Swift Opposes Advocating Heavier Trucks on U.S. Interstates, CEO Moyes Says

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Swift Transportation Inc. opposes the trucking industry’s lobbying efforts toward allowing heavier trucks on interstate highways in the United States, the company’s CEO told a gathering of Canadian trucking executives.

Jerry Moyes also told the group that his company opposes tolls on existing interstates, supports a speed limiter mandate for heavy trucks and hopes to expand the use of natural gas in its operations. Moyes spoke at the opening of Truck World, whose organizers bill it as Canada’s largest truck show.

Referring specifically to American Trucking Associations’ push to allow 97,000-pound trucks with six axles, Moyes told the executives, “We don’t think it’ll ever be approved.”

“And our attitude is that, as an industry, we need to be fighting on issues that we can win,” he said. “This is an issue we will never win.”

Moyes questioned statistics that claim fleets would save fuel with the heavier weights. “I think the numbers they’re producing are pretty deceiving, and I just don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said.

Swift’s small fleet of trucks dedicated to oversize loads, he also said, has a worse safety record than the rest of its fleet.

Truck weight and size limits are higher in Canada, with each province allowed to set its own specific limits, David Bradley, president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, told Transport Topics. At a minimum, each province allows trucks up to 62,500 kilograms, or about 138,000 pounds, with a total length of 25 meters, or about 82 feet.

The higher limits yield environmental, productivity and safety benefits, Bradley said.

Moyes said interstate tolling would not be as much of an issue if the Highway Trust Fund were used only for roads. “We feel that our tax dollars are being put into the highway fund, and they should be spent on highways and not pathways and railroad yards and everything else.”

The trucking industry supports higher fuel taxes to pay for infrastructure improvement if the money is reserved for highways, he said.

Swift governs the speed of all of its trucks to 62 mph, but Moyes said that all heavy trucks should be limited to 65 mph in the United States. “We think that is probably going to go through,” he said, referring to an upcoming proposal by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Speed limiters would bring both safety and fuel economy benefits, he said.

The federal government’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program is a major focus for U.S. truckers, Moyes said: “Shippers are really looking at CSA scores.”

Presenting a table of the CSA scores of some major U.S. carriers, including Swift, he said, “We use this as a sales tool.”

Moyes spoke at length about Swift’s forays into natural gas, calling the truckload carrier “leaders” in using it to fuel trucks.

Swift runs a fleet of 10 natural gas trucks in California that use Cummins Inc.’s 8.9-liter ISL G engines. Though the experiment is working well, he said, the trucks have limited uses.

“I think this thing is going to work for small [less-than-truckload] companies who do some pickup and delivery and a little bit of linehaul,” he said. “It’s very underpowered, but it’s working in some environments.”

Each of the trucks costs $125,000 after a $35,000 rebate from California, for a total price of $160,000, which is “way, way, way too much money” for a truck of that size, he said.

The carrier also runs two trucks with Cummins 11.9-liter spark-ignited natural gas engines. Swift soon will buy two more of the 11.9-liter trucks and some Navi-star Inc. trucks that use a combination of diesel and natural gas, he said.

Moyes said he hopes for 10% of Swift’s fleet to run on natural gas by the end of 2013, he told fleet executives.

“It’s got a long ways to go,” he said of natural gas technology. “This is not going to happen overnight.”