Breaking the bank

Todd Spencer, president and CEO of OOIDA, has a knack for being very prophetic on many issues facing trucking.

Years and years ago it became apparent that the Highway Trust Fund was not sustainable in its current form coupled with all of the hijacking of highway trust funds to the general fund. We were talking about the situation, and Todd said something to the effect of, if the feds don’t get this funding situation figured out, states will get desperate for money, and who knows what all they will do.

That’s exactly what is happening right now. And, not surprisingly at all, states are going after truckers and their perceived deep pockets.

Not once has OOIDA ever said that truckers aren’t willing to pay their fair share of infrastructure funding. Problem is, truckers have been paying more than their fair share for a very, very long time.

The OOIDA Foundation’s research shows that trucks account for 45% of the federal highway use fee revenue, but only represent 9% of the vehicles miles traveled and 4% of all registered vehicles. That’s bad, but that’s not all.

According to the Federal Highway Administration’s National Household Travel Survey, the average passenger vehicle owner pays approximately 34 to 45 times less than the average truck driver in fuel taxes alone.

A single owner-operator pays, a minimum average, of $6,260 each year into the Highway Trust Fund, according to the Foundation.

Now you have a growing chorus of lawmakers who apparently think that’s not enough. This perception that truckers are running around the country with 53-foot trailers chock full of hundred dollar bills has got to stop. It’s going to get to the point that lawmakers are literally going to break what little bank of an operating margin many truckers work on.

Senior Editor Mark Schremmer takes a look at the uptick in calls for truckers to pay even more for infrastructure funding around the country starting on Page 14.

While we are on the topic of costing truckers more money, let’s talk about the continued attempts to legislate an increase to the insurance minimums on motor carriers.

Digital Content Editor Greg Grisolano has been keenly interested in Operation Sideswipe. That’s the racket down in New Orleans where a bunch of yahoos are intentionally getting into wrecks with trucks hoping for a big payday. (You can read about how that’s going for them on Page 84.)

Greg astutely connected the dots between the motivation behind Operation Sideswipe type scams and what any increase to the minimum insurance requirements will mean for truckers in his opinion piece on Page 10.

Schremmer also covers a letter from a coalition of 60 groups on what the far reaching effect of an increase to the insurance minimums would mean for the economy as a whole. I’m going to wager that more than a few lawmakers haven’t thought about that unintended consequence. That article is on Page 20.

When the topic of driver retention (or what the American Trucking Associations would like people to believe is a shortage of drivers) comes up, the best you could hope for is a few nods from lawmakers agreeing that pay and driver treatment need to improve. But it never seemed to rise to the level of being considered a problem that needed solved.

Boy, did that tune change with the current administration.

Very late in our deadline cycle for this issue, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor held a roundtable of industry stakeholders to talk about … wait for it … driver retention.

The event flipped the narrative on the ATA’s driver shortage myth, big time. Schremmer brings you a quick report on this roundtable that felt like a seismic shift in attitude toward truckers on Page 22. Consider that article just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, it happened close to our deadline and space was limited. Look for more in the October issue and online at LandLine.Media. LL