“I think the taxing issues. Trucking gets taxed in so many ways. There’s licensing and then on top of that you pay excise tax. There are taxes on fuel, and we pay taxes on our underground storage tanks. Plus we have to purchase insurance on those items. There’s the road use taxes and then you have to turn around and pay tolls. I would think that taxes are the government regulations that should be looked at first.”
Richard Ahrens, president
Peete Freight Line Inc.,
Woodstock, Ill.
“The hours of service. They’re trying to cut it up even lower than it already is. In the situation we’re in – we’re a wholesale service provider, and we deliver to lumber yards – we can only deliver from 8 to 5. This creates a problem. There’s so much dead time in these yards, and we may need to make eight stops in a day’s time. You may only be getting 6 hours under your belt in drive time each day. We could be at end of 5 days, but only have driven 36 hours in the week. The DOT needs to allow more time for down time or remote time. Waiting counts against your 15 hours. You only get 15 hours of work a day, which includes 10 hours of drive time. There should be some sort of a waiver for deliveries, like severe weather conditions where you can log an extra two hours of driving. We’re killing ourselves. We may have only driven 36 to 42 hours a week, but the driver has spent 60 hours working. He can’t log off duty because we pay our drivers hourly. If the driver is sitting one to one-and-a-half hours, he has to log it and it counts against his 60 hours. If he doesn’t log it and we pay him, then we have a problem with the DOT since our time sheets have to match log books.”
Kyle Kos, transportation manager
Reid & Wright, Broomfield, Co.
“All of them. It’s really hard to say, but I think that something will have to be done about the IFTA taxes. They need to lower it, especially with the price of fuel going back up. They also need to do something to make shippers go along with the fuel surcharge.”
Bob Sheron, terminal manager
TDQ Expediting. Taylor, Mich.
“Fuel taxes, especially with Michigan looking at a 4 cent increase per gallon. It needs to remain as is and they need to get their education dollars elsewhere.”
Kenneth Elliot, CFO
NTB Inc., Byron Center, Mich.
“Probably the hours of service. I’m in the wrecker business. It’s a whole different ballgame than the over-the-road companies. It really needs to be looked into. In our business, we’re not as regular as they are. In our business we may sit around 3 to 4 hours and do nothing, but it counts against your time. And then when your time runs out, you’ve got a call. It hurts our business.”
Ben Lyle, president
Lyle Wrecker Service, Haleyville, Ala.
“The hours-of-service criteria. It limits the highway drivers and the amount of revenue the truck generates each day. They’re telling the drivers that they can only drive 10 hours a day, but if you take the modern conveniences in a truck, and you consider that he’s parked for the better part of the day with nothing to do, it doesn’t make sense. Nobody wants a tired driver on the road, but they need to re-evaluate that.”
Scott Roberts, truck manager
F & R Enterprises Inc., North Bend, Ore.
“We’re a broker and I would like them to change the way they handle sub-haulers. They hold the broker responsible for drug testing, even though a sub-hauler may work only one day out of a year. They need to have a centralized drug testing program where everyone reports to one agency.”
Bill Barney, operations manager
Frank C. Alegre Trucking Inc., Lodi, Calif.
