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   Senator Ted Stevens, a former Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee who allowed police officers to impersonate motor carrier safety professionals at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, was convicted over a year ago of failing to report gifts from an oil company.   The nation’s largest oil company, Exxon, benefited the most from the Administration's ban on fuel efficient intermodal vehicles, announcing record earnings of 14 billion.  

    According a recent study by the Federal Railroad Administration, intermodal trains are up to five times more fuel efficient than long haul trucks while virtually eliminating highway wear and tear.  Trucking is the most dangerous occupation in the United States.  One in every seven Americans killed on the job is a truck driver.   According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Traffic Safety Overview, more than three thousand motorists are killed by trucks each year.  A sober motorist is more than twice as likely to be killed by a heavy truck as by a drunk driver.

    On April 2nd, 2009, an FBI Duty Analyst in Houston told me that on "April Fool's Day" the charges against the Senator were mysteriously dropped just three weeks after a complaint I filed "went through" in which he was included as a person of interest in the deaths of 12 truckers in Texas.  The dozen truckers had a greater than 50-50 chance of being victims of wrongful death because increases in driving hours intended to help long haul trucking companies compete with railroads caused daytime tractor trailer fatalities in crashes with other vehicles to double between 2002 and 2007 and modern safety features like cars have were never legalized.  The FBI station chief who received my complaint resigned about a month later.  

    Together with safety advocates, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters filed suit, claiming the increases in driving hours were in direct conflict with the provisions of many of their collective bargaining agreements.  I filed an intervenors brief in the case alleging that the increases, which allow an inexperienced trainee working more than 80 hours per week to replace two skilled professionals working 40 hours per week if they go on strike, killed 3000 people.  Unionized trucking companies began going out of business as non-union companies began overworking their drivers.  The inability to strike to protect their jobs may have cost truckers $50,000 to $100,000 in lost income while Wall Street bankers who bankrolled the non-union competitors became fabulously wealthy.  

    The Department of Justice asked the court for time to allow the President of the Maryland Trucking Association, one of the groups that would have negotiated with the Teamsters had there been a strike, to be confirmed as Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator.  This nomination violated President Obama's campaign promise that he would not appoint lobbyists to head government agencies.  I filed an opposition demanding they settle the case on the grounds that a one month delay could cost the lives of forty people including several small children.  On October 26th, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration agreed to settle.  

    Less than 24 hours later, without any apparent vote, the Commerce Committee confirmed the President of the Maryland Trucking Association by "unanimous consent" even though a Senator on the Committee was featured on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" opposing the nomination.  When I called the Committee to ask how this happened, neither of the majority or minority staffers I spoke to were aware that Senate confirmation had already occurred.  It had been done without their knowledge.  

    The Commerce Committee was supposed to hold a hearing to determine if the lobbyist had “professional experience in motor carrier safety” as required by the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act, but the majority of the Senators did not show up for the hearing and members of the public were not allowed to testify against the nominee.  A motor carrier safety professional would normally have received numerous safety awards driving 18 wheelers up to a million miles without a crash before being considered qualified to advise other truckers on matters concerning their personal safety.  It takes a trucker as long to become a safety professional as it takes a doctor to graduate from medical school.  The lobbyist Obama picked had never driven a truck for a living.

    Obviously, Senator Stevens was not the only one responsible for the three thousand deaths.  Presidential Candidate John McCain, the former Chairman of the Commerce Committee not convicted of receiving gifts, had a conflict of interest in confirming Administrators whose hours of service rules were favorable to his family business—a type of trucking company called a beer distributorship.  His additional profit gleaned from lower wages and working drivers longer hours was likely many times the value of the gifts received by Senator Stevens.  

    It is not yet known what motivated Chairman Rockefeller to confirm the lobbyist in violation of the President's campaign pledge.  He is thought to possess a vast family fortune benefitting from lower wages for truckers.  It has been widely reported that the Secretary of Transportation, a former Congressman from Illinois, once hand delivered a letter to the White House requesting clemency for a former governor of Illinois convicted of issuing bogus commercial driver’s licenses in exchange for campaign donations. President Obama, a former Senator from Illinois, may have had something to do with this.  

    Thanks to the increased driving hours, the nation's largest truckload carrier, J.B. Hunt, earned record profit of $60.3 million in the third quarter of 2008; Landstar reported record revenue of $733 million; while Conway, Celadon, Marten, Knight, Werner, Old Dominion, Covenant, and UTS saw revenues increase 10 to 24 percent.  Because almost all of the revenue increases resulted from fuel surcharges when Diesel fuel exceeded $4 per gallon, it is unlikely that any of the non-union companies that replaced high wage experienced truckers with low wage unskilled trainees would have remained in business for long if the skilled professionals who lost their jobs had been allowed to compete with safer, more fuel efficient intermodal vehicles.  

