Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990 TAG: 9007200587
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards Business Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Chances are a glance in the rear-view mirror would show one of the 53-foot-long double trailers that have been allowed to travel Virginia's roads only since last year. But a look ahead shows a push for even longer and heavier trucks.
A national debate is developing that could well lead to bigger trucks on Virginia highways after 1991. Triple-trailer trucks, almost a third longer than the existing twins, and longer twin-trailers, with each trailer nearly as long as a present single-trailer trucks, may share highways with passenger cars in the future.
The maximum overall length of trucks on the state's interstate roads could grow roughly 50 percent, from 75 feet to 110 feet.
Truck talk promises to gain momentum as the September 1991 expiration of federal highway programs and funding nears and Congress debates what new laws are needed.
Critics - including environmental and consumer groups and railroads - claim that the big trucks are not paying enough now to cover the damage they do to roads.
But the trucking industry says it is paying its fair share. And, if forced to accept higher taxes, truckers will need to "increase productivity" - a euphemism for using bigger trucks.
Clearly, forces are lining up on either side of the debate.
The American Automobile Association, the Teamsters Union and independent truckers oppose bigger trucks on safety grounds. Also, the union says bigger trucks will cost its members jobs, and independent truckers fear they will have to buy bigger equipment in order to compete with the major trucking companies.
Conservation groups say freight should be kept on the rails because trucks do more harm to the environment than railroads.
A report this spring said the big trucks contribute to urban congestion and pollution and use three times as much energy to haul freight as competing railroads. The report came from a coalition of a railroad passengers group, a taxpayers organization and environmental groups.
"Federal freight policies should be re-examined and changed to be more consistent with broader national goals of environmental protection, energy efficiency and safety," the report said.
The railroads say increasing the size of trucks will cost them freight business and mean job layoffs and higher rates for their remaining shippers, which include Virginia coal companies that have little alternative to rail.
"We think as we go into the latter stage of 1990, this may be the most important public policy issue facing the railroad industry," said Frank Wilner, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads.
In 1982, the federal Surface Transportation Assistance Act raised the gross weight limits for trucks in all states to 80,000 pounds.
In 1983, to avoid losing federal highway funds, Virginia agreed to allow twin-trailer trucks on all interstate highways and roughly 1,300 miles of primary roads.
At the urging of shippers and large trucking companies, the Virginia General Assembly in 1989 increased the legal length - but not the weight - of single trailers on Virginia roads from 48 feet to 53 feet, not including the length of the cab, on which Virginia places no limit.
The legislation to increase truck lengths caught the auto association and other opponents by surprise last year.
They probably won't be caught off guard again.
AAA, which said 90 percent of its members opposed the earlier increase, is planning a story on the bigger trucks in an upcoming issue of its newsletter, said Mike Thompson, director of public affairs for AAA of Virginia.
He said the association will oppose any further increase in truck sizes. Roads and bridges are not designed to carry heavier trucks but AAA's big concern is safety, he said. "When these things start rolling [over], if a car is anywhere around, I feel sorry for [its driver]," he said.
Public concern about safety and the numbers of big trucks on Virginia's roads seems to be growing, if letters from newspaper readers are any indication.
A newspaper photo of a June truck collision that killed two truck drivers and a passenger on I-81 "should not have surprised anyone," reader Raymond Lawrence of Roanoke wrote on June 25. "Such carnage, I predict, is only a harbinger of things to come."
Another letter writer, Brooks Leavitt of Martinsville, agreed with Leavitt and wrote on July 3: "Surely everyone . . . has experienced the threat of a monstrous tractor-trailer riding almost bumper-to-bumper behind him, knowing that a sudden stop would inevitably cause a devastating accident."
In 1989, according to preliminary figures from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, 54 of 68 people killed in tractor-trailer crashes in Virginia were not riding in trucks. The 3,657 tractor-trailer crashes last year accounted for 2.6 percent of all such accidents and the 61 fatal crashes, some involving more than one victim, represented 6.7 percent of all fatal collisions.
There were no fatal crashes of twin tractor-trailers last year in Virginia. In 1988 there was one fatality involving a twin tractor-trailer among 100 deaths involving tractor-trailers.
Jim Johnston, president of the 14,000-member Iowa-based Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association, said his group has some real concerns about permitting larger trucks and equipment because of the threats to highways as well as safety.
The nation's highways aren't built to support the longer and heavier trucks, said Johnston, who has had personal experience driving triple-trailer rigs. The first rule in pulling triple trailers is "don't look into your mirror," because you'll start trying to compensate for the movement of the truck's rear end, he said.
The Teamsters Union, which represents truck drivers, is generally opposed to the use of triple-trailer trucks for a variety of safety reasons, said Vernon McDougall, the union's acting director of safety and health. McDougall said he has heard rumors that a push will be under way next year for larger and heavier trucks.
Bob Crouse, president of Houston Motor Express, a small trucking company at Elliston, said his drivers pull the twin 28-foot trailers, but he believes twin 48-foot trailers are stretching the concept. "You don't back those guys; you have to go forward," he said.
Under a grandfather clause in federal law, seven states - all in the West - already permit twin 48-foot trailers and weights up to 129,000 pounds. Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio, which don't qualify for the grandfather provision, allow the extra large twin trailers on roads that don't get federal funds.
Thirteen states, most of them in the West, plus Indiana and Ohio, permit triple 28-foot trailers as heavy as 134,000 pounds.
Supporters of the bigger trucks say they have a good safety record in the states where they've been permitted. The triple trailers have had a better safety record than other trucks, said John Reith, director of highway policy for the American Trucking Association. That's because, he said, the triples travel for the most part only between major terminals that are located next to interstate highways.
