Support Grows for U.S. Truck Office

Rep. Frank Wolf (TT File Photo)

upport for creation of a federal agency devoted solely to truck safety grew last week during a long-awaited congressional hearing on who in the Department of Transportation should oversee the industry.

American Trucking Associations and other industry groups endorsed establishing a federal trucking administration during a congressional hearing to discuss the former Office of Motor Carriers.

While House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said he still would prefer to transfer truck safety from the Federal Highway Administration to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the lawmaker said he has an open mind on the issue.

“Agencies do best when they have a core purpose,” said ATA President Walter B. McCormick Jr. in his first appearance before Congress. “NHTSA does its core mission of auto safety well. FHWA does its core mission of building highways well. Eighty-two percent of freight transportation revenue comes from trucking. There should be a separate motor carrier administration.”

Wolf announced the hearing last fall after he failed in two attempts to move jurisdiction over truck safety to NHTSA. But he did not get any definitive answers to his question on whether truck safety would be improved by a transfer of OMC, now called the Motor Carrier and Highway Safety business unit.

The hearing, which lasted nearly six hours, included scathing indictments of OMC’s poor track record, complaints of trucking’s influence over the agency, discussion of truck driver fatigue and a lesson in Trucking 101 for subcommittee members, whose job normally is to set annual spending levels for transportation programs.

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