Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/619872
PULSE January 2016 | Overdrive | 3 By Max Heine Editorial director mheine@randallreilly.com T here's been a lot to follow with the recent passage of a $305 billion, five-year transportation funding bill. As our story on page 22 details, the measure reforms the Compliance, Safety, Account- ability program and addresses much more of importance to trucking. Within our industry, those topics have out- shone the one problem that's had Congress passing funding patches since 2008: how to keep Highway Trust Fund coffers supplied year after year. Due to factors such as inflation and improved engine efficiency, the HTF's main revenue source, the federal fuels tax, brings in only $34 billion a year toward transpor- tation spending of $50 billion. Many studies have documented mounting infrastructure needs. That means more congestion, pot- holes and dangerous bridges. The last increase in the federal fuels tax was in 1993, when 60 cents would buy what costs a dollar today. During these two decades of negligence by Congress, some states have made up the funding shortfall or encouraged privately developed toll roads and bridges. Other states have done nothing. Piecemeal state efforts fall short of what's neede for a highly integrated network of national highways. Many inside and outside of trucking have lobbied for user-based tax reform to keep the HTF out of the emergency room every few years. With fuel prices so low, there's been an excellent opportunity for politicians to incur much less political fallout from the thankless task of raising the federal gasoline (18.4 cents/gallon) and diesel (24.4 cents/gallon) taxes, or at least indexing the rates to inflation or finding another system in lieu of the problematic fixed cents-per-gallon. Instead, the new bill draws upon these sources (in de- scending order of amounts) to make up the $80 billion short- fall over five years: raiding the Federal Reserve, selling crude oil from the national reserve, increasing Customs Services user fees, privatizing certain tax collection activi- ties and other sources. Only a minor one, lifting the caps on penalties for motor vehicle safety violations, is related to transportation. The new bill did nothing to create stable user-based funding to make our infra- structure program self-sus- taining. A Heritage Founda- tion analysis concludes "the HTF will be close to exhaus- tion in 2021 and will require an even larger bailout to maintain its new levels of higher spending." Congress and the president get credit for passing a bill covering five years and a lot of bases. They get no credit for stuffing a grab bag full of diverse revenue streams and pretending to make ends meet. So much, too little The new highway bill does not address needed reform of the federal fuels tax, the major funding source for the Highway Trust Fund. The tax was last changed for gasoline and diesel in 1993. ject to the rule. "If I have to be monitored," he says, "the government doesn't believe I'm telling the truth with my logbook." In effect, he says, the current "trust but verify" enforce- ment protocol is preferable to the distrust he believes the mandate reflects. Others, however, pointed to the inflexibility of the hours of service rule as perhaps the lynchpin in all the e-log angst. An anony- mous commenter noted the "real issue" was the combi- nation of mandated e-logs and the rigid 14-hour day, which could be a deadly combination for safety: "The motoring public [has] no clue how this law affects their safety" by dis- incentivizing rest in drivers' race to beat the clock. The public is "led to believe this law increases their safety. In fact, it does the opposite." Pre-2000 exemption: Winners and losers Active pre-2000 Class 8 truck population in the U.S., by carrier size 1-4 trucks 62% 5-9 trucks 18% 10-19 trucks 10% 20-49 trucks 6% 50+ trucks 4% RigDig.com/bi Who benefits the most from the pre-2000 model-year exception to FMCSA's ELD mandate? Carriers with one to nine trucks own eight of every 10 active 1999 and older vehicles.