newsworthy
Lautenberg remains thorn in side of shippers, carriers
He may be retiring when his
current term expires, but
Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg
will not leave without firing
a parting shot at his trucker
and shipper nemeses.
Lautenberg, the 89-year-
old New Jersey Democrat
who announced in February
he would not seek re-elec-tion once his term is up in
November 2014, in early
May reintroduced legislation to extend the current truck
weight limits to the entire 220,000-mile National
Highway System (NHS), which includes the 44,000-mile
interstate system. The current limits of 80,000 pounds of
gross vehicle weight (rig, trailer, and freight) only apply
on the interstate system. All but six states and the District
of Columbia allow for heavier trucks on their NHS-des-ignated roads.
The bill, the Safe Highways and Infrastructure
Preservation Act of 2013 (SHIPA), would cap the length of
trailers operating on the NHS to 53 feet and expand the
current freeze on triple-trailer operations on interstates to
the NHS. It would also establish an enforcement program
to ensure accountability, according to Lautenberg.
“Closing the loophole that keeps these long, overweight
trucks on our National Highway System will protect families and preserve our nation’s infrastructure,” Lautenberg
said in a statement announcing the legislation. “Trucks
play a critical role in our nation’s economy, but they also
share the roads with our families, so we must do everything we can to make our nation’s highways safer and
prevent tragic accidents.”
Lautenberg has introduced this legislation several times before, but it has
never gone far. The senator, representing a densely populated state with
small landmass, has long been at odds
with private industry over the issue of
bigger trucks. He authored a 1991 bill
banning triple-trailers from operating
in most states.
restrict states’ ability to decide for themselves how best
to deal with their congestion and goods movement
issues at a time when they should be granted more flex-
ibility, not less.”
The Coalition for Transportation Productivity (CTP),
a group of about 200 shippers and affiliates lobbying for
deployment of bigger trucks, said the legislation is part
of an effort by the nation’s railroads to stifle truck com-
petition by keeping bigger vehicles off the road. “This
railroad-backed coalition is waging a war on truck pro-
ductivity that is predicated on fear rather than on facts,”
said John Runyan, CTP’s executive director.
Shippers have argued that heavier and longer vehicles
would enable them to move the same amount of goods
with fewer loads, resulting in fewer vehicle-miles driven
and reductions in fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
Railroads weren’t unhappy. “We certainly support
efforts being made by Sen. Lautenberg and other lawmakers seeking to maintain federal truck size and weight
limits on our nation’s already overburdened highways,”
said Holly Arthur, spokeswoman for the Association of
American Railroads.
In an e-mail to DC VELOCITY, Runyan said the shipper
community is “waking and up and uniting like never
before” around the issue. “The battle is just getting started,” he added.
However, the subject got little visibility at the recent
NASSTRAC (National Shippers Strategic Transportation
Council) conference and expo in Orlando, Fla. One of
the few references to the issue came from the group’s
Washington counsel, John Cutler, who noted in a
speech that Lautenberg’s impending retirement might
herald a new day for advocates pushing for the use of
bigger trucks. ;
ground breakers
SWIFT REACTION
The American Trucking Associations,
which represents the nation’s largest
trucking companies, said the
Lautenberg bill would “severely
Port Jersey Logistics, a public warehousing and distribution company,
has completed a 50,000-square-foot expansion of its warehouse facility in Dayton, N.J. … Banneker Industries, a
national supply chain management company, has opened a new regional distribution center in Madison, Ala. … Nordic Cold
Storage has announced the grand opening
of the first phase of its state-of-the-art
storage and blast facility, located just minutes from the Port of Savannah in Georgia.
