Heavy truck loads a problem?

Truckers bypass weigh stations as firms look for solutions to a lack of manpower and high fuel costs.

Around Mars Hill, N.C., truckers keep up a steady chatter of warnings on the CB about the weather, traffic, and "bears" – police – looking for overweight loads.

Even with 200 state truck inspectors out on the roads, some local-run truckers in Florida routinely overload their trailers and dump trucks, to make up for hard-to-find manpower and the $3.20 they pay for each gallon of diesel. In Pennsylvania, citizens complain about roads sagging and bridges groaning under the pressure from overweight trucks dodging interstate weigh stations.

The cat-and-mouse game between cheating truckers and state inspectors is intensifying on America's highways, especially as investigators continue to look for the cause of the Minneapolis bridge collapse in August. Critics say 50-ton trucks, protected by a powerful lobby, don't pay their fair share to fix aging and ailing infrastructure. But for some men and women driving big rigs, heavy loads on America's back roadways are just business as usual under current rules and economic circumstances, not to mention the pressures of keeping store shelves stocked with inexpensive goods.

"What we're experiencing is that [trucking companies and drivers] are consciously making a decision to run heavier and taking the risk of being caught instead of paying extra manpower costs or buying additional vehicles," says Sgt. John Fairchild, a North Carolina Highway Patrol spokesman in Asheville, whose troop spent three days last week hunting down too-heavy trucks near the Tennessee border.

Economists say the incentive to cheat is increasing as the trucking industry faces rising fuel costs, a rail-freight industry on the rebound, and, next July, the potential loosening of restrictions on truckers coming from Mexico.

"Increasing weight increases productivity, because they get a greater payload and, theoretically, it becomes more profitable," says Walter Rice, professor emeritus of economics at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. "But, obviously, what is happening is they're incurring social costs [including safety and wear-and-tear costs], even as there's an implied incentive to do it."

Truckers still have one key advantage: sympathetic lawmakers. The truckers' focused economic message tends to resonate more than ambiguous public concern, experts say.

For instance, even if trucks are found to be overweight, fines run only about 10 cents a pound – too light to curb behavior, critics say. In one example of the trucking industry's power, a North Carolina law allows trucks to run 10 percent heavier on fragile secondary roads than the 80,000 pounds gross weight limit out on the interstate – a nod to local economic interests.

Despite stepped up enforcement in many states, current law "communicates to the trucking industry that [running heavy] is not that big of a deal," says John Lannen, executive director of the pro-reform Truck Safety Coalition in Arlington, Va.

Critics say heavy trucks are harder to stop and cause more damage when they do wreck.

Some 8 million tractor-trailers – each having the impact of about 5,000 cars – roll down American roads today, compared with about 2 million in the 1950s. Their impact on asphalt is exponential: One recent study of Maine's roadways showed that a 100,000 pound truck on six axles does twice the amount of road damage as an 80,000 pound truck on five axles. In addition, 30 percent of US trucks are overloaded, according to a study presented last year at a Federal Transportation Research Board conference.

"You've got honest truck drivers and companies that are hurt by it. Taxpayers are hurt by it. People are put at risk by it," says Mr. Lannen.

A variety of factors make it impossible to pinpoint whether truckers are paying their fair share for road and bridge improvements, says Dr. Rice. A US Department of Transportation study in 2000 showed that trucks carrying the legal limit of 80,000 pounds contribute 91 percent of their share of highway costs, while trucks weighing more than 100,000 pounds contribute 50 percent of their fair share.

Truckers say that's hooey. A trucker driving 100,000 miles a year will pay about $4,000 in fuel taxes on top of other fees and licenses compared with about $100 for an average commuter, says Larry Daniel, president of the American Independent Truckers' Association in Clinton, Miss. Still, he says, when truckers stray outside the law, it's a sign of marginal operators' poor management.

The most common tactic, he says, is to run when weigh stations are closed, which is one reason three times as many overweight trucks travel at night. Sometimes truckers will risk heavier fines by dodging an open weigh station.

"Weigh stations are static, so [lawbreakers] have to find the routes that will take them around that location," says Mr. Daniel. "When you do that, that's going to put your truck on a road that your truck typically doesn't drive on ... and it's risky."

There is constant pressure from shippers to overload, says Kevin, an Illinois truck driver at a truck stop on the I-285 in Atlanta. On this trip a California produce company overloaded his truck by 2,000 pounds. He had to ask for a crate to be unloaded to put him back at 80,000 pounds. Since truckers are ultimately responsible, most will say no to requests to carry heavier loads. But "like any industry, we've got our share of outlaws," he says.

Minnesota trucker Rick Mork says most firms, including the glass company he works for, have more to lose from running heavy loads. "You used to see a lot more heavy trucks 10 years ago than you do now," he says. "You don't gain much, and you incur that much more wear and tear on your truck."

By Patrick Johnson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Services Undercover cops find it ‘easy’ to cheat on trucker drug tests

WASHINGTON — Undercover federal investigators discovered that it was surprisingly easy to cheat on random drug tests designed to catch truck drivers who use drugs, NBC News reported Wednesday night.

