Improvements at the Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry will reroute haz-mat and oversize loads on a  150-mile detour to cross the northern border.

The Ontario Ministry of Transport and Transport Canada recently granted $8.8 million to improve infrastructure at the Windsor terminal and dock. The changes are expected to increase the ferry’s number of trips to more than the current ten trips daily.

The ferry transports about 40 to 50 haz-mat and oversize trucks across the American-Canadian border daily, since such loads are not permitted to use the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel or the Ambassador Bridge. For the duration of the renovations, trucks will need to use the Blue Water Bridge crossing from Port Huron, Mich., to Sarnia, Ontario.

Source: TruckingInfo.com: Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry to Close for Improvement Project

Long Beach Port has been blasted by an environmental group and labor organizations, such as the Teamsters, for its willingness to treat independent truckers fairly under the Clean Trucks Program. According to The Journal of Commerce, the Natural Resources Defense Council wants Long Beach City Council to review the settlement between the port and the American Trucking Associations (ATA) last month.

NRDC wrote a letter to the council opposing the registration agreement, which would allow compliant owner-operators and independent truckers to load at the port.  The group said the settlement “erodes the environmental benefits of the clean truck program,” and wants the concession agreement reinstated, like at the Los Angeles Port. A convoy to protest L.A. Port’s harsh stance recently rolled up I-710 and past the L.A. City Hall, trying to bring attention to the unfair requirement.

The Oct. 19 settlement dropped the controversial motor carrier concessions requirements, which force drivers to become employees of larger companies. Instead, the truckers would still have to meet strict emissions standards, but would still retain independence. Under the concession requirements, owner-operators and independent truckers would be shut out from the port by 2013, whether or not they make costly upgrades or purchase new, environmentally-compliant equipment.

The heart of the matter may the unionizing issue. Direct employees can be unionized, explained the JOC article. Owner-operators legally can’t. David Pettit, lead attorney for the NRDC in Los Angeles, said the employee-driver requirement isn’t an issue with their complaint, but rather that the harbor commission failed to review the settlement’s compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, as state and city law requires.

Both the federal 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals and the federal district court in L.A. ruled earlier this year that forcing independents into employment by motor carriers was illegal. The Long Beach deputy city attorney is looking into the complaint.

Source: The Journal of Commerce: Environment Group Wants Clean-Truck Review

A Minnesota congressman has revived pressure to remove flammable wet lines, pipes underneath cargo tankers, saying they pose a high risk to motorists who may be involved in crashes with the haz-mat trucks.

But members of the tanker industry say the odds of fatal wet lines accidents is around 1-in- 30 million. Barbara Windsor, president of the tanker company Hahn Transportation, said the industry’s record of safety shows there’s no justification for requiring equipment to purge wet lines.

Able to carry up to 50 gallons of cargo, often petroleum fuels, wet lines can rupture during accidents and release their cargo. Representative James Oberstar introduced a measure as part of a reauthorization bill for the federal haz-mat safety program. Other measures include tightening up haz-mat permitting and adding more federal investigators for hazardous materials transportation.

Of the 184 occurrences of wet lines being damaged or ruptured in the past decade, 13 deaths and seven cases of injury have been recorded. According to PHMSA, all seven injured and six of the 13 fatalities were a result of spills from the wet lines, rather than from collision impact.

Windsor, who is also first vice-chairman of the American Trucking Associations, said during that timeframe there were in excess of 180 million shipments of flammable liquids. Getting struck by lightning was 6,000 times more likely than being killed in a wet lines accident, she testified to a congressional panel Nov. 16.

Balancing the risks posed against the costs of retrofitting tankers with a pumping system. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has long had wet line prohibition as a goal. Five years ago, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) analyzed the benefits and costs of eliminating flammables in wet lines, but tossed the idea as cost-prohibitive. It did, however, say in September that it will begin new rulemaking to prevent flammable liquid transportation in “unprotected product piping” for current and new tankers, though the administration hasn’t published that yet.

The industry and PHMSA disagree on the cost and scope of equipment that would be affected by such a ruling. PHMSA says 15,000 tankers would bear a cost of $4,000 each, but the industry estimates the reality would be 26,000 tanker trailers bearing a $5,000 load for retrofitting.

Source: TruckingInfo.com:  Pressure Grows to Prohibit Flammables in Tanker Wet Lines. Oliver B. Patton.

Claiming four Louisville-area trucking companies are competing unfairly with companies that pay higher union wages, Teamsters Local 89 picketed the carriers Tuesday, reported the Courier-Journal. The union named Pegasus Transportation, Hammond Transportation, Summitt Trucking and TDXRESS as the four targeted.

The union tries to maintain a standard of wages and benefits for their members, but those companies don’t use union employees pay “well below the standard,” said union president Fred Zuckerman.

The picketing didn’t affect Summitt Trucking, said company president Dave Summitt. This  wasn’t the first Teamster pressure against the Clarksville, Ind., dry van and reefer company.

Summitt said the wages and benefits the company pays its approximately 350 employees are “fair” for the current business climate, otherwise the carrier wouldn’t have any employees.

Source: Courier-journal.com: Teamsters to picket 4 trucking, transportation companies Tuesday. (updated)

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) meeting in Sacramento this week will include presentations on diesel emissions and air quality legislation, reports Land Line Magazine. At least one alliance of motor carriers plans to be in attendance.

The Nov. 19-20 meeting will include updates on California’s Bill 32 implementation. The legislation, from 2006, gave the board much of its clout responsible for recent stringent trucking regulations.

