TCA Supports Fuel Tax Increase to Fund Highway Improvements

This story appears in the March 16 print edition of Transport Topics.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Truckload Carriers Association has decided for the first time to support a fuel tax increase as a preferred method of highway funding.

“In a general sense, we are supportive of fuel tax increases over the other alternatives, such as privatization, tolling, weight/distance taxes or ton-mile taxes,” TCA President Chris Burruss told Transport Topics last week.

The decision aligns TCA with policy championed by American Trucking Associations to raise fuel taxes to support highway infrastructure improvements.

TCA’s position “is recognition that our existing policy didn’t address funding.” Burruss said during TCA’s annual meeting here last week. “We are not quite ready to say we support [so many] cents-a-gallon of a fuel tax increase. It’s progress to get a position we can promote. We want to be part of the [highway funding] discussion.”

TCA’s board, a longtime opponent of fuel tax increases, took the first step toward this position in October, when it began to discuss a new approach to highway funding, a key issue before Congress as it debates reauthorization of transportation-funding legislation this year.

Financing problems were dramatized last year when Congress transferred $8 billion of general revenue into the Highway Trust Fund to keep it solvent.

Last month, a commission created by Congress recommended raising diesel fuel taxes 15 cents a gallon until other levies based on miles driven can be created.

“We know we haven’t had a fuel tax increase since 1993,” said Kevin Burch, TCA’s chairman and president of Jet Express, Dayton, Ohio. “We want to pay our fair share. We want to be sure about where the money goes.” He said TCA wants to be sure higher fuel taxes are dedicated to highway improvements.

“We have to feel warm and fuzzy about that, and we don’t yet have that feeling that the money will go there,” he said.

Burruss said TCA was “very disappointed” by an Obama administration budget proposal that would put fuel tax revenue into the government’s general fund instead of the Highway Trust Fund.

The Highway Trust Fund “is intended to fund highway improvements and maintenance,” Burruss said. “We can’t understand how it is in the best interests of the industry or the country to spend the money on other programs.”

In addition to funding, TCA focused on regulatory and legislative issues, including opposition to “card check” legislation that would facilitate union organization.

The group also said it would oppose potential legislation that would require owner-operators to become employees and initiatives to pay for improvements through tolling or privatization.

The TCA meeting was “very productive,” said American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves, who spoke to the TCA board.

“Everything in Washington is driven by the new administration and Democratic strength in the House and the Senate,”  Graves said in an interview. “The environment is going to be very challenging.”

Burruss, Burch and ATA Chairman Charles “Shorty” Whittington stressed the common interests TCA shares with ATA.

“It is important to focus our energy on issues we agree on, like card check and independent contractor status,” Burruss said.

“We need to work with ATA on legislative matters so that we have one voice in Washington,” Burch said.

Whittington, who is president of Grammer Industries, put it this way: “The relationship between ATA and TCA is the best it has ever been because we are communicating. We have differences, but we can communicate.”

“We have been fortunate that TCA’s and ATA’s chairmen in the past five years have been committed to making each other’s organizations stronger by cooperating,” Burruss said. “We are not always going to agree, but finally we recognize that, on many issues, we are in agreement.”

Whittington said grass-roots action is more important than ever, and he urged truckers to deliver positive messages to Washington that focus on the key contribution trucking makes to the economy.

TCA’s board reaffirmed its opposition to increasing truck weight limits to 97,000 pounds. ATA supports the increase, which shipper groups such as Americans for Safe and Efficient Transportation also endorse.

“We are almost split down the middle on truck size and weight,” TCA’s Burruss said. “Our members are concerned about the cost of having to replace equipment. They are worried about whether the additional weight will get higher revenue.”

TCA’s board also reversed its prior position and now opposes the use of twin 33-foot trailers, or B-doubles, that are used for specialized heavy-haul operations, carrying bulk products such as grain and sugar beets.