A blow to the economy

Organizations from a variety of industries have joined together to fight proposals that would increase truckers’ insurance rates.

A coalition of more than 60 organizations, including the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, says that increasing the minimum insurance requirement for motor carriers by 167% would be a blow to the entire economy.

The OOIDA-led coalition sent a letter on June 28 to the House Rules Committee asking lawmakers to support an amendment that would remove an insurance increase from the House highway bill. The Truck Insurance Coalition includes organizations in the trucking, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, materials and towing industries.

The amendment was not approved by the House Rules Committee, but OOIDA and the other members of the coalition are continuing to work to keep the measure from becoming law. One of the ways the coalition is doing so is by attempting to get lawmakers to understand that a truck insurance increase would affect the general population.

“Increasing minimum liability coverage would harm all businesses transporting property, not just long-haul trucking operations,” the Truck Insurance Coalition wrote. “As illustrated by the diversity of our coalition, the impact would be felt in many sectors of the economy that have been working to help our nation recover from the COVID-19 pandemic … This policy clearly does not belong in legislation that is designed to support economic recovery and encourage growth.”

As of press time, the House highway bill, or the INVEST in America Act, included a measure that would increase motor carriers’ minimum liability insurance from $750,000 to $2 million.

Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., proposed an amendment to strike the truck insurance increase from the bill.

Bost, who was raised in a trucking family, also offered the amendment during the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee markup hearing in early June. During debate, he offered passionate remarks about why the amendment was needed and called the increase a “punishment” to the nation’s truck drivers.

“Over the past year during the time of this pandemic, we’ve relied pretty hard on the working people who drive trucks across the nation,” Bost said. “These men and women continue their essential work by stocking store shelves and making sure food was put on everyone’s table, and (getting us) the supplies we needed while many of us were trapped in our homes. Now after praising these individuals for their great work, this legislation turns around and punishes them.”

Several other House Republicans spoke in favor of the amendment during the 30 minutes of debate. The amendment would have stripped the measure originally introduced by Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill. Garcia referred to the $1.25 million hike as a “modest increase.”

“Raising the minimum insurance requirement is a fix in search of a problem,” Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., said. “My friend across the aisle made note that this is a ‘modest’ increase. Madam Chair, this is a (167%) increase … That is an extraordinary amount of money.”

Graves also referenced a June 2021 article from Land Line Magazine that quoted Joe Deems, executive director of the National Risk Retention Association, as saying that an increase would not have any positive effect on safety and has “nothing whatsoever to do with safety.”

Implying that the motivation for the increase comes from trial lawyers, Graves noted that last year he asked that none of the money from the increase to go to attorneys.

“You could hear crickets,” Graves said. “They all knew. They knew that this was exactly what it was designed to do.”

Regardless, the committee stuck mostly to party lines, rejecting Bost’s amendment by a recorded vote of 38-30.

The Truck Insurance Coalition wanted the Rules Committee to move Bost’s amendment forward so it can be debated on the full House floor.

“If the House allows this policy to remain in the highway bill, it would jeopardize countless small and family-owned businesses, as well as blue collar jobs,” the coalition wrote.

The coalition noted that current insurance minimums are adequate for more than 99% of cases and that there is no evidence that increasing the cost of insurance would have any positive effect on safety.

“There is no reputable research indicating an increase of any amount would help reduce crash rates,” the coalition wrote.

The coalition suggested that the House would need to remove the insurance provision from the bill for any chance of it being signed into law. While the Democratic majority in the House included an insurance increase in its bill, the Senate’s bipartisan version of the highway bill left an insurance increase out.

“Notably, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed its portion of the highway bill with a large bipartisan margin, and this bill did not include any changes to minimum insurance levels,” the coalition wrote. LL