Undercover investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, used bogus truck driver’s licenses to gain access to 24 drug-testing sites. They found that 75 percent “failed to restrict access to items that could be used to adulterate or dilute the [urine] specimen, meaning that running water, soap, or air freshener was available in the bathroom during the test.”

The GAO team also bought drug-masking products over the Web and was able to mix them with real specimens at the drug-testing sites “without being caught by site collectors,” the agency said in a report scheduled to be made public Thursday.

Drug-screening labs never realized that there was a problem. “Every drug masking product went undetected by the drug screening labs,” said the report, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News.

A spokeswoman for the Transportation Department, which requires motor carriers to test their employees and sets the regulations for collections, said driver errors, not drug use, caused most accidents.

“Our efforts on this front have been critical in helping us reduce the number of large truck fatalities by nearly 5 percent last year — the largest decline in four years,” said the spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who asked GAO to investigate, said the report was “frankly astonishing and shocking and dismaying. You can manipulate the tests, you can mask substance abuse and go undetected on the roadways.”

Oberstar, who planned to hold a hearing Thursday, said the drug-testing system was broken and was placing other drivers in danger.

“It fails, it is not sufficient, it is not protecting the public interest,” he said.

The Transportation Department estimates that fewer than 2 percent of truck drivers test positive each year for controlled substances in random federal tests. But when Oregon law enforcement officials conducted their own random tests this year, 9 percent of truck drivers tested positive.

Dozens of products widely available on the Web are marketed to truckers as fail-safe ways to defeat the mandatory drug tests.

“My first reaction was total disbelief. I just felt sick,” said Kathleen Ellsbury, whose husband, Tony Qamar, was killed two years ago when a truck driver in Washington state lost his load of logs on a curve, crushing Qamar’s car. Also killed was Daniel Johnson, a fellow seismologist at the University of Washington.

Ellsbury learned later that the truck driver, who was sentenced to 4½ years in prison for vehicular homicide, had previously been convicted of possessing methamphetamines and that he had meth in his blood at the time of the crash.

“The system has big holes, let’s say that,” said Ellsbury, who said she had a message for truck drivers who might be tempted to cheat: “I’d like to be standing right outside the bathroom and hold up a picture of my husband — remind them there's consequences.”

Spokesmen for the trucking industry said truck drivers were among the safest drivers on the road, with much lower rates of drug use than the general population. Still, they said, having roughly 30,000 drivers test positive each year was unacceptable.

The Transportation Department spokeswoman, while blaming “commercial and passenger driver errors” for most highway deaths, said the department was continuing to “work with our state law enforcement partners to aggressively ensure trucking companies comply with our regulations, including drug and alcohol enforcement.”

“In 2006 alone, this combined federal and state effort led to more than 5,000 enforcement cases that resulted in more than $19 million in fines and 1,035 companies being taken out of service,” she said.

The Trucker; Thursday, November 1, 2007

DOT Drug Testing Easily Beaten, Oversight Limited, Compliance Lacking

The Department of Transportation's efforts to reduce truck and bus crashes by making sure that drivers are not using illegal drugs are being hampered by "a significant lack of compliance" by motor carriers and limited oversight by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, preliminary reports issued by the Government Accountability Office Nov. 1 found.

Compliance is especially lacking among small carriers and self-employed drivers, according to the GAO testimony on the integrity of drug testing programs before the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit. The testimony and a related report on urine collection centers are part of a GAO project expected to be complete in May 2008.

Violations of drug testing protocols are noted in more than 40 percent of FMCSA's safety audits of newer motor carrier operations conducted since 2003, and more than 70 percent of the compliance reviews conducted on carriers already in the industry in 2001, the agency said.

GAO's investigation into the drug testing program also found that FMCSA's oversight activities are limited in quantity and scope. Only newer motor carriers are subject to safety audits. Carriers that were in business earlier than 2003 are covered by FMCSA's compliance review system, which examines the performance of only about 2 percent of carriers each year.

While illegal drug use is not among the most frequently cited factors associated with large truck crashes, studies show that use of illegal drugs can severely impair driving ability. Crashes involving trucks and buses account for 13 percent of all highway deaths each year, the report said.

Since 1988, federal regulations have required commercial drivers to submit urine samples to be tested for drugs. The testing covers five drug categories--marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, and phencyclidine (PCP).

FMCSA data shows that between 1.3 percent and 2.8 percent of drivers tested positive for the presence of illegal drugs from 1994 to 2005. Concern exists that some drivers may be escaping detection, the report said.

Drug Testing Compliance

Issues of compliance with drug testing programs extend to the companies that collect urine samples, GAO said. In a separate report, GAO details an investigation in which the agency created fictitious trucking companies and bogus driver's licenses to see whether 24 urine collection sites were following agency protocols.

Investigators posed as truck drivers and gained access to all 24 sites "demonstrating that a drug user could send someone to take a drug test in their place using false identification," the report said.

In 22 of the 24 urine collection sites, the company did not adequately follow the protocols GAO was examining. For example, in 75 percent of the sites, drivers had access to items that could be used to adulterate or dilute the specimen. Using drug-masking products purchased on Web sites, GAO investigators used adulterants at four sites and substituted synthetic urine at four other sites "without being caught by site collectors," the report said.

BNA's Transportation Watch: Monday, November 5, 2007

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