Editorial: Thank You, Congress

Saying thank you to a branch of the federal government could get to be a habit for trucking.

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First, President Clinton opens up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, knocking down crude oil prices by about 20% and offering us a ray of sunshine that may lead to lower diesel and gasoline prices as well as adequate supplies to keep our trucks moving.

Now it is a virtual certainty that Congress is going to do the right thing and rap the Department of Transportation on the knuckles for its failed attempt at revising the work rules for truckers and order DOT officials to spend the next year formulating a policy with which the industry can live.

Kudos to Congress for stopping DOT’s intended rush to install its flawed hours-of-service regulations on the industry in order for the Clinton administration to take credit for it before the White House changes occupants on Jan. 20.

And more thanks to Congress for basically ordering DOT to fix the regulations. The trucking industry wants new hours of service to replace the more than 60-year-old regulations under which we currently operate. But we can’t afford to have new rules that would hurt, rather than improve, productivity, profitability and safety.

And while virtually everyone agrees that new rules are needed, about the only other universal agreement has been that DOT’s proposal won’t work.

The one-year moratorium on DOT implementing its proposal is intended to spur the department into going back to the drawing board and working — in cooperation with the industry and other interested parties — on producing a new, effective rule.

And the trucking industry stands ready to do its part.

On the fuel side, the White House decision to release oil from the 571 million barrels of reserve petroleum, has also spurred the governments of Europe to weigh similar releases from their reserves.

The $6-a-barrel reduction in the price of crude since Clinton’s announcement and before a single barrel had been released should translate into savings of up to 15-cents-a-gallon at the pump.

We’ve still got a long way to go before fuel prices are back at a reasonable level, but we’ve taken a big step in the right direction.