Packard’s Trucking Reform Bill Proposes Further Deregulation

With wide support from shippers and carriers, Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) Thursday introduced an ambitious trucking reform bill designed to strip layers of regulation from an industry infamous for its archaic and often absurd rules.

The wide-ranging legislation has the backing of the Bush Administration and a majority of the Interstate Commerce Commission. More important, increasing numbers of carriers have decided to support the bill, whose major provisions would dramatically change the way they do business.

Its most fundamental provision would be the transfer of economic regulation of the industry solely to the ICC. This would help eliminate the Byzantine system of overlapping federal, state and local laws that result in expensive, even bizarre, freight-hauling practices.

For example, according to industry information, it costs the American Fire Hydrant Co. of Beaumont, Tex. $603 to ship a fire hydrant from Beaumont to Texarkana, Tex. but the same hydrant costs only $297 to ship to Texarkana, Ark., across the state line.

“The motor carrier industry is a classic example of how efficiency has been sacrificed to government regulation,” Packard said.

The bill would also simplify the licensing procedures, do away with tariff filing requirements and allow the ICC, on a case-by-case basis, to exempt a carrier from any ICC regulation.

Finally, the bill offers an administrative solution to a $27-million backlog of court cases in which shippers are seeking settlements from bankrupt carriers.

Packard said the legislation would not affect the ability of the states to regulate safety, carry out programs to eliminate drug and alcohol abuse by truck drivers or to restrict the use of large double- and triple-trailer trucks.

ICC Chairman Edward J. Philbin said that, although regulation of the industry was eased by an earlier reform bill in 1980, “there is concern that the remaining regulations are a real burden on the industry and the economy.”

Packard said the legislation is supported by the Department of Transportation, the Department of Justice, the Office of Management and Budget and the White House Council on Competitiveness.