The trucking industry has seen an interesting last five years.
First, there was the Covid pandemic which severely disrupted consumer demand and changed buying and importing habits. As a result, what followed was a trucking boom that led to a shortage of truck drivers for some time. Companies then popped up left and right offering trucking services, but demand remained high. In recent years, there has also been talk of automation decimating trucking careers and pushing drivers out of a job. That hasn’t happened and many automated trucking services are still not ready for prime time.
New Congressional bill would expand current infrastructure to help overworked truckers rest.
Now, the U.S. House of Representatives is introducing a new bill that would expand parking availability for resting trucks and their drivers. The legislation, named the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, would allocate over $750 million over five years to help repurpose existing spaces to give room to truckers to rest.
Similar legislation was introduced in the House twice – in 2021 and 2023. It didn’t become law at those times. The legislation is bipartisan, being sponsored by both Republicans (in the majority) and Democrats (in the minority). U.S. Representative Mike Bost (R-Illinois) is leading the charge for the new trucking legislation, since he has a trucking background having been part of his family business before joining Congress. He is working with U.S. Representative Angie Craig (D-Minnesota), U.S. Representative Pete Stauber (R-Minnesota), and U.S. Representative Salud Carbajal (D-California), on the legislation.
What are the specifics of the new trucking legislation?
The specifics of the bill are pretty simple. First, the $755 million earmarked in the bill would be funded through federal grants. Rather than only fund the construction of completely new facilities for trucks and their drivers, the bill would repurpose outdated weigh stations along highways, utilize existing rest areas, and transform park-and-ride zones. Some grants would be awarded for the construction of new rest areas, or expansions of existing parking spaces at rest areas.
At the moment, it appears Congress is aligned with private-sector trucking groups on the legislation, with some prominent trucking lobbies agreeing on the need for the bill to become law. The consensus, both in the trucking industry and in Congress, is that truckers are overworked, exhausted, and burnt-out, and that is negatively affecting deliveries. Worse, many believe, it is putting truckers in dangerous, high-risk situations, for no reason other than lack of infrastructure.
The bill has only been introduced in the House. It still needs to be passed by a majority vote there, before it goes to the U.S. Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass. There’s a chance this type of bill is folded into larger, broader legislation, which could happen as well.
