DC Velocity - February 2013

newsworthy On May 31, Henry J. Maier will settle into the job of his life.

accolades

Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. was honored as the number-one less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier by Mastio & Co. as part of its 2012 Value and Loyalty Benchmarking Study. … Southeastern Freight Lines, a provider of regional LTL transportation services, received Brunswick Bowling’s 2012 Crown Club Supplier Award for outstanding service to the company. … Pest control specialist Rentokil has received Johnson Controls’ Supplier Excellence in Execution award for 2012.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood will not remain on the job in the second Obama administration.

LaHood, 67, said in an e-mail to Department of Transportation (DOT) employees that he would stay in the post until the Senate confirms his successor. Deborah A.B. Hersman, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, has emerged as a leading candidate for the post.

LaHood, an Illinois Republican who served 14 years in the House of Representatives before taking the top DOT job in January 2009, is the only member of the opposition party in President Obama’s cabinet.

“I’ve told President Obama, and I’ve told many of you, that this is the best job I’ve ever had. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to work with all of you, and I’m confident that DOT will continue to achieve great things in the future,” LaHood wrote in his e-mail.

Since the president won re-election, LaHood has been asked if he planned to remain in a second-term cabinet. His stock reply was that he would discuss the matter with President Obama in due course.

During LaHood’s tenure, Congress passed and the president signed into law the first transportation funding reauthorization bill since 2005. LaHood had forecast in January 2011 that a funding bill could become law that summer, but that did not come to pass until July 2012.

LaHood had been sharply critical of a five-year, $260 billion reauthorization bill that had passed the Republican-led House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, calling it “the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen in 35 years of public service.” He instead supported the 27-month, $109 billion reauthorization measure that eventually became law.

Under LaHood, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a sub-agency of DOT, took aggressive steps to improve motor carrier safety. FMCSA launched CSA 2010, a far-reaching initiative to identify and, if necessary, remove substandard truck drivers from the road. In addition, FMCSA made the first significant rewrite in a decade of the driver hours-of-service (HOS) regulations. The regulations, which are scheduled to be enforced beginning July 1, are the subject of a court challenge by industry and safety advocacy groups.

In August 2012, LaHood announced the launch of the agency’s Freight Policy Council. That group, which is made up of high-ranking officials from the various transport modes, is tasked with developing a national plan for improving freight movements and coordinating the implementation of the freight provisions in the reauthorization bill.

LaHood also launched a war on so-called “distracted driving” in a bid to keep motorists and commercial drivers alike from texting on cell phones while behind the wheel. In January 2010, he pushed through a directive banning all texting on cell phones by truck and bus drivers. ;