Truckers commend Congressman Paul Tonko for continued efforts for safe truck parking
(Grain Valley, Mo., April 5, 2011) – The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) would like to thank U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) for continuing to stand behind the nation’s hard-working truck drivers and the need for safe parking. Tonko spoke at a hearing today where he encouraged members of the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure to support his efforts to address the nationwide truck parking shortage.
The hearing, “Reforming the Nation’s Surface Transportation Programs,” focused on a variety of transportation issues. Tonko used his testimony to talk about Jason Rivenburg, a truck driver who was murdered while parked overnight at an abandoned gas station. The hearing is part of the effort by Congress to write a new highway re-authorization bill.
“We are hopeful that Mr. Tonko’s words will hit home with the committee and we thank him for his ongoing, bipartisan efforts,” said Todd Spencer, Executive Vice President of OOIDA. “The trucking industry faces a litany of issues and the least we can do is to make sure drivers have a safe place to rest while delivering the nation’s goods.”
Tonko had previously introduced Jason’s Law in the U.S. House to address the truck parking shortage and improve conditions at current truck parking facilities.
“Mr. Tonko truly understands the connection between truckers and the role they play in the success of all small businesses,” said Spencer. “Protecting their safety is one of many key issues that need to be addressed as more and more expectations are placed upon them.”
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is the largest national trade association representing the interests of small-business trucking professionals and professional truck drivers. The Association currently has more than 151,000 members nationwide. OOIDA was established in 1973 and is headquartered in the greater Kansas City, Mo., area.
Arrow Truck Sales names ‘Back on the Road’ winner
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LOUISVILLE. Nationwide used truck retailer Arrow Truck Sales named truck driver David Acosta of Orlando, FL, as the winner of its 2011 ‘Back on the Road’ campaign here last week at the Mid-America Trucking Show this year. David is a perfect example of someone who sincerely needs assistance to help overcome a series of unfortunate hurdles,” said Steve Clough, president of Arrow Truck Sales. He fights every day to provide for his family and he truly represents the spirit of what ‘Back on the Road’ is all about. We are proud to give him this opportunity to not only change his life, but the lives of his wife and two daughters. Acosta, an owner-operator, has struggled over the last few years with the financial burdens of providing for his single-income family while his wife stayed home to care for their 16-year-old daughter, who suffers from nephrotic syndrome a deadly kidney disease she’s been fighting since age four. A U.S. Navy veteran, Acosta came to trucking after working in the construction industry. The recession took its toll on his livelihood, ultimately forcing him to give up his truck. But now, Acosta has a second chance to make a living as a trucker via Arrow’s ’Back on the Road’ campaign. As the contest winner, he will receive: a 2007 Volvo VNL 780, courtesy of Arrow Truck Sales; a one-year work agreement with Heartland Express; monthly $500 fuel cards thanks to Pilot Travel Centers; insurance provided by the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA); and many other goods and services from other contest sponsors such as Michelin, Thermo King and others. I thank God for this opportunity and I plan to represent this industry and this program in an upstanding manner, Acosta said after being named the winner. I want my children and others to see the hard work I can produce for this industry. These are the people we need to touch, to see that we can have a better tomorrow.� |
Daily Express Offers Fuel Programs for Owner-Operators
Heavy haul and specialized trucking company Daily Express now offers fuel surcharge programs for its owner-operators.
Formal fuel surcharge programs include a guaranteed minimum fuel payment on every load, a graduated fuel payment that increases with the weight of the cargo being shipped, and an empty mile fuel payment.
Daily Express says it was the first carrier to create a formal weight-based fuel payment system five years ago. This weight-based fuel payment is a benefit to owner-operators hauling overweight machinery, equipment and wind energy products, since extra weight cuts fuel mileage. Daily Express also formed a fuel surcharge using a base cost of $1.10 per gallon and a fuel economy of 5 mpg. Owner-operators receive extra compensation for any time fuel is $1.15 or greater.
Daily Express is also promoting its empty mile fuel payment to cover the owner-operator’s uncompensated fuel cost for empty miles. It is common for carriers to offer some form of fuel surcharge payment for loaded miles however Daily Express has a formal fuel payment to help cover empty miles.
Local long-haul driver saluted by trucking industry
Mooresville’s William Cutler, Jr. said he is living proof that driving a commercial tractor-trailer safely for a long time can be done.
Cutler recently was hailed by Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) for 34 years of accident-free driving. According to OOIDA, the Safe Driving Award Program is designed to “recognize and reward OOIDA members for their safe, accident-free years while operating a commercial vehicle.
“Safe driving awards are available to all eligible OOIDA members who qualify based upon the number of years for which the member has operated a commercial vehicle without being involved in a preventable accident.”
