State governments, especially California, need to understand they can’t “mess with trucking,” said Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations.
Singling out California’s meal and rest break rules that are causing problems for truckers in California, Spear said that ATA would be “stepping out of our comfort zone” to help its state trucking association partners fight these kinds of rules that hurt trucking. Noting that trucking is interstate commerce, Spear said ATA would sue California over the issue which he argued compromised safety and only benefited “trial attorneys.” He also pointed out proposals in New Hampshire to charge tolls on bridges in the state only to trucks.
As for the federal governments, Spear said that ATA needed “under stand them. We have to work with them.” The roads and bridges we all drive on are “not political.”
The truck industry is too big and too important not to engage, Spear said, noting that trucks move 70% of domestic freight and over 70% of NAFTA freight. As for changes to the NAFTA or other trade agreements, he said, “if you tweak it and do it wrong, we’ll be the first people to feel it.”
On autonomous vehicles, Spear said that while the technologies were promising, the media hype indicating driverless trucks are in the near future are “bunk.”
“We are not talking about driverless, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.” After all he noted, jetliners are capable of taking off, flying and landing without anyone in the cockpit, “but we don’t do it.”
With driverless trucks way off in the future, the industry still needs to find more drivers. Spear said the industry needs a way to get to 18-21 year-olds – not to let them drive, but to get them in the industry, where they can be trained to be drivers, maybe at age 20, rather than the current 21-year-old age limit.
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