Senate to consider pilot program to extend truck weight in Maine

It’s an exemption that first began with the logging industry and has since extended to other goods, according to Brian Parke, vice president of the Maine Motor Transport Association (MMTA).

The Trucker Staff

9/15/2009

WASHINGTON — From Washington to Augusta and perhaps beyond, the eyes of the transportation industry are on Capitol Hill as the Senate today resumes consideration H.R. 3288, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, which includes a proposal to establish a one-year pilot program to allow tractor-trailers to exceed the 80,000-pound federal truck size and weight limit on Maine’s interstate highways.

Proponents say the proposal makes sense in that it would extend the current six-axle 100,000-pound limit already allowed on the Maine Turnpike, which extends from Kittery near the state’s southern border with New Hampshire to Augusta, and is also designated at Interstate 95.

It’s an exemption that first began with the logging industry and has since extended to other goods, according to Brian Parke, vice president of the Maine Motor Transport Association (MMTA).

Motor carriers have learned they can be more productive with the heavier trucks, he said.

Proponents note that heavier than 80,000-pound trucks are already permitted on interstate highways in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York, as well as the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec.

The Maine Turnpike designation ends at Augusta, but I-95 proceeds another 200 miles north.

The MMTA, the Maine Department of Transportation and the Maine Department of Public Safety are among the groups pushing for the pilot program.

Also supporting the pilot program is Coalition for Transportation Productivity, an advocacy group of more than 100 shippers dedicated to “responsibly increasing federal weight limits on interstate highways.

Against the pilot program are consumer, health, safety, environmental and truck driver organizations, which were recently joined by the families of truck crash victims to issue a warning to the motoring public about the proposed pilot program provision.

The group said it was concerned that national and state trucking interests in other Northeast and mid-Atlantic states would use any such congressional action as a springboard for seeking a congressional repeal of the federal truck weight exemption in other states and nationwide.

"This special interest provision was quietly inserted into this federal legislation without any public input and without any public hearings," said Joan Claybrook, chair of Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH). "This is straight out of the trucking industry's playbook as they work in the shadows of the Capitol to pick off one state and then another as part of their nationwide strategy to bypass public scrutiny and overrun today's rules of the road."

MMTA’s Parke says that motor carriers already operating the heavier trucks along the turnpike simply divert the secondary roads when forced off the interstate.

That’s a problem for the Maine DOT, according to spokesman Robert Elder, who said a recent truck impact study by Wilbur Smith Associates determined that an interstate truck weight exemption would save the State of Maine between $1.3 million and $2.0 million annually in bridge and pavement costs.

“A companion Maine DOT study of the currently exempted Maine Turnpike estimated that the federal truck weight exemption on that highway saves the state between $2.1 and $3.2 million annually in bridge and pavement costs,” he Elder said.

He also noted that the federal truck weight exemption would lower transportation costs by  decreasing truck miles traveled per volume of goods and would also reduce fuel usage  and dependence on foreign oil.

 The Trucker staff can be contacted to comment on this article at editor@thetrucker.com.

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