ATA Cites Infrastructure, Fuel as Critical Trucking Issues

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mproved national infrastructure, rising fuel prices and new diesel-fuel regulations top trucking’s agenda this year, an American Trucking Associations’ official told an investors’ conference in New York this week.

The trucking industry is working to ensure that Congress allocates more money for freight infrastructure and to relieve congestion when it reauthorizes the next highway spending bill in 2009, ATA Senior Vice President Tim Lynch told the Bear Stearns Global Transportation Conference.

“We must begin now thinking about how we will build and maintain our transportation system,” Lynch said. “An aging infrastructure network stretched to its limits operates less efficiently.

Lynch said that fuel supply and costs could be the top issues this year. The trucking industry will face “significant challenges as it transitions to ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel,” designed to support a new generation of diesel emissions control equipment, he said.

While the trucking industry supports ULSD, Lynch said trucking has a number of concerns about the new fuel, due to market this fall.

Chief among them is the risk of supply disruptions due to the fact that ULSD can be contaminated as it moves through a complex system of pipelines and the distribution network.

Lynch detailed for investors how the trucking industry is addressing the long-haul driver shortage at a time when freight volumes are growing.

He also discussed trucking’s security concerns, ATA’s support for a coordinated, cost-effective process for screening transportation workers and the current legal challenge to hours-of-service rules, all top issues to the industry.