Trucking needs new regulatory environment, OOIDA says
While testifying in front of Congress about the U.S. Department of Transportation’s regulatory agenda, OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh didn’t hold back.
Pugh, who worked as a truck driver for two decades, said that truckers are forced to operate in a “dysfunctional regulatory environment” that favors compliance and technology over practical solutions that would improve the profession and increase safety.
“While compliance rates with the dizzying array of regulations have never been higher, there are those – including large motor carriers, shippers, safety advocates, elected officials and bureaucrats – who not only resist modernizing or eliminating needless regulations but want to impose even more impractical and ineffective rules on American truckers,” he said.
In recent years, regulators and lawmakers have proposed such rules as mandating speed-limiting devices on commercial motor vehicles, requiring side underride guards and increasing a truck’s minimum liability insurance by about 500%.
Pugh used the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee hearing on July 24 to speak out on these issues and to ask the government to take a new approach that values the expertise of America’s professional truck drivers. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association argues that overly burdensome regulations are driving safe and experienced truckers out of the industry while decreasing safety and hindering America’s supply chain.
“In the end, truckers want regulations that reflect their needs and the changing dynamics of their industry,” Pugh said. “It’s time for Congress and DOT to help make trucking an appealing, safe and sustainable career by listening first to the people who make their living behind the wheel.”
Instead of mandating more unreliable technology and making it more difficult for truckers to operate a successful business, Pugh suggested improving entry-level driver training standards, enforcing broker transparency and removing the longstanding overtime exemption for motor carriers.
“Let me be clear, OOIDA and our members are not anti-regulation, as some would have you believe,” Pugh said.
“In fact, the opposite is true. We have a long history of supporting regulations that address critical needs in our industry and are backed by sound research and data. For decades, we have pushed for enhanced driver training requirements to ensure the men and women behind the wheel of a commercial motor vehicle are prepared to operate at the safest level. We’ve also pushed for greater broker transparency, stronger truck-leasing requirements, better driver pay and more accurate and reliable safety-ratings systems.”
The hearing focused on a variety of trucking issues, including speed limiters, automatic emergency brakes and the push toward electric trucks and autonomous vehicles.
Speed limiters
A considerable amount of time at the hearing involved discussion of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s rulemaking to require speed limiters on trucks.
In 2022, FMCSA issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that considered mandating speed limiters on commercial motor vehicles. The agency is slated to unveil a formal proposal in May 2025. While the proposed top speed hasn’t been revealed, safety groups have lobbied to limit heavy-duty trucks to 60 mph.
OOIDA contends that the requirement would hinder safety by creating dangerous speed differentials and increasing the risk of crashes between cars and trucks.
There are highways in the United States with speed limits as fast as 85 mph. Even more, the flow of traffic on interstates is often faster than the speed limit. That means the rule could lead to cars traveling 30 mph faster than trucks on the same road.
“Decades of highway research shows greater speed differentials increase interactions, such as passing or braking, between truck drivers and other road users,” Pugh wrote in his submitted testimony. “Studies have consistently demonstrated that increasing these interactions directly increases the likelihood of crashes.”
Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, agreed that limiting trucks to such slow speeds would yield “negative consequences.”
“I want to remind my colleagues that DOT is considering limiting every single truck on the road to 60 miles per hour regardless of what the posted speed limit is,” Nehls said.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., pushed back against criticism of a speed limiter mandate.
“In the last year for which we have data available, 20% of truck crashes occurred at speeds over 70 miles per hour, resulting in about 1,000 deaths,” Moulton said.
However, the cited statistic is a bit misleading. When FMCSA issued the speed limiter notice in 2022, it cited 2019 stats indicating that there were nearly 900 fatal crashes involving large trucks in posted speed limits of 70 mph or more.
The statistic was based on the speed limit alone, and the agency did not know how fast the trucks were going in the crashes. The agency also didn’t know how many of the trucks involved were already using speed-limiting devices.
Even more, that statistic ignores that 13.3% more fatal crashes occurred in 50 and 55 mph zones.
