The final fiscal 2010 transportation spending bill includes language allowing Maine and Vermont to conduct one-year pilot programs granting heavier six-axle trucks access to interstate highways within their borders. Maximum weight was set at 100,000 pounds in Maine and 90,000 pounds in Vermont. Vermont can also permit trucks hauling certain products such as unprocessed milk, forest products or quarry products to weigh up to 99,000 pounds Current law bans trucks with a gross weight exceeding 80,000 pounds from federal interstate highways.
Increasing allowable truck size and weight limits on our Interstate Highways will benefit our nation's economic productivity, reduce emissions, and improve safety.
At a recent conference hosted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, transportation experts from around the world discussed a soon to be released study that finds the U.S. is lagging in truck productivity, safety and sustainability when compared with Europe, Canada, Australia, and Mexico due to our overly restrictive size and weight limits.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA) supports allowing more productive vehicles to operate on the Interstate Highway System, consistent with sound engineering standards and safety. At present, 6-axle trucks weighing 97,000 pounds are used extensively throughout the industrialized world. Bringing our federal regulations more in-line with international competitors will reduce logistics costs for businesses and consumers, allowing them to better compete in the global economy.
Making trucks more productive is not a new idea. In 1974, Congress used a Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), forerunner of Federal Highway Administration, study to formulate the current Interstate Highway System axle weight limits, bridge formula and even vehicle width. That BPR study called for truck weights up to 105,500 pounds on the Interstate, without need for special permits. So, the actions in Maine and Vermont are just a step closer to the original Interstate design.
Also, many states already permit trucks with weights higher than the federal 80,000-pound limit to operate on state highways. Allowing heavier trucks to use Interstates instead of forcing them onto more accident-prone secondary roads will improve safety. Using more productive trucks also decreases the number of trucks needed to haul the same amount of freight, reducing accident exposure, lowering pavement maintenance costs and mitigating traffic congestion along critical freight corridors. The addition of the sixth-axle preserves stopping distances by adding braking power, and lessens pavement damage by improving weight distribution.
The trucking industry is safer than ever before. Large truck crash, injury and fatality rates have reached their lowest point since the U.S. Department of Transportation began recording statistics in 1975. In 2008 the number of fatalities in truck-involved crashes experienced a record low in a continuing trend that can be expected to accelerate if size and weight reform is accomplished. Safety would improve because truck miles traveled would grow more slowly and result in less crash exposure.
Furthermore, several configurations supported by ATA have the best safety record of any truck. A study sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration found that longer combination vehicles (LCVs) - double and triple-trailer trucks - have a crash rate which is half that of the more common trucks they replaced. These statistics are confirmed by data collected by our members who operate these vehicles.
In addition to safety benefits, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified the use of more productive trucks as an effective strategy to reduce vehicle emissions as part of its SmartWay Transport Partnership Program. Truck size and weight reform will increase fuel efficiency because fewer trips are needed to deliver the same amount of freight. In fact, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) found that a 97,000-pound truck is 17 percent more fuel efficient than an 80,000-pound truck when load capacity is factored in. LCVs are up to 39 percent more fuel efficient.
In another study, ATRI and the Maine Department of Transportation found that expanding the federal gross vehicle weight exemptions to additional portions of the Maine Interstate system would make trucks more fuel efficient and emit less particulate matter and nitrogen oxide as a result.
With U.S. freight tonnage expected to grow 28 percent by 2018, more productive trucks are needed to accommodate this increase. In today's just-in-time logistics system, trucks will continue to haul 70 percent of freight tonnage in the U.S., and nearly 100 percent of consumer products.
To increase productivity, ATA supports allowing 6-axle vehicles to carry 97,000 pounds and allowing states to permit use of longer combination vehicles where appropriate. Making these reforms will allow trucks to deliver the food, clothes, and medicine that we use every day in a more safe, and efficient manner - reducing logistics costs and decreasing the industry's carbon output.