This Editorial appears in the Oct. 8 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today. The leaders of the nation’s for-hire trucking fleets and the suppliers that serve them are gathering in Las Vegas this week to address the state of the industry as American Trucking Associations holds its annual Management Conference & Exhibition.
The gathering takes place at a “transitional moment” for trucking, said ATA President Bill Graves, in which the industry can “assess or potentially reset some of our priorities.”
With a highway bill finally signed into law, the industry’s top issue has shifted to fine-tuning the federal government’s new safety regime for trucking, Compliance, Safety, Accountability.
For many years running, getting a highway bill passed was trucking’s No. 1 priority because the nation had operated without a basic transportation law from 2009 until earlier this year. Now, highway projects are funded until the fall of 2014.
Graves said that, while ATA was happy there was new highway legislation, the measure didn’t provide adequate funding for all the infrastructure needs of the country and failed to find new funding sources to aid the ailing Highway Trust Fund.
ATA has continued to support raising federal fuel taxes, as long as the money is used for infrastructure improvements.
Meanwhile, as we report in this week’s Transport Topics, CSA certainly needs some fixing, as two of the program’s categories apparently fail to correlate with safe motor carrier operations (see story, page 1).
The trucking industry continues to do battle over another initiative from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: the driver hours-of-service rule. Litigation continues, as ATA has challenged FMCSA over the 34-hour restart provision, and other interest groups contest the agency’s decision to retain the 11-hour driving day.
Why the agency wants to modify the HOS rule that has led to significant highway safety improvements is beyond us. And indications are that the industry will continue to forcefully challenge FMCSA over HOS; FMCSA recently asked a federal appeals court to reject ATA’s lawsuit against the rule because the agency knows best about such things.
ATA’s conference also is expected to focus on ways to turn back a number of efforts to increase tolling on existing roads by states.
In other words, even with the highway bill debate settled for now, there will be no shortage of important business for the trucking industry’s leaders to discuss in Las Vegas.
