The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announced on Dec. 28 that the Federal Register will publish its withdrawal of a notice of a final rule requiring tank truck carriers who haul flammable liquids to either retrofit their existing tankers to protect their wetlines or install a system to purge product from those lines.

Flawed data used by hazardous-materials regulators to justify a 2011 regulation call into question the basis for the rule that would require the installation of technologies to purge liquid from tank truck wetlines, according to a new government report.

The federal agency that regulates hazardous materials did not properly consider the costs and benefits of a proposed mandate that tank truck lines be purged of flammable liquids, the Government Accountability Office said Sept. 11.

The head of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance said a proposed rule requiring that flammable liquids be purged from tank truck wetlines during transport is “for practical purposes unenforceable in the field.”

Federal regulators should abandon a proposed rule that would restrict transportation of flammable liquids in the pipes used to load and unload gasoline and other flammable products, the chairman of American Trucking Associations told a House panel last week.

Federal regulators last week proposed a rule to require tank truck carriers who haul flammable liquids to either retrofit their existing tankers to protect their wetlines or install a system to purge product from those lines.

The president of the National Tank Truck Carriers has asked the National Transportation Safety Board to reopen its investigation into a fatal 1997 tank truck accident in Yonkers, N.Y., that he said has become the “poster child” of the agency’s campaign to require purge retrofits for cargo tank wetlines.

The president of the National Tank Truck Carriers has asked the National Transportation Safety Board to withdraw and reopen its investigation into a fatal 1997 tank truck accident that he said has become the “poster child” of the agency’s longtime campaign to require purge retrofits for cargo tank wetlines.

The costs of a proposed federal rule expected to prohibit the transportation of flammable liquids in unprotected product piping on tank trucks would far outweigh the benefits, a trucking industry delegation told White House officials last week.