In Utah, where the triple trailers have been permitted on interstates for the past 20 years, they have been involved in only one fatal crash, said Norm Lindgren, a spokesman for the Utah Transportation Department. The state requires the trucks be parked in high winds and snowy weather, Lindgren said.
At this point, there is no clear initiative to seek federal legislation that would increase the length and weight of trucks nationwide, but the trucking industry's critics are conviced that one is coming.
If there is a substantial increase in federal highway user taxes, the industry probably would seek to offset that with productivity gains, said Reith. His ATA is a federation of 51 state trucking associations and represents roughly 30,000 trucking companies nationwide.
Reith said it has been the shippers who have promoted the 53-foot trailer, which most states - except 11 along the East Coast - have approved. Beyond that, shippers have not put any pressure on the trucking industry to provide bigger trucks, he said.
While the trucking industry says it's waiting for a call for more taxes before asking for bigger trucks, the railroads' Wilner said he believes it "may also work the back door as well." Wilner thinks the big trucking companies may readily agree to a tax increase in order to create an argument for bigger trucks.
If the ATA is not interested in bigger trucks, Wilner said he wonders why the association's Trucking Research Institute commissioned a recent study examining the productivity and consumer benefits of longer combination trucks.
The ATA study, released in June, looked at the possible use of triple trailers and medium and long-length twin trucks on the nation's interstate highways and some primary roads. The report concluded that such a system could save shippers $4 billion yearly, most of which would eventually be passed on to consumers. Safety would benefit, the study said, through reduced truck miles and accident rates.
Anthony Garrett of California-based CRASH, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, notes that ATA President Thomas J. Donahue told a national television audience on CNN's "Cross-fire" on Memorial Day that he wants all the productivity increases he can get.
Donahue submitted written testimony to Congress, telling the House Surface Transportation Subcommittee in March, it should designate the 44,000-mile interstate system and another 120,000 miles of state highways for use by trucks of 135,000 pounds, Garrett said.
Giving a boost to the call for bigger trucks is a July 2 report by the National Research Council, written at Congress' request. The report says an estimated $4.3 billion - $300,000 more than the ATA estimate - could be saved yearly if the states were allowed to permit heavier trucks on certain roads. The government report says if all states gave the go-ahead to heavier weights, the railroads would lose about 2.2 percent of their traffic, but the railroad industry estimates the loss at four times that much.
On the state level, various sources agree, no one is pushing for increases in truck sizes beyond the 53-foot trailers approved by the legislature last year. Del. V. Earl Dickinson, D-Mineral, chairman of the House of Delegates Roads and Internal Navigation Committee, said he knows of no initiative in Virginia for bigger trucks and if one comes he expects it from outside the state.
There is some irony in the fact that the call by the railroads and other interest groups for trucks to pay more of a share of highway maintenance costs might, itself, become the vehicle the trucking industry drives toward bigger trucks on all U.S. highways.
A report this spring by the National Association of Railroad Passengers, Friends of the Earth, the National Taxpayers Union, and the Sierra Club cites a 1982 federal study that says the heaviest trucks pay for only 65 percent of the highway damage they cause, resulting in a 35 percent subsidy for those vehicles. "It's time to get heavy trucks off the back of the taxpayer," David Keating, executive vice president of the Taxpayers Union, said at the time of the report's release.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is studying who should have responsibility for road costs in Virginia and will report to legislators later in the year. Virginia charges $1,220 a year for the largest trucks that operate for-hire solely in the state. If the truck operates outside Virginia, the registration fees are shared with other states. The State Corporation Commission charges trucks a $10 annual fee no matter where they operate.
The railroads support a weight-distance tax as a "first step" in recovering the costs of road damage from trucks. A study authored by Wilner of the American Association of Railroads says economists view the taxes a "second best" strategy for recovering costs behind a user charge that also would take into account indirect costs such as road congestion and noise and air pollution.
But Wilner said the railroads are not so much interested in increasing taxes for truckers as in stopping the growth in the size of trucks. Absolutely no societal benefit is to be gained by increasing truck sizes, he said.
If twin 48-foot trailers with a 135,000-pound gross limit are approved, the railroads could expect to lose 9 percent of their traffic and 52 percent of their pre-tax profits immediately, Wilner said. Legislation permitting the bigger trucks would lead to a massive new wave of track abandonments and job losses, he said.
The trucking industry would oppose any increase in taxes until the $12 billion balance in the federal highway trust fund is drawn down, Reith said. The ATA has criticized weight-distance taxes as being inefficient and subject to underreporting.
While opposing the longer trucks, the independent truckers' chief, Johnston, speaks against raising current truck taxes.
"The fact is, trucks don't pay anything, people do," Johnston said. Taxes on a truck are a cost of doing business and like a truck's purchase, cost will be passed on to the consumer.
Highway allocation formulas don't take into account that trucks don't need fancy rest areas or beltways around cities, Johnston said. "The fact is we don't need good highways," he said. "The trucking industry can operate on gravel roads if that's what's available."
What's really taking the freight from the railroads is their inefficiency, Johnston said. "The railroads have just never been able to set up an efficient system."
FOR THE RECORD
published correction ran Monday, July 23, 1990
In 1989 the Virginia General Assembly approved an increase in the size of commercial truck-trailers permitted on state highways from 48 feet to 53 feet (not including the tractor). Because of a reporter's error, a story in Sunday's newspaper - in making reference to this increase - incorrectly applied it to double trailers. Under federal pressure, the General Assembly in 1983 allowed twin trailers, each 28 feet long, on Virginia interstate highways and some primary roads.
Memo: correction