Give truckers an inch, they'll take a ton-mile: every liberalization has been a launching pad for further increases

Railway Age, May, 1997 by Frank N. Wilner

We all know of Michael Jackson the rock star. Many of us know of Michael Jackson the single-malt scotch expert. Railroad stockholders and employees would do best to ignore the first two and concentrate on the American Trucking Associations' Senior Vice President Michael Jackson, who aspires to eradicate federal and state limitations on the operation of long-combination vehicles (LCVs).

Jackson proposes detente in exchange for "minimal" LCV liberalizations--and rail officials are wary. They should be. As industry. consultant Leonard Lee Lane observes: "Every liberalization of truck size and weight limits has become a launching pad for further increases."

In 1974 truckers used the energy crisis to convince Congress to grant states the option to increase maximum gross-vehicle weights by 10% to 80,000 pounds. In 1982 Congress made the 80,000-pound limitation mandatory on federal-aid highways.

So that truckers might gain full economic advantage of those higher weights, Congress ordered states not to restrict trailer length below 48 feet for singles or 28-1/2 feet each for doubles.

Truckers then convinced individual states to permit operation of 53-foot singles. Expansion of multiple trailers followed as truckers induced previously cantious state legislatures to adopt the more liberal restrictions of their neighbors.

The tide reversed in 1991 when the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) prohibited states from enacting further truck size and weight liberalizations. This coincided with a fundamental shift in public attitude as operators of smaller automobiles rebelled against sharing increasingly congested and deteriorating highways with growing numbers of heavy trucks.

With the congressionally enacted freeze on LCVs there commenced a 14% increase in railroad intermodal volume as motor carriers of every description shifted a million more trailer and container loads annually from the highways to the rails.

Now, with a likelihood that Congress will take the Highway Trust Fund off budget--where dedicated trust fund balances no longer will be used to offset general-fund spending--more billions of dollars annually will be directed toward road construction. And since they underpay their highway maintenance and repair responsibility, it is no coincidence that subsidized truckers wish to entice railroads as fellow travelers in a partial thaw of the LCV freeze that will discourage intermodalism.

Discussion of highway subsidies is unavoidable when considering LCV liberalization. Major railroads alone pay the cost of eliminating congestion on their privately owned and maintained track.

Yet fuel taxes fail miserably at capturing from big-rig operators the cost of exponential pavement damage caused by higher axle loads. Only weight-distance user charges arc efficient, but truckers have been successful at scrapping them in all but a few western states where the push for repeal continues.

Certainly railroads and trackers want to cool LCV hostilities and devote more attention to customers. But ATA's proposal may carry. too high a price.

Although ATA has no intention--currently--of pursuing operating authority for 53-foot doubles, it does advocate expanding the operating range for 40-foot doubles and 28-foot triples and wants Congress to grant states renewed unilateral authority, to thaw ISTEA's LCV freeze.

In fact, ATA's proposal would permit 28-foot triples on highways stretching west to Chicago from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. It would allow expanded use of 40-foot doubles and 28-foot triples on 1-15 in California between San Bernardino and the Nevada state line, on I-40 in Texas and New Mexico, and on highways across Missouri and Nebraska. The ATA proposal also would result in operation of Rocky Mountain doubles (a 53-foot unit coupled to a 28-footer) in the Pacific Northwest and ratchet maximum truck weights to 129,000 pounds in nearly a dozen states west of the Mississippi River.

ATA President Tom Donohue wrote rail CEOs that the financial impact of the proposal would be "extremely modest." But the LCV expansion would be concentrated on highways parallel to rail corridors where the shift of traffic from highways to rail has been most dramatic.

Donohue says acceptance of ATA's proposal will "avoid a protracted, expensive, and damaging battle with trucking partners." It is true that ATA mischief-making with regard to rail safety issues could be troublesome.

And it is never quite politic to fight with one's best (and least captive) customers.

So should the olive branch proffered by the truckers' Mr. Jackson be accepted? History records that every previous trucker entreaty with regards to truck size and weight limitations has been a Trojan Horse.