Report Faults Truck Industry Oversight

A government agency that regulates the trucking industry violated federal rules by asking trucking companies to lobby Congress on its behalf, according to a report released Thursday by the Transportation Department’s inspector general.

“The investigation shows the incestuous relationship that has developed between the trucking industry and the government agency charged with enforcing compliance with the rules,” said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee. “Something is very wrong with this picture.”

Wolf last year proposed putting the Office of Motor Carriers, a little-known federal agency now administered by the road-building Federal Highway Administration, under the watchful eye of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

According to the inspector general, high-ranking employees in the Office of Motor Carriers drafted letters opposing Wolf’s proposal that they then asked major trucking companies to send to Congress. They also telephoned heads of trucking companies and asked them to personally contact prominent legislators to oppose the proposal.

Department of Transportation regulations ban agencies from asking industries to lobby Congress on their behalf.

“The actions of OMC’s senior management foster at a minimum an appearance that OMC does not have the ‘arm’s length’ relationship called for between safety regulators and the industry,” said inspector general Kenneth C. Mead.

The office’s parent organization, the Federal Highway Administration, denounced the relationship and will conduct its own investigation to determine penalties, said Kenneth R. Wykle, FHA administrator. He called the action of OMC officials “a serious breach of departmental policy and congressional prohibition against lobbying.”

The agency this week replaced George Reagle, who headed the agency, and assigned him to other duties within the highway administration.

Wolf, who is reintroducing his proposal this year, said he may ask for a Justice Department inquiry. “Were laws broken?” he asked. “At the very least, I believe those in charge at OMC should face tough disciplinary action and even firing for their outrageous conduct.”

Wolf and other supporters say the change in oversight is necessary because trucks continually cause more fatalities every year while the OMC has taken fewer preventive measures.

About 15 people are killed every day in truck crashes, or the equivalent to a major airline crash every two weeks, Wolf said. In 1997, 409 Californians lost their lives as a result of truck accidents.

Wolf complained that OMC has few accurate methods in effect to monitor how many hours truckers have been on the road without a break. Federal rules limit drivers to no more than 10 hours behind the wheel without stopping.

He said more than 1 in 5 trucks on America’s highways operate with defects so serious that they are not safe enough to drive.

However, the trucking industry insists that, while raw numbers of fatalities are up, this is because more trucks are on the road.

“Because the economy is so good, there are more trucks on the road, so of course there are going to be more accidents. That’s a law of numbers, but it doesn’t mean trucks are less safe,” said Warren Hoemann, vice president of the Sacramento-based California Trucking Assn. “We have better safety than ever before and over 1,000 percent increase in road-side checks.”

American trucks aren’t the only safety concern on the roads that OMC is supposed to monitor.Another cause for concern, said Wolf, is the influx of unsafe trucks coming across the Mexican border under terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

With the exception of California, far too few trucks are being inspected at the U.S. border, he said. In 1997, 44% of all the Mexican trucks entering the United States would have failed U.S. safety tests.