    The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration currently funds an army of state enforcement officers under the auspices of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance that daily inspects and weighs trucks, ticketing truckers who dare to equip their trucks with modern safety features if they weigh too much.  Truck size and weight restrictions were first imposed in 1956 to protect the long haul trucking industry from competition with intermodal technology introduced that same year.  Intermodal containers (and the vehicles to carry them) weigh more than ordinary truck trailers because they must support the weight of as many as a dozen other containers when stacked on a ship.  Truck trailers only need to be strong enough to bear the weight of snow in winter.  

    Banning heavy duty safety devices was an unanticipated side effect of truck size and weight restrictions.  Brake problems were recorded in almost 30 percent of the trucks in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Large Truck Crash Causation Study.  Almost 27 percent of the trucks studied were were the sole motor vehicle in the crash (such as when a truck swerves off the road to avoid hitting a car) and 10 percent more were unable to maneuver or stop quickly enough to avoid becoming involved in the first collision in the crash (p.11).  An additional 10 percent of the crashes were directly caused by loss of brakes, tire or wheel failure, or cargo shift (p.13).  This means that 47% of the crashes studied could potentially have been prevented by decriminalizing heavy duty safety features. 

    Big trucks frighten motorists, so they buy larger cars than they otherwise would—exacerbating the problems of air pollution and dependence on foreign oil.  Because railroads are unable to deliver freight the last five miles to the customer's door, 70% of the nation's freight must be carried on long haul trucks.  Intermodal vehicles would allow the rail industry to provide door to door rail service to every home and business in America without the need for a loading dock.  Only large corporations have access to rail transportation today.  If intermodal vehicles were allowed to deliver freight a mere five miles, rail transportation would increase dramatically and track electrification would become economical—reducing noise and pollution.  Like most nations, the US has a surplus of night time generating capacity that could be used to power trains.  A trucker with an intermodal vehicle that traveled less than five miles could use plug in power and never buy Diesel fuel again.  This is why oil industry executives are willing to risk prison by bribing government officials—and why Senator Stevens was convicted of receiving gifts from an oil company.

    When truckers like me decided to replace our obsolete 18 wheelers with modern intermodal vehicles, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration decided to replace us truckers with inexperienced trainees.  But, trainees do not remain inexperienced for long.  Sooner or later, they realize their lives are in danger.  Rather than tolerate unsafe working conditions, most quit their jobs within six months, causing employee turnover rates at long haul trucking companies to exceed 120% per year—which means almost all of the new drivers quit within one year.  To remedy the so called "driver shortage" they created, the Agency lowered truck driver training standards—allowing a small handful of campaign contributors to become extremely wealthy by replacing their highly paid professionals with overworked low wage trainees.  

    Like teenagers, first year truck drivers now crash three times as often as experienced drivers.  A 1999 University of Michigan study conducted before the creation of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration showed that driver error was responsible for only 26% of truck crashes.  Today's truck drivers have a 46% greater rate of driver error.  Crossing over a lane line or departing from the roadway was recorded for almost one third of the trucks in the Large Truck Crash Causation Study.  Loss of control was coded for thirty percent.  Unskilled truck drivers were coded as driving too fast for conditions at a rate almost fifty percent higher than motorists even though they were recorded as being fatigued only half as often.  The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in 2005 that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's new training standard, shortening the customary one year on the road to as little as one week of classroom training, was arbitrary and capricious.  

    If they were legal, intermodal vehicles would eliminate our nation's need for foreign oil.  Not only would trucks use less Diesel fuel, but motorists would feel safe again driving fuel efficient smaller cars.  A riddle is often told in third world countries:  “How much does a loaf of bread cost in America?”  The answer is:  “Ten thousand dollars!—one dollar for the bread and ten thousand for the car you need to drive to the store to buy it or you don't eat!”  The same riddle can be asked about trucks:  ‘How much does it cost to hire a trucker?’  Answer:  ‘ten thousand for the loading dock, twenty thousand for the fork lift, and a hundred thousand for the warehouse...’  The 53 foot long trailers used by most long haul trucking companies are virtually useless to small businessmen.  The main benefit of intermodal vehicles is actually not safety, but their ability to deliver smaller 20 foot long containers absolutely anywhere without a loading dock.  Road, sea, and rail can be combined into an integrated transportation system that will eliminate the need for long haul trucks.  That means that truckers can go home from work every night without having to drive long distances and organic farmers will be able to sell milk and produce directly to consumers over the internet and have it delivered to people's homes at half supermarket prices.  Unemployed people could start home industries to prevent their homes from being foreclosed and people will no longer need to own cars to buy things.    

    Half of all trips are shopping trips.  With fewer cars and trucks on the road, there will be fewer car crashes, less highway congestion, less oil consumed, less pollution, cars will last longer, insurance rates and cost of living will be lower, and war in the Middle East will be unnecessary.  Small businessmen will be able to compete on a level playing field with big corporations, so ultra wealthy campaign contributors will be a thing of the past.  Needless to say, the trucking, oil, auto, food, insurance, chemical, and retail industries are all against it.

     How much does our obsolete long haul trucking industry cost taxpayers?  In the last highway bill, the following money was allocated for highway funding:

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