Trucking Productivity Tops Agenda

Trucking must fight efforts in Congress to strangle its productivity. That is why American Trucking Associations will push for state flexibility to fill in the gaps in the network for longer combination vehicles and resist any attempts to undercut vehicle dimensions, according to ATA President Walter B. McCormick Jr.

He said trucking productivity will be among ATA’s top goals in Congress for 1999.

“We will fight to prevent any rollbacks on truck sizes and weights and will work aggressively to rationalize the current Interstate route network for LCVs,” Mr. McCormick said in an interview. “We’ve been saying that the time has come for states to be given some common-sense flexibility to meet their transportation needs, especially in western states.

“We are not looking for wholesale increases in truck sizes and weights,” he emphasized.

ATA supports eliminating gaps in the national highway network for triple-trailers, turnpike doubles and Rocky Mountain doubles. The network has remained basically unchanged since 1991, when Congress said no new routes could be added — the so-called LCV freeze. States without pre-existing rights can not allow trucks exceeding the 80,000-pound weight limit on federal roads without specific congressional approval.

Since the freeze, various coalitions of truckers, shippers and business groups have urged Congress for exemptions. Most recently, TEA 21 — the highway bill enacted in June — allowed logging trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds to continuing operating on the Maine and New Hampshire turnpikes. It also authorized sugarcane haulers to run at 100,000 pounds in Louisiana during harvest season and said two pre-cast concrete panels would constitute a nondivisible load in Colorado.

At the urging of Idaho truckers, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) tried unsuccessfully in July to win congressional support for legislation allowing truckers to operate vehicles weighing up to 129,000 pounds in Idaho. The state legislature, however, approved a limited experiment with the higher weight on certain state roads.

More recently, the governors of Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming asked for House hearings on flexibility. In letters over a three-month period last year to Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), the governors cited concerns about rail service as the reason for more flexibility for trucks (TT, 11-16-98, p. 1).

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