The long-haul trucker and Vietnam veteran said he got his start driving large vehicles in the Navy while on shore duty, and hasn’t stopped since.
“I’ve stuck with it because I want to do my part to keep America moving,” Cutler said. “People don’t realize that truckers are the life-blood of this country. I do what I do so when moms need to get milk from the grocery store, it’s there to pick up.
“ I’ve put a lot of effort into this industry and devoted my life to driving. America stops without truckers.”
Cutler said he drives seven days a week and has logged more than 7 1/2 million miles.
“I’ve covered 48 states in my career and have even driven to Alaska from Florida,” he said. “The hardest part of my job is getting the commodity, whatever it happens to be, delivered on time, no matter what Mother Nature happens to be doing. Whether it’s storming, sleeting or the sun is beating down, we have to get the product there. I’ve been over every mountain range in this country in every kind of weather.”
Cutler says the best part of his job is “being a paid tourist.”
“I’ve been all over and seen the changes in this country,” he said. “The camaraderie between truckers is also really great. You can sit down at a counter at a truck stop and talk to anyone. If you see another truck broken down on the side of the road, you stop, no matter when your load is due and help them out.
“It’s been that way since I started, and I love it.”
As for his clean driving record, Cutler said he considers safety number one.
“I didn’t expect the recognition at all, but it means I’ve been doing something right,” he said. “So many truckers say it can’t be done, that there are too many variables on the road, but I am living proof.
“Pay attention to the road, concentrate and keep your mind on what you’re doing. Safety has to be first.”
American Trucking Associations praises restart of U.S.- Mexico program
American Trucking Associations, the largest trucking industry trade group, is praising a pilot program to restart long-haul, cross-border trucking.
The United States and Mexico recently agreed to implement the long-delayed cross-border trucking provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement, whereby Mexican fleets must demonstrate that they meet the same safety standards as U.S. fleets and Mexican trucks are prohibited from hauling freight between destinations within the United States.
Through the new program, the U.S. Department of Transportation will lift tariffs and allow GPS systems to be used for tracking to ensure compliance.
“This announcement is good news for the U.S. businesses that have been hurt by Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs, including the trucking industry, and we look forward to the U.S. finally living up to its commitments under the North American Free Trade Agreement,” ATA CEO Bill Graves said in a statement. “ATA is hopeful that the lifting of the retaliatory tariffs that were imposed after a previous cross-border trucking pilot program was abolished by Congress in 2009 will help the two countries resume more normal trading patterns and increase the flow of commerce between the two countries.”
Final negotiations to get the program started are expected to take several months.
Mexico is the second-largest export market for the United States.
In an industry update earlier this month, Overland Park-based trucker YRC Worldwide Inc. (Nasdaq: YRCW) referred to reports that transportation between the United States and its NAFTA partners was up almost 20 percent in January compared with a year earlier, and 85 percent of that freight was being moved by rail or truck.
Read more: American Trucking Associations praises restart of U.S.-Mexico program | Kansas City Business Journal
Trucking jobs surge in February
| By Avery Vise
The U.S. economy added 192,000 nonfarm jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis during February — 11,200 of which came from for-hire trucking companies, according to the preliminary estimates released March 4 by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the numbers hold, the increase in trucking jobs would be the largest one-month surge since December 1990. However, BLS revised January estimates for payroll employment in truck transportation downward by 4,300, so the net increase over the figures reported last month is 6,900. Payroll employment at for-hire trucking companies in February increased 3.1 percent year-over-year to 38,300 jobs, according to the preliminary figures. Since the beginning of March 2010 when the slump in trucking jobs hit bottom, trucking companies have added 39,000 jobs, according to BLS estimates. Total employment in trucking in February was more than 1.266 million – down 187,000, or 12.9 percent, from peak trucking employment in January 2007. The BLS numbers reflect all payroll employment in for-hire trucking, but they don’t include trucking-related jobs in other industries, such as a truck driver for a private fleet. Nor do the numbers reflect the total amount of hiring since they only include new jobs, not replacements for existing positions. Figures for trucking do not include the express delivery companies, which fall under the category of “couriers and messenger” in BLS data. According to preliminary numbers, that was the only segment of transportation that lost jobs, likely reflecting the final terminations of temporary jobs added to handle holiday season demand. Employment by couriers and messengers was down by only 1,400 jobs, however. Despite the strong growth in jobs throughout the economy, the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent as the number of people seeking employment rose at about the same level as the number of new jobs added. |
source: http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=86317
OOIDA surveys truckers on HOS
The proposed hours-of-service regulations make several changes to the existing regs – with the potential to deeply affect some trucking operations.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is conducting an online survey of its membership to help analyze the implications of the proposed regulations.
