiring any infrastructure modifications,” he added.

Darrin Roth, director of highway operations for American Trucking Associations, said that a longer pup trailer would be “effectively a new configuration” that, with two of the lengthened pups, could be longer than 66 feet.

But beyond the less-than-truckload carriers, “it’s hard to say how extensively that [new trailer] will be used by the rest of the industry,” he said, adding that the standard pup trailer LTL carriers use is 28.5 feet long.

Roth said size-and-weight regulations generally reflect federal law, “but there are about 1,000 nuances.”

He added that there has been “a national freeze” since 1991 on triple and double trailer combinations weighing more than 80,000 pounds, or where one or more of the trailers is longer than 28.5 feet — configurations known as longer combination vehicles (LCVs).

If a state did not allow LCVs at that time on a particular road network, those rules remain frozen, Roth said. The maximum length of a standard over-the-road trailer is 53 feet.

In March 2011, an advocacy group primarily made up of several LTL carriers — and called the Coalition for Safer Trucking — launched an effort “to return authority to the states to make decisions on size issues such as triple trailers and longer combinations of doubles,” James Burnley, a former U.S. secretary of transportation and the coalition’s spokesman, told TT in March of this year.

The LTL coalition complemen-ted another such organization, one consisting primarily of shippers, that had sought to increase the allowable weight of truck-trailer combinations as part of any transportation program reauthorization, Burnley said.

Both coalitions’ respective language on weight was dropped during the markup of Mica’s bill. At that time, the LTL coalition became “supportive” of what Burnley said was FedEx’s separate effort to win an increase in the length of pups to 33 feet and broaden their use — language that was included in the final version of the House panel’s bill.

Burnley explained, however, that FedEx sought “preemptive language” in the bill that would take effect once the legislation was signed into law and would allow longer pup combinations in all 50 states.

Burnley said the coalition members now “embrace fully the Fed-Ex idea.”

He said that the LTL coalition includes AAA Cooper Transportation, Dothan, Ala.; Con-way Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich; Estes Express Lines, Richmond, Va.; Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., Thomasville, N.C.; Saia Motor Freight Line, Johns Creek, Ga.; and Volvo Trucks North America, Greensboro, N.C.

Burnley added that UPS Inc., Atlanta, supported the industry group’s goals but was not formally part of the coalition.

This spring, before the conference committee began its work, Burnley told TT he was optimistic about the 33-foot provision’s ultimate chances, noting that opponents of the other size and weight provisions “did not fight the [FedEx] pup-trailer language.”

Gary Frantz, Con-way’s director of communications in San Mateo, Calif., declined to elaborate on his company’s participation in the Burnley-led coalition, but he did say that, if the longer equipment was approved, Con-way, which ranks No. 3 on the for-hire 100, would use it the same way as it does its current fleet of pup trailers.

David Vander Pol, co-owner and co-president of Oak Harbor Freight Lines Inc., a privately held regional LTL carrier based in Auburn, Wash., said what he favors more than longer pup trailers is uniform regulatory approval of triple combinations of existing 28.5-foot trailers within his operating territory.

For example, neither California nor Washington state currently allows triples, he said, but they are allowed in the West in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah.

“Right now, we send doubles to Portland, Ore., and triples [south] to Medford, Ore. Then we drop one off and send doubles into California,” Vander Pol said.

“If the desired result is to reduce fuel consumption and the number of trucks on the road,” he added, “then two triples replace three doubles, cutting the number of trucks on the road by 50%.”

Asked if he would convert his shorter trailers to the 33-foot pups if they were available, Vander Pol said it would be a tremendous investment with a fleet of 1,500 trailers to replace and was “something we would have to put a pencil to.”

Meanwhile, Craig Bennett, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Utility Trailer Manufacturing Co., City of Industry, Calif., said a change to longer pup trailers is a practical step.

“You have to move more freight per driver” because of concerns that the pool of drivers may not be large enough to handle freight volumes, he said.

The longer configuration also would boost the trucking industry’s efficiency and competitiveness with the railroads, Bennett said.

His company already builds pup trailers, Bennett said, and the shift to longer trailers is “very doable,” requiring only the right size materials.

“There is no conversion issue of any significance,” Bennett said.

Another trailer maker, Wabash National Corp., Lafayette, Ind., also saw the potential change to larger pup trailers as an easy build for itself.

“I would not anticipate any technical challenges, other than typical engineering challenges presented with any new project,” said Rod Ehrlich, Wabash National’s chief technology officer.