Editorial: The Federal Trucking Administration

This is a test. What has 86% of the nation’s freight business, annual revenue of about $350 billion, employs almost 9 million people and can’t get the mother of all bureaucracies to give it its own office?

Of course you’re right, it’s the trucking industry.

The ongoing fight over Rep. Frank Wolf’s campaign to transfer the Office of Motor Carriers — the nearest thing the industry has to a bureau in the national government — from the Federal Highway Administration to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration once again highlights why trucking must have its own agency.

The trucking business is so vast, so varied and so critical to the national economy that it deserves its own administration. Such an agency would both represent the industry’s needs within the Department of Transportation and administer the rules and regulations implemented by the government to ensure safe operations.

The nation’s maritime industry, which generated $7.4 billion in revenue during 1996, has the Maritime Administration. The airline industry, which generated $13.3 billion in freight revenue during that same year, has the Federal Aviation Administration. The railroads, with about $35 billion in revenue, have the Federal Railroad Administration.

Not that creation of a new agency in and of itself would solve safety or infrastructure problems. But the Federal Trucking Administration would prevent the distracting, tug-of-war over OMC involving two agencies that have other priorities: highway design and construction on the one hand, and vehicle safety design on the other.

Much of the industry, led by American Trucking Associations, supports the creation of a separate federal office for highway freight carriers. Last week, a high-ranking CRASH official urged trucking and safety groups to begin a search for common solutions to safety issues. Perhaps these groups, and Mr. Wolf, would like to take the next step and join in the drive to establish the new federal agency — a more appropriate method for improving highway safety than a tug-of-war.

If all parties agree on the ultimate goal — namely safer highways — maybe the time has come to take a giant step together and convince Congress to establish the Federal Trucking Administration.