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    The nation's largest truckload carrier, J.B. Hunt, recently announced record earnings of $60.3 million.  Landstar reported record third quarter revenue of $733 million, while Conway, Celadon, Marten, Knight, Werner, Old Dominion,   Heartland, Covenant, and UTS saw revenues increase 10 to 24 percent.  

    One reason for this record performance is that, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's 2007 Traffic Safety Annual Assessment, 16% more truck drivers have been killed on the job since 2002 at the same time that passenger car fatalities decreased by 20%.

    These numbers are significant because trucks and cars are ergonomically identical.  The seating position, speed, and forces acting on the human body during a crash are the same in both cars and trucks, so any safety technology proven to save lives in cars must also save lives in trucks.

    The former Chairmen of the Senate Commerce Committee, including presidential candidate John McCain and Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was recently convicted of receiving gifts from an oil company, were supposed to hold hearings to confirm that President Bush's appointees for Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator had “professional experience in motor carrier safety.”  

    Instead, McCain & Stevens allowed police officers who had never driven a truck for a living to impersonate motor carrier safety professionals and withhold modern safety devices from truckers.  A motor carrier safety professional would normally have received numerous safety awards driving 18 wheelers up to a million miles without an accident before he would be considered qualified to advise other truckers on matters concerning their personal safety.  

    Four hundred fifty eight additional truckers were killed on the job from 2003 to 2007.  If the President's appointees had allowed trucks to have modern safety features like cars have, such as adequate brakes, rollover protection, and crash absorbent bumpers, heavy truck occupant fatalities would have fallen 20% just as car fatalities did.  Only 550 truckers would have been killed in 2007—not 802!  1050 of the 4000 truckers killed on the job between 2003 and 2008 would still be enjoying autumn colors with their families.

    Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters recently revealed that to protect themselves, the number of truckers wearing seat belts jumped dramatically to a record level of 65 percent in 2007—up from only 48 percent in 2003.  Is it just coincidence that a 35% increase in seat belt use has “caused” a 16% increase in trucker fatalities since 2002?   Aren’t seat belts supposed to save lives?

    In Public Citizen's The Hidden Failures of Belts in Rollover Crashes, a Ford Motor Company engineer said, “ It is obvious that occupants that are restrained in upright positions are more susceptible to injury from a collapsed roof than unrestrained occupants who are free to tumble about the interior of the vehicle.  It seems unjust to penalize people wearing effective restraint systems by exposing them to more severe injuries than they might expect with no restraints (p. 9).”  Obtusely, Secretary Peters proclaims, “we won’t rest until 100 percent of commercial motor vehicle drivers wear a seat belt.”    

    As long ago as 1968, Ford engineers thought that the minimum roof crush standard should be at least two times the weight of the vehicle.  In a show of support two days before the Administration's response was due in my lawsuit to legalize anti roll over features in heavy trucks, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed to increase roll over protection in light trucks to 2.5 times the vehicle weight.  The President's appointees have refused to decriminalize roll over protection in heavy trucks.  Vehicles that lack roll over protection such as busses, lawn mowers, and farm tractors are not normally equipped with seat belts.  Roll over protection is illegal on most tractor trailer trucks because of size & weight restrictions.    

    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 devices because 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.  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 modern safety devices was an unanticipated side effect of banning intermodal vehicles.  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 modern safety features in trucks. 

    Steel wheels roll more easily than rubber tires do and only the front of a train has to fight the wind, so trains get three times better fuel economy than trucks and are five times safer.  Big trucks frighten motorists, so they buy larger cars than they otherwise would, further exacerbating the problems of air pollution and dependence on foreign oil.  Modern 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.  It is because of the inability of railroads to deliver freight the last five miles to the customer's door that 70% of the nation's freight has to be carried on long haul trucks.  If intermodal vehicles were allowed to deliver freight a mere five miles, demand for rail transportation would increase dramatically and track electrification would become economical—further reducing cost and pollution.  Like most nations, the US has a surplus of night time generating capacity that could be used to power trains.  

    The New York Times alleged that the trucking industry provided $14 million in campaign donations to Republicans between 2000 and 2006 (Stephen Labaton, December 3, 2006).  However, the amounts contributed by the oil industry are thought to be much greater—which is why John McCain chose the Governor of Alaska, an oil producing state, as his running mate.  With Diesel fuel costing around $3-4 a gallon, it is fair to say that the oil industry makes more profits from the trucking industry than the trucking industry makes from the trucking industry.  A long haul truck that drives 120,000 miles a year and gets 7 miles per gallon might spend $50,000 per year on Diesel fuel—more than the driver's annual wages!  A trucker with an intermodal vehicle that did not need to drive more than five miles could use plug in electrical power and never buy any Diesel fuel ever.  This is why oil industry executives are willing to risk prison by bribing government officials—and why a Senator from Alaska was recently convicted of receiving gifts from an oil company.

    Instead of legalizing intermodal vehicles, the unqualified appointees decided to increase the revenue of long haul trucking companies by allowing them to require their drivers to work longer hours.  Rather than tolerate increased fatigue and unsafe working conditions, most truckers quit their jobs, causing employee turnover rates at long haul trucking companies to exceed 120% per year—which means most of the scabs also quit before one year.  To remedy the so called "driver shortage" they created, the President's appointees lowered truck driver training standards—allowing a small handful of campaign contributors to become extremely wealthy by replacing their highly paid skilled professional truckers with overworked low wage trainees.  The result is that trucking has become the nation’s most dangerous occupation.  A sober motorist is twice as likely to be killed by a heavy truck as by a drunk driver.  One in every seven Americans killed on the job dies in the cab of a truck.  

    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 (p.12).  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 (p.17).  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.  

    The former Republican Governor of Illinois, George Ryan, was sentenced to six years in prison for granting commercial drivers licenses to unqualified truck drivers in exchange for campaign donations.  As Governor of Texas, President Bush would certainly have known that unskilled trainees were attempting to drive 18 wheelers without proper qualifications.  Bush appointed the current Motor Carrier Safety Administrator simply because he graduated from a particular evangelical Christian college two weeks after a truck crash killing four students from the college was featured on TV.  He must have thought that taking revenge on truckers by denying them modern safety devices would somehow encourage them to drive more safely instead of quitting their jobs.  

    It must be remembered that there were originally two justifications for the war in Iraq:  that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq threatened the nation's oil supply.  If they were legal, modern intermodal trucks would have eliminated our nation's need for foreign oil.  Not only would trucks be more efficient, but motorists would feel safe again driving less expensive 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 main benefit of intermodal vehicles is actually not safety, but their ability to deliver 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.  People will no longer need to drive 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.  For this reason, I have filed suit to legalize intermodal vehicles.

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

“It is my understanding that Mr. Trescott is interested in the position of FMCSA Administrator.  Upon reviewing his resume, I believe you will agree with my analysis that Mr. Trescott has unique qualifications.”—  Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, United States House of Representatives, Washington DC.

“LOVE your book. So well written!!!!  This isn't just for people interested in trucking. Everyone can benefit from this.”—Kenny Morse “Mr. Traffic, Driving Instructor to the Stars,” KLRA CBS Radio, Los Angeles

“We've had a lot of Ph.D.’s on the show that weren't as clear and articulate as this truck driver.”—Denton Randall, WHAS, Louisville