"Semper Fidelis” goes the U.S. Marine Corps motto, meaning “always faithful.” Trucking is about as close as you can get to this venerable maxim without being an actual leatherneck, and trucking does have its share of such former Marines.

Congress and the administration still are struggling to do something more than absolutely nothing on a multiyear transportation plan, so consider the nation’s economy instead.

Attending Infrastructure Week events and watching Congress work on a surface transportation bill reminds one of the value of hand-eye coordination.

On the surface, it would appear the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s announcement last week that it had exceeded its goal of recruiting more than 225 truck drivers to participate in the hours-of-service restart study would be a positive development.

It’s amazing how many people are saying very similar things regarding a real federal surface transportation plan, yet there’s little reason to believe that anything substantial will happen soon.

Throughout the busy first quarter of trucking industry conferences and trade shows, we were continually impressed with the attempts by fleets and industry suppliers to enhance the quality of life of today’s truck drivers.

The rumor mill was correct: The federal government did not publish its Phase 2 greenhouse-gas rule on truck emissions by March 31.

In January, FMCSA released its Crash Weighting Report. The four-year study was conducted due to pressure from Congress and the trucking industry. The concern is that the Crash Indicator, one of seven scores in the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program patently misrepresents a carrier’s level of responsibility in certain DOT-reportable crashes.

It has been more than four years since the government launched its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.    

Even the most skeptical curmudgeon would have left the recent Truckload Carriers Association annual meeting with a sense of at least some encouragement.