Idaho Gov. Signs Anti-Indemnification Law, Approves Heavier Trucks

Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has signed bills that will protect truckers from unfair shipping contracts and make permanent a 129,000-pound weight limit for trucks on state routes.

The current weight limit on the 35 state highway routes affected is 105,000 pounds. Both bills were signed in March and take effect July 1.

With the anti-indemnification bill now law, Idaho becomes the 37th state to prohibit shippers from offering contracts that make the carrier responsible for an accident regardless of who is at fault.

Kathleen Fowers, president of the Idaho Trucking Association, credited passage in the Legislature last month to efforts by ITA’s legislative team to educate lawmakers about the unfairness of such contracts.

“We passed that one with flying colors, no opposition,” she said.

In some states, such as Colorado, opposition from shippers has been so intense that anti-indemnification bills failed.

In Louisiana, shippers sued the state, trying to overturn an anti-indemnification bill passed there, but the court upheld the measure.

The weight bill was signed after a pilot program found that loads as heavy as 129,000 pounds did not damage bridges, pavement or roads.

Run by the Idaho Transportation Department, the pilot program lasted nearly 10 years. Results were based on 264,169 trips made by 1,359 trucks from 127 different carriers.

The state’s sugar beet haulers and cement haulers played a big role in the pilot, buying the necessary equipment for testing the heavier weights, Fowers said.

When truckers first approached the Legislature with the idea of a lengthy pilot program, the railroads opposed the experiment “big time,” she said.

The next weight issue facing Idaho truckers is persuading Congress to allow higher weight limits on Idaho’s portion of the interstate highway system, Fowers said. A delegation of Idaho trucking leaders will travel to Washington in late April to visit members of the House and Senate in an effort to persuade them to support an exemption for Idaho so that it can raise its interstate weight.

Under a 1991 federal law, the existing interstate weight in Idaho was frozen at 105,000 pounds — well above the 80,000-pound weight limit that the Congress set for much of the interstate highway system in 1991.