PUC Weighing New Controls on Trucking

What the state Public Utilities Commission decides to do may have a significant impact on trucking safety in California.

The five-member panel is considering a recommendation by one of its administrative law judges that will, in effect, steadily increase trucking rates.

If adopted, the recommendation--a shift away from state deregulation of the industry that began six years ago--presumably will result in carriers being assured enough money to hire skilled drivers and properly maintain their equipment.

That, in turn, will help improve safety on the roads, the recommendation suggests.

“Destructive rate-cutting among carriers has contributed to the chaos and uncertainty which is prevalent in the for-hire motor carrier industry,” Administrative Law Judge William Turkish said in his 116-page report to the commission.

‘Negative Effect’ on Safety

He said intense competition that has marked the deregulated industry has led to a reduction in the amount of money spent on truck maintenance, resulting in “a negative effect on highway safety.”

Turkish’s report came down much more strongly than expected in favor of tougher regulations and is expected to touch off debate within the PUC and in affected industries.

“The problem (of rising truck accidents) is serious enough to cause the commissioners to take a hard second look at trucking deregulation,” said Vic Weisser, head of the PUC transportation section.

PUC Chairman Don Vial is a strong advocate of tighter regulations.

Of the other commissioners, observers say, two are generally considered in favor of deregulation, one is leaning toward tougher rules for safety’s sake and the other is likely to prefer some sort of compromise.

“It’s not unlikely that we could have a split vote--2-2-1--and no decision,” said one source close to the commission who asked not to be identified.

Decision Expected in Spring

The commission is to hear arguments on the recommendation and make a decision by next spring.

Mike Parkhurst, head of the 30,000-member Independent Truckers Assn. in Los Angeles, said he would welcome minimum rates being set for truckers.

“In the past few years,” he said, “it has been almost as if the trucking industry has a death wish because of all the rate undercutting.”

But he doubts that such action will help make the roads safer.

“Safety can never properly be attacked through regulation of trucks,” Parkhurst said. “If you want to improve safety, you have to do it out there (on the road). You have to get the word out that if a driver has an accident, his company will be heavily fined and face severe restrictions.”

He is also skeptical about singling out the trucking industry to try to improve safety by regulating rates.

“It didn’t make any difference in safety when the airline industry was deregulated in 1977,” he said. “And the government doesn’t come in and say that because one clothing manufacturer charges less for his product than another, his employees have less healthful working conditions.”

Tougher rate regulations are not the only options being considered by state officials.

Another possibility is trying to convince the Legislature to allocate more money for the California Highway Patrol to beef up mechanical inspections of trucks.

Because of budget cutbacks, staffing in the CHP’s safety unit dwindled by 10.8% between 1975 and 1980 to a low of 231 employees.

As a partial result of those cuts, the agency in 1979 abandoned its comprehensive mechanical inspections in favor of limited checks of items deemed the most critical--brakes, tires, wheels, suspension.

The limited checks take only 15 minutes, compared to 40 minutes for the more thorough ones.

Limited Checks

Although staffing in the CHP unit rose to 303 at the end of 1984, the agency still does only the limited checks. CHP spokesman Kent Milton said the CHP feels the limited checks are good because they can handle more trucks in less time with less staff.

Of 244,100 critical-item checks conducted last year, 703,700 violations--an average of 2.9 per vehicle--were discovered. With the exception of a decline in 1981, the rate has been climbing since 1980, when it was 2.5 violations per vehicle.

A major stumbling block to finding a solution to the rising number of traffic accidents remains the paucity of information to determine exactly who is at fault.

Bits and pieces of data are scattered throughout several agencies. One major source of statistics is the CHP, but even that information, as good as it is, has gaps.

For instance, the CHP statistics do not reveal:

- Whether trucks that are involved in accidents are parcel delivery vans or huge tractor-trailers.

- Whether the drivers are hourly employees just putting in their eight hours or owner-operators who are paid by the load and hence may be pushing themselves too fast and too long.

- Whether those who are in accidents are federally controlled interstate operators or short-haul intrastate truckers who can be regulated by the California PUC.

- How many hours truckers have been on the road when an accident occurs.

As a result, the Highway Patrol--under pressure from the PUC and organizations such as the California Trucking Assn. and the auto club--is revising its record-keeping to try to provide those answers.

The agency hopes to have its new data-gathering system operating by the end of this year, CHP Capt. Dick Noonan said.

But, Weisser said, it may be as long as two to three years after that before officials will have enough information to spot trends and feel comfortable about allocating blame.