Pro-trucker

If Congress really wants to take steps toward improving the supply chain, then it needs to advocate for measures that will benefit the nation’s truck drivers.

That was OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh’s message to lawmakers during a House Highways and Transit Subcommittee hearing on May 10.

The goal of the hearing was to identify potential legislative solutions to ongoing supply chain challenges throughout the transportation sector.

Pugh dedicated much of his written testimony to touting efforts for truck parking, broker transparency and improved driver compensation while speaking out against proposed regulations for speed limiters, side underride guards and strict emission standards.

A longtime truck driver and owner-operator before he began working at OOIDA headquarters, Pugh told lawmakers that there is no way to regulate the supply chain to produce optimal efficiency. However, he said that there are steps that can be taken to improve conditions and productivity for small trucking businesses, owner-operators and professional drivers.

“It is clear to OOIDA the supply chain will never function optimally when our members struggle to find safe parking, are detained at loading facilities for hours on end, aren’t being fully paid for the time they work, face a flood of new and costly regulations and can’t even access restrooms when picking up or dropping off critical freight,” Pugh wrote in his submitted testimony. “If you want to improve supply chain functionality through legislation, you must find the political courage to address these pervasive problems.”

Truck parking

OOIDA helped craft the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, which would provide $755 million for truck parking over three years. Identical versions of the bill have been introduced in the House and Senate, and both have been gaining momentum.

“If the committee is looking for commonsense, bipartisan solutions to improve supply chain efficiency, it is abundantly clear passage of Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act must be a priority,” Pugh wrote. “Nearly identical legislation passed this committee last year with unanimous bipartisan support. We applaud members and leaders of this panel for remaining committed to resolving this longstanding problem in the 118th Congress.”

Detention time

Pugh told Congress that a huge aspect of supply chain issues has to do with the amount of free time truck drivers give away at loading and unloading facilities.

A 2018 study from the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that up to $1.3 billion is lost in annual earnings to truck drivers because of detention time.

OOIDA contends that a big reason detention time is so common is because truck drivers’ time is not valued. The Association argues that removing the overtime exemption in the Fair Labor Standards Act would make shipper and receiver facilities have consequences for making a driver wait for hours.

“If a shipper or receiver knows they won’t be responsible for paying overtime, they simply don’t care as much about respecting a driver’s time,” Pugh wrote. “If repealed, drivers would either be fairly compensated for the extra hours they work, or shippers and receivers would find ways to reduce delays to avoid paying overtime. Simply put, the current law ensures that a driver’s time is less valued than other professions and enables inefficiencies to persist, and even worsen. If Congress is serious about fixing pervasive problems in the supply chain, this absolutely must change.”

Broker transparency

OOIDA petitioned FMCSA in 2020 to begin enforcing existing broker regulations and to create more transparency in regard to broker transactions.

FMCSA announced in March that it was granting OOIDA’s petition and would soon be publishing a rulemaking regarding broker transparency. At the same time, FMCSA informed the Transportation Intermediaries Association that it was denying its petition to eliminate an existing regulation that requires brokers to make transaction records available to all applicable parties.

OOIDA’s petition asked the agency to require brokers to automatically provide an electronic copy of each transaction record within 48 hours and to explicitly prohibit brokers from including any provision that requires a carrier to waive their transparency rights.

“If rules are promulgated to improve broker transparency and current regulations are better enforced by DOT, this would support the economic stability of the trucking industry and help develop a more reliable supply chain,” Pugh wrote.

Anne Reinke, president of TIA, also testified. She said her organization plans to continue to fight broker transparency efforts.

“We believe FMCSA does not have the legal authority to ‘pierce’ contracts between a broker and a shipper, for many reasons, not least of which is that such an act would potentially expose proprietary information of shippers, fundamentally alter and constrain the shipping market, and result in serious significant costs for all parties with little benefit,” Reinke wrote.

Blocking mandates

Pugh also used a portion of his written testimony to ask Congress to block such burdensome mandates as speed limiters and side underride guards, which OOIDA believes would actually deter safety.

“Both ATA and FMCSA are aware that decades of research on the topic of speed has consistently led to the same conclusion: roads are safest when all vehicles are moving the same relative rate of speed,” Pugh wrote. “ATA has chosen to ignore this reality because a speed limiter mandate would benefit their large, corporate members by slowing down smaller competitors.”

OOIDA supports the DRIVE Act, which would prevent FMCSA from moving forward with a speed limiter mandate. LL