Truckers Frustrated with FMCSA and Bush

Seeing its chance and capitalizing on the timing, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Washington DC, opportunely decided to announce it was extending the unpopular cross-border trucking pilot program for another two years. Most fortuitously for the Administration, Congress was out of town for its summer recess. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), a trade group dedicated to preserving truck driver jobs, was not taken by surprise at the FMCSA’s timing or tactics. The association maintained that continuing the program defies Congressional directives and flies in the face of the nation’s existing laws and regulations, posing additional safety risks to those who hold truck driver jobs and those who share the highways with them.

Todd Spencer, OOIDA’s executive vice president, stated that the Bush Administration has repeatedly shown its willingness to bypass the wishes of Congress and the American public in order to advance the controversial program. He continued that FMCSA’s making the announcement while Congress was out of town was the norm rather than the exception for the agency, a convenient end run around legislators’ reservations and objections. Spencer called the maneuver “Bush league tactics,” an apropos play on words.

Congress has voted more than once to end the program, a position with which the OOIDA heartily agreed on more than one occasion. Congress and the OOIDA both contend that the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)-administered pilot program runs counter to U.S. laws and regulations addressing the safety and security concerns of those who hold truck driving jobs across the nation.

Spencer holds that the Department of Transportation has consistently gone out of its way to foist the pilot program on an unwilling public and on transportation professionals, oblivious to the potential safety and security risks to those who hold truck driver jobs.

A trade association that represents the interests of small-business trucking concerns and professional truck drivers in the United States and the Canadian provinces, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association currently has more than 161,000 members in the United States and Canada. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association was established in 1973 and is headquartered in the greater Kansas City, Missouri area.