Speaking to a meeting of trucking industry leaders in Arizona early this week, the acting FMCSA Administrator said her agency and trucking are in sync on top industry issues, including the need for more truck parking.
“There is so much we are working on together,” Robin Hutcheson said, citing the need for more truck parking, as well as steps the White House is taking to ease the industry’s shortage of drivers. She said the parking issue cannot be solved by one entity alone, but that FMCSA is working with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to identify every available funding source that states might utilize to expand truck parking at the state level.
Hutcheson also noted how the pandemic raised awareness among Americans of the importance of trucking to the nation.
“During the pandemic, a lot of people had the choice to Zoom their way through,” she said, “but truckers and the trucking industry did not have that option — they had to go into work.”
Hutcheson has been the acting administrator of FMCSA since Jan. 19 and her nomination to officially head the agency is now before the Senate Commerce Committee.
Several lawsuits were filed challenging the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) independent contractor (IC) regulation enacted by the Biden Administration and the DOL’s Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su in early 2024.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in a Federal Register notice published April 1, denied a petition from the Institute for Safer Trucking (IST) requesting an investigation of collisions that van-type semi-trailers experience with passenger vehicles and other vulnerable road users.
ICSA representatives attended the TCA Truckload event, the preeminent event hosted by the Truckload Carriers Association, held in our hometown of Phoenix, AZ. We also attended the Mid-America Trucking Show (MATS), the largest trucking show in North America, held in Louisville, KY.