Pugh said that if speeding is the issue, the focus should be on slowing down cars and trucks.
“It’s been proven over and over that traffic traveling at the same speed is the safest,” he added.
Automatic emergency brakes
Pugh also spoke out against a proposal to mandate automatic emergency braking systems on heavy-duty trucks. However, he wasn’t the only person with a trucking background to speak out against the tech.
Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., who owns a trucking company, has dozens of trucks with the technology. But he doesn’t believe AEBs work as intended.
“Man, I have a boatload of them that I’d love to get rid of,” Collins said.
Requiring manufacturers to equip vehicles with automatic emergency brakes has been among the DOT’s priorities.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and FMCSA are projected to issue a final rule in 2025 that will eventually require new trucks to be equipped with automatic emergency brakes.
“They’re not foolproof,” Pugh told Collins. “We have constant false activations … I drove a truck (with AEB technology) from Reno last year back to Kansas City. It was constantly going off, and there was nothing around.”
Pugh added that many OOIDA members have reported instances where the false activations have led to the truck being rear-ended or nearly rear-ended by a passenger vehicle.
“Trucks are completely different than cars,” Pugh said. “And just because a technology works well on a car doesn’t mean it’s going to work well on a truck. Every load and every type of truck is different as far as weight and how the product moves. You take a tanker, there’s liquid in there moving around. So the way you have to stop (a tanker) is completely different than how you’d have to stop a load of paper towels in a van trailer.”
Electric trucks
Earlier this year, the EPA announced its final rule formally known as “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phase 3.” The EPA rule requires that 25% of sleeper cab tractors be zero-direct-emission vehicles by 2032.
OOIDA spoke out against the EPA’s efforts to move the trucking industry toward electric trucks before the technology, infrastructure and resources are in place.
“The American truckers are getting a little tired of it, too … They’re tired of being the guinea pigs for all this stuff that comes out of EPA,” Pugh said. “We were guinea pigs in 2008, we were guinea pigs in 2011 and we’re going to be the guinea pigs again. Every time we’ve been a guinea pig, a whole sector of our industry has been wiped out because they couldn’t afford it … Truckers want clean air. We all want clean air and clean water. But let the free market figure this out. Free market always does better than government heavy-handedness.”
OOIDA argues that the rule pushes truckers in the direction of electric trucks even though there are major question marks in regard to cost, mileage range, battery weight, safety, charging time and a sufficient power grid.
“It’s going to devastate our industry,” Pugh said. “There’s nowhere to really fuel them. No one really has a way to address how we’re going to recharge these trucks. Small-business carriers like myself, I parked my truck at my house all the time. So this means when I want to go home or park my truck, I need to put in a very expensive charging system in my truck. Not to mention, these trucks weigh 10,000 pounds more than their diesel counterparts, which means they will haul less of a payload … which means by hauling less of a payload, you’re going to put more of these trucks out there.”
Autonomous vehicles
Although truckers are constantly confronted with new regulations that they must comply with, autonomous companies are beginning to deploy driverless trucks with what appears to be little regulatory oversight.
“Despite unfounded forecasts and empty promises that automated vehicles will lead to zero deaths, there continue to be real-world situations in which automation has devastatingly failed,” Pugh wrote in his submitted testimony. “Unfortunately, current voluntary reporting requirements leave truckers and the public in the dark about the safety and reliability of autonomous technologies.”
Pugh added that the lack of data doesn’t even allow for a proper assessment of the technology and whether it could improve safety.
“OOIDA is frequently asked what truckers think about the development of autonomous technology and what it means for the future of their profession,” Pugh wrote. “To be frank, there’s not a whole lot we can say about how the technology is performing or what exactly it means for truckers. We can only presume these vehicles are not ready for safe deployment without mandatory reporting on performance. OOIDA believes that any process to advance automated technology should be met with mandatory data transparency from manufacturers. This will help educate consumers, the industry and regulators about the actual reliability of autonomous technology.” LL