The Web page includes a brief description of the proposed changes, a chart comparing the current regulations to the proposal, and the 16-question survey.
“The responses to the survey will directly aid us in developing our Association response to FMCSA,” said OOIDA Director of Regulatory Affairs Joe Rajkovacz.
To review the proposed changes and take the survey, click here.
Truckers Say Detention Legislation Would Improve Productivity, Safety
(Grain Valley, Mo.) – The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) says a new bill would make shippers and receivers accountable for their contribution to the lack of productivity in the transportation supply chain and would make significant improvements to highway safety.
Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced a bill today, H.R. 756, in the House of Representatives to address the problem of excessive wait times for trucks at shipping and receiving facilities. Otherwise known as “detention time,” this is an issue truckers have continually brought to the attention of lawmakers and policymakers because of how it affects hours-of-service regulations, productivity and highway safety.
“In a just-in-time, deregulated industry, trucking has de-evolved to where truckers are donating their time to the benefit of shippers and receivers. The problem persists because it doesn’t cost shippers or receivers to squander drivers’ time,” said Todd Spencer, Executive Vice President, OOIDA.
The bill calls for a study and a regulatory rulemaking on detention times and compensation. Among other things, the study would evaluate average lengths of time that drivers are detained before loading and unloading and the impact on hours of service. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) would be required to introduce a new regulation, setting standards for maximum numbers of hours a driver may be detained and not compensated.
Surveys conducted by OOIDA indicate as many as 40 hours per week are spent by drivers waiting to be loaded or unloaded. A study by FMCSA says the cost to the industry is more than $3 billion per year and the cost to the public is more than $6.5 billion per year.
“The colossal, mind-numbing wait times at loading docks are the biggest drain on productivity and on drivers,” said Spencer. “Shippers and receivers have for too long gotten away with wasting truckers’ time without any accountability for their role in the ultimate effect it has on highway safety.”
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is the largest national trade association representing the interests of small-business trucking professionals and professional truck drivers. The Association currently has more than 152,000 members nationwide. OOIDA was established in 1973 and is headquartered in the greater Kansas City, Mo., area.
U.S., Mexico Agree to Settle Truck Feud
WASHINGTON—The U.S. and Mexico unveiled a deal Thursday to resolve a longstanding dispute over cross-border trucking, an agreement that could help ease tense relations between the two neighbor.
The deal seeks to end a nearly 20-year ban on Mexican trucks crossing the U.S. border, a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement that subjected $2.4 billion of U.S. goods annually to punitive tariffs by Mexico. Half of the tariffs will be suspended when the deal is signed by both nations, expected in about 60 days. The remainder will be lifted when the first Mexican hauler complies with a series of U.S. certification requirements, including English-language, drug and safety tests.
The new requirements for Mexican trucks are tougher than those established in Nafta and somewhat tougher than those currently in force for American truckers. Specifically, Mexican trucks will have to carry electronic recorders to ensure they do only cross-border, not domestic, runs and to track compliance with U.S. hours-of-service laws.
Nonetheless, the agreement appears to be a setback for U.S. labor unions, which have backed the ban in its various incarnations and opposed some other Obama administration trade initiatives, including efforts to conclude a trade pact with Colombia. Unionized U.S. truckers say the plan threatens their jobs.
The trucking deal “caves in to business interests at the expense of the traveling public and American workers,” said International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jim Hoffa. The union has long said that Mexican trucks and drivers are potentially unsafe, which the Mexican government disputes.
A senior administration official said a key concern was that Mexico would expand the list of U.S. products subjected to tariffs to include a broader range of manufactured goods.
“We were beginning to hear from farmers and businesses being hurt, and some closing, because of these retaliatory tariffs,” the official said.
The talks over the deal intensified in January. Details were being hammered out until an hour before the joint announcement from President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said his group is “pressing the administration and Congress to finalize the agreement, move the United States into compliance, and allow an end to these job-killing tariffs.” The Chamber has led a coalition of industry and agriculture interests who wanted to overturn the trucking ban.
The ban has been one of a series of thorny issues in the U.S.-Mexico relationship, including drug-crime-related violence along the border. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was killed and another agent was wounded by gunmen a few weeks ago. It marks the first time a U.S.-law-enforcement official was killed in the line of duty in Mexico in several decades.
Mr. Calderón has said the U.S. should do more to help Mexico, including tightening gun laws and working to lower drug use in America, a continuing point of tension between the two countries. The two men sought to play down those differences Thursday. “We have to take responsibility just as he’s taking responsibility,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re putting more and more resources into this.”
The decision to permit Mexican trucks to enter the U.S. “is very important,” said Luis de la Calle, an international trade consultant and former Nafta negotiator. Mr. de la Calle said the decision would boost Mexico’s ability to compete in international trade by lowering transport costs. The agreement, by simplifying the border crossing process, could even increase border security, Mr. de la Calle said.
The pact is the latest twist in the White House’s complex relationship with organized labor. Unions still provide a large chunk of campaign cash to Democratic campaigns, and President Obama in his first two years in office extended a helping hand to organized labor. At the same time, the White House didn’t press for the unions’ top priority—a procedure dubbed “card check” that would have made it easier for U.S. workers to organize.
The Obama administration scored a coup in December by securing support from the United Auto Workers for a pending trade agreement with South Korea. But unions have since come out against a trade pact with Colombia, which Republicans in Congress say must be passed on a similar timeframe with the Korea agreement.
Mexican truckers were allowed into the U.S. under Nafta, which was signed in 1994. But unions and their allies in Congress repeatedly used legislation to block access. Nafta ruled in the late 1990s that Mexico could impose punitive tariffs, which it did in 2009, after Mr. Obama signed an unrelated bill that canceled a George W. Bush-era pilot program designed to grant temporary access to Mexican cross-border truckers.
The list of goods subjected to punitive tariffs has steadily increased since then, including U.S. construction equipment, pork, fruits and vegetables, a range of processed foods, even Christmas trees and suntan lotion, threatening an increasingly wide range of industries and their workers.
Thursday’s agreement “puts us back to where we were two years ago,” when Mexico first imposed tariffs, said Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Associations, the industry’s chief lobbying group, which praised the agreement. “If I was one of the businesses being hammered by the tariffs for the past two years, I’d wonder whether it was all worth it.”
The Transportation Department hopes to have a proposed agreement available for congressional briefings and public notice and comment by late March or early April. After responding to public comments, the U.S. would finalize the agreement with Mexico. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office would then ensure the tariffs are lifted as agreed.
—José de Córdoba
contributed to this article.Write to Elizabeth Williamson at elizabeth.williamson@wsj.com
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703300904576178511087875924.html
Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association opposes Mexican trucking program
Grain Valley’s Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has weighed in against a federal proposal that eventually could allow Mexican trucks to carry freight on U.S. highways.
The U.S. Department of Transportation on Thursday released a “concept document” for a new long-haul cross-border Mexican trucking program that replaces a pilot project the Obama administration terminated in March.
“With so much focus in Washington on creating jobs, it’s a bit shocking that the administration would pursue a program that can only rob U.S. drivers of their jobs,” said Todd Spencer, the association’s executive vice president.
Through the proposal, Mexican truck carriers could apply for permission to operate long-haul trucks in the United States. They first would have to undergo audits by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, checking drivers’ criminal background and driving safety performance, assessing the companies’ vehicle maintenance, and certifying that participating vehicles met Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and federal emissions standards.
The participating drivers also would have to pass English proficiency and U.S. traffic law tests, and the carriers would have to provide proof of insurance.
DOT officials said they would issue a final version of the proposal in the coming months, after which the public would have a chance to comment.
OOIDA isn’t waiting. It argued against any cross-border program until Mexico dramatically increases the safety, security and anti-pollution standards for truckers in Mexico. Otherwise, the group said, Mexican companies can undercut U.S. competitors because they face fewer costs from regulation.
“If a new cross-border trucking program were implemented in the near future, U.S. truckers would be forced to forfeit their own economic opportunities while companies and drivers from Mexico, free from equivalent regulatory burdens, take over their traffic lanes,” Spencer said.
Jim Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, echoed those sentiments in a statement on the union’s website, adding that Mexico’s rampant drug violence would make U.S. truckers unwilling to participate and ship goods south.
“Trade agreements are supposed to benefit both parties, but this is a one-way street,” Hoffa said.
He also claimed that Mexican trucks are inherently unsafe, which Mexico has denied.
Weighing in on the pro side is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which issued a statement claiming that more than 25,000 jobs are at risk if a cross-border program isn’t created because of retaliatory tariffs and other fees that Mexico levied on U.S. imports after the pilot program was abolished in 2009.
“If we’re going to double exports within five years, we must hold on to export markets, such as Mexico, where American companies are already doing well,” chamber CEO Thomas Donohue said. “It’s time that we complied with the promise we made to allow carefully inspected trucks to move across the border. We will closely study the U.S. proposal and hope we can help implement a modern cross-border transportation system that provides certainty for trucking companies and shippers throughout North America.”
The Teamsters have played a key role in helping Overland Park-based less-than-truckload carrier YRC Worldwide Inc. (Nasdaq: YRCW) cut costs as part of a turnaround plan. Its members who work for YRC have approved three rounds of concessions.
