Todd Spencer: Well, that just goes to show what he knows.
Todd Dills: The voice you heard there might be a familiar one to longtime Overdrive radio listeners was that of Todd Spencer, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, with a little good natured ribbing of OOIDA’s executive vice president Lewie Pugh. Back when we last hosted the pair on Overdrive Radio in 2020 after President Joe Bidens election victory, I’d asked a question about who we might expect to lead the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration under the new administration. Lewie popped in quick with an answer to that. Why, Todd Spencer, he said. Spencer and company would go on to officially put his name in the hat publicly, to no avail.
This time around, with others around the owner operator world doing the same, Spencer notes he’s not planning to make that bid again, but comes with some advice to President Elect Donald Trump’s transition about the pick, at the same time.
Todd Spencer: I would hope that the person that they picked for that task will have some general awareness of the issues that we’re talking about. the dilemma with any of these agencies is that it takes a while to learn, stick the wall. To learn the job, to learn the people, to learn the issues. It makes life somewhat. Anyway, things tend to go better when somebody starts with a little bit of basic knowledge coming in the door. That’s all.
Todd Dills: I’m Todd Dills, your host as usual for this edition of Overdrive Radio for December 2, 2024. Hoping you got your fill of Thanksgiving over this past weekend, wherever you spent it. It’s a busy time of year on the highways. I know and for OOIDA this year, no doubt busy as well with the change in the administration and Congress today. We’ll hear more from Todd Spencer and Pugh both about what they think owner operators should expect out of the second Trump administration and what issues they’ll be advocating for change for the better.
Busy time for the association too with board elections in the offing. I spoke to one of our truckers of the month for 2024. Wayne Transports leased Mike Nichols recently and he noted he’d be on the ballot this year for a potential spot. Spencer and company had just hosted Nichols at OOIDA headquarters in Grain Valley, Missouri.
Todd Spencer: We just had a Director meeting and yes, Mike was here and he’s a pretty impressive guy. We have a nominating committee that culls through nominees and picks alternates that will be, that will actually go before the general membership and they’ll vote on who they like and then, then they’ll be seated on our board, all of our directors s officers come from the membership. They’re you know that’s made up of current drivers. We set the organization up basically run by truckers to always be run by truckers.
Todd Dills: As such, today we we’ll hear further emphasis on a big hope of the association to get big time m dedicated truck parking funding across the