The carrier coalition West State Alliance (WSA) plans to attend the meeting. WSA has criticized the board for the postponement of a workshop in October that was to discuss the aggressive emissions enforcement’s economic impact. A WSA board member, Bill Abudi, said the tough new regulations haven’t been matched with grants for smaller carriers.

Truckers want to reduce diesel pollution, Abudi pointed out, and are the first people affected by it.  But clean air and workable business options must be balanced.

Source: OOIDA’s Land Line Magazine: This Week’s CARB meeting to hit on trucking-related topics. Chalire Morasch.

Trucking conditions continued to improve for a third month in a row, according to FTR Associates, a firm that analyses the trucking industry. The firm’s Trucking Conditions Index (TCI) for October, which combines statistics for the trucking industry into one measurement, reached the highest number since November 2008, the group reported Monday.

But at minus 16.4, that number was still well below neutral zero, indicating a continued struggle from the “steep downturn seen late last year and into 2009,” said FTR president, Eric Starks.

“Real acceleration in the trucking fundamentals that we track for this index will likely wait for a substantial recovery in volumes and capacity utilization which we don’t expect to occur for at least another year,” Starks said.

The Nashville, Ind. firm uses five trucking industry statistics to analyze the overall health of the trucking industry, reported monthly on its The Trucker’s Dashboard.

Source: FTR Associates: TCI Index Improves But Remains Well Below Neutral. (press release, Nov. 16, 2009)

Starting Nov. 18, the Oregon Department of Transportation will perform an 24-hour truck weighing and inspections on I-5, reported Land Line Magazine. The motor carrier agency intends the three-day intensive operation as a way to not only weight regulations, but to educate drivers about the dangers of unevenly distributed load weights, and regulatory mistakes such as expired permits.

While most motor carriers and drivers comply with Oregon’s highway laws, an “intensive enforcement event like this can help identify those who are not,” said ODOT motor carrier field services manager Ed Scrivner.

More than two million trucks were weighed in the state last year using static scales, with nearly another million and a half weighed on in-motion scales by the state’s Green Light pre-clearance system. Scrivner said the concentrated activities, while the same type that the staff undertook each day, helped to emphasize the priority ODOT places on safety and weight compliance.

Source: Land Line Magazine: Truck weight blitz this week in Oregon

After receiving several separate petitions from truck and brake manufacturers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it will reconsider or amend portions of its requirements for truck stopping distances.

Four main issues of the final rule were called into question by the Truck Manufacturers Association, Bendix Spicer Foundation Brake, the Heavy Duty Brake Manufacturers Council of the Heavy Duty Manufacturers Association, and ArvinMeritor. The agency also received four separate petitions in support of the TMA request, these from Peterbilt, Kenworth, Navistar and Daimler Trucks North America.

In regards to trucks under 59,600 GVWR, an omission of a specified the date for compliance with Table IIa would have subjected these vehicles to a Nov. 24, 2009 compliance date. That’s not the intention, said NHTSA, as the omission was accidental and will be amended. The vehicles in this class have until Aug. 1, 2013 to meet these requirements.

The administration will also rectify a term discrepancy for “Typical Three-Axle Tractors”. The definition used in the preamble differed from the term’s use in the text of the regulation. NHTSA also agreed that since fuel tank load specs weren’t covered in the notice of rulemaking, they would remove the specification from the rule on procedural grounds.

The agency is working on a response for the fourth issue, which involves required distances for stopping at reduced speeds.

Source: TruckingInfo.com: NHTSA Responds to Truck Stopping Distances Petitions

A change in Boston’s truck route, in which Mayor Thomas M. Menino eliminated daytime permits for gas and fuel trucks,  has been ruled illegal by the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration, reported the Boston Globe.

The federal agency said the city never requested or received approval to ban haz-mat loads from passing through, which is FMCSA’s jurisdiction.

The route change effectively shifts danger to other communities, as evidenced by a 2007 accident on a residential street in Everett, when a rerouted tanker overturned and sent a flood of burning gasoline down the street. Massachusetts Motor Transportation Association’s executive director, Anne Lynch, said the ban amounted to an ‘export of risk’ by sending fuel trucks into Everett and surrounding communities to avoid Boston.

“He took traffic that should have gone through the city and rerouted it through 27 towns,” said Lynch. “You cannot export your risk to another community.”

Boston’s transportation commissioner Thomas J. Tinlin said the change was made to keep the city from being a convenient throughway for fuel deliveries bound elsewhere, like Hyannis. “Why should that person be able to cut through our city and put our citizens at risk?” he asked, saying the DOT had issue with how the city went about the rerouting process, not with the reroute itself.

To legally make the change to routes, Boston must establish a reason for the change, look at several other factors, and consult with neighboring communities.

Source: The Boston Globe: US slaps Boston’s rerouting of trucks. Stephanie Ebbert.

Montana’s director of the Department of Transportation announced that tractor-trailers will still be allowed to run Hwy. 35 near Flathead Lake. The decision was made after several truck-only accidents occurred on the narrow road. Haz-mat loads will also still be allowed access to the roads, reports the Billings Gazette.

A truck wreck in April 2008 spilled thousands of gallons of gasoline near the lake area, requiring evacuation of five family homes that lasted more than a year. The accident spurred residents’ requests for restricted or banned truck travel on the state highway, which runs on the lake’s eastern shore. Area residents have called for restricting truck traffic to the lake’s west-shore highway, U.S. 93, which is both more modern and wider.

Three more single-truck accidents have occurred along Hwy. 35 in the past year and a half.

Source: The Billings Gazette: DOT director says truck traffic will continue on Flathead highway. Assoc. Press.