Maine senators’ bid to raise truck weight limits bogged down

A bill that would raise weight limits on trucks in Maine to 100,000 pounds faces an uphill fight in Washington in this election year.

Maine’s two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, have introduced legislation allowing for a two-year pilot program allowing 100,000-pound weight limits for trucks as long as fuel remains above $3.50 a gallon. Currently trucks are limited to 80,000 pounds on most interstates, although as many as 29 states have exemptions to that limit.

Truck sizes and weights are always an emotional issue in Washington. In this abbreviated congressional election-year calendar, the Maine bill is considered a longshot. Congress will soon break for a five-week August recess and returns briefly in September before taking its usual October break for re-election purposes. The bill, S-30-59, is called the "Commercial Truck Fuel Savings Demonstration Act of 2008." It is currently under consideration by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, but its future is unclear.

Maine is a special case. Because of the importance of the state’s lumber industry, Maine has a partial weight limit exemption in the southern half of the state which allows trucks up to 100,000 pounds. But trucks heading into Canada, where weight limits are 140,000 pounds, usually run on secondary state roads with a 100,000-pound weight limit where this exemption ends.

"Current laws that force trucks carrying more than 80,000 pounds off the federal Interstate system and onto smaller, two-lane roads simply do not make sense," Sen. Collins said in a statement. "This legislation would less the fuel-cost burden on truckers by putting these trucks back on the federal Interstate system where they belong."

One of the reasons the Maine exemption is considered a longshot is Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and longtime opponent of any increase in truck sizes and weights. Lautenberg and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., have introduced a competing bill that would preserve the current 80,000 weight limit for trucks on Interstates.

Lautenberg calls the idea of 97,000-pound trucks "a recipe for disaster." McCaskill says allowing longer and heavier trucks "defies common sense." On the House side, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., has long been against longer and heavier trucks, though he is calling for more studies and information on the issue.

The American Trucking Associations has taken no stance on the Maine bill. However, ATA quietly is laying the groundwork for what is expected to be a big push in the next Congress for greater use of longer combination vehicles. In its recent initiative to increase "sustainability" for the trucking industry, ATA included the use of "more productive truck combinations" as part of its six-point plan for the industry’s future.

The longer combination vehicles are backed by industry giants such as J.B. Hunt, Schneider National, UPS Freight, FedEx Freight and other large carriers. Citing Department of Transportation studies, the ATA says increasing weight limits to 97,000 pounds on single trucks and allowing heavier double 33-foot trailers in more states would save more than 20.5 billion gallons of fuel over 10 years. Allowing more longer combination vehicles has the potential to save 6.1 billion gallons of fuel while reducing carbon dioxide levels, ATA claims.

Railroads and safety advocates can be counted to come out in force against any such plan. But there are signs rail opposition may be softening. Truckers are the rails’ largest customers these days. Recently one railroad chief executive, Matthew K. Rose of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, indicated that if truckers were allocated a higher share of road taxes for greater use of longer and heavier trucks, he would not oppose it.

In any event, the push for longer and heavier trucks can be expected to go into high gear in 2009.