From SCDigest's On-Target E-Magazine
Feb. 15, 2012
Logistics News: As Surface Transportation Bill Nears Vote in Full House, a Look How the Sausages are Made, as Rail Interests Whipped Trucking Over Heavier Truck Provision
Trucking Does Get Longer Trailers for Doubles; Rail Industry Smartly Marshalls Local Sheriffs for Its Cause
SCDigest Editorial Staff
As we reported last week, the long delayed new Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill made it out of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee but without a provision sought by many shippers that would have permitted heavier trucks to operate on federal highways. (See Legislation to Allow Heavier Trucks Dismissed from Highway Bill, in Blow to Shippers.)
That legislation determines funding through 2016 for a wide variety of transportation initiatives, from highway construction to bridges, public transportation and more. That House bill as of now would commit $260 million in such infrastructure spend over the five-year period, while the Senate is working on its own version, currently committing $109 billion over two years.
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| NASSTRAC's Regan noted that several Congressperson's told him that having a number of sheriffs coming out against the bill from the own districts made quite an impression on them. |
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Meanwhile, just this week, the new budget proposal from the Obama administration ups that ante, recommending a much larger $476 billion bill that would make commitments through 2018. The administration also said it may likely veto a final bill approved by both houses if it contains language, as the House version currently does, that would authorize construction of the Keystone oil pipeline that the president recently tabled for further study, angering both many Republicans and some labor groups over the lost opportunity for job growth.
As that drama plays out, the debate over the Safe and Efficient Trucking Act (SETA), which would have permitted an increase in total truck weights to 97,000 pounds from the current 80,000 pounds with the addition of a sixth axle, opened a window on the old adage (variously attributed to both Mark Twain and Otto Van Bismarck) that it's better that people don't know how laws and sausages are made.
The rail industry brought out some big guns to get the SETA language, which just recently seemed very likely to be approved, out of the final bill coming out of committee, clearly overpowering trucking industry forces. That led in the end to a somewhat surprising truce between the American Trucking Associations (ATA) and the Association of American Railroads (AAR) urging passage of the bill in the House without any further amendments.
That seemed a direct reference to the SETA language. When the committee voted to delay consideration of the heavier trucks and several other proposals pending three years additional of study, the Coalition for Transportation Productivity (CTP), an industry group of more than 200 shippers and industry associations formed specifically to push the heavier weight change, vowed to try to add the SETA language back in through amendment in the full House. With the ATA now recommending against that change, the SETA measure appears dead for now and maybe even for the next three years.
However, the ATA-AAR truce appears only valid for the House vote.Some proponents of the SETA bill may still try to get a similar measurer into the Senate's version of the bill, and hope the provision will stick in the reconciliation process between the two versions. But current Senate bill language being discussed in committee also includes language calling for a three-year study of the heavier truck proposal and other issues, so the prospects for success of that strategy may be very doubtful. In addition, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey is amamently against a SETA-type change, and has vowed to never let the change make it into law.
“It’s important that you not have two very large, significant sectors of the transportation community at each others’ throats as the bill goes to the floor,” said James Burnley, a former U.S. transportation secretary and a trucking industry lobbyist, in explaining the ATA-AAR truce. “That undermines support in what is an already very, very difficult situation in passing the bill in either house.”
Rail Industry Overpowers CTP and Trucking Interests
The AAR was against the SETA bill for the simple fact that rail interests perceived the measure would give a relative new advantage to trucking versus rail, a perspective that is probably correct, given that the change to a 97,000-pound weight limit could add as much as 14,000 pounds, or some 31%, in potential freight capacity, to trucks that currently weigh-out before they cube-out.
The truck provisions would represent “a major change in the competitive playing field between truck and rail,” said Ed Hamberger, president and chief executive officer of AAR.
On Feb. 1, the day before the committee vote, Washington saw a “Stand Up For Trucking” Fly-In event on Feb. 1, meant to press the trucking friendly legislation, including the SETA bill. The event, which included visits to some 140 Congressional offices by 170 transportation industry professionals, was organized by Mike Regan, Chairman of the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council (NASSTRAC) and president of TranzAct Technologies.
(Transportation Management Article Continued Below)
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Regan told us that one bit of good news from a trucking industry perspective is that "the rail industry has been brought out in the open in terms of their opposition to the SETA legislation.Before, they had hidden behind consumer safety groups that they were funding rather than opposing the law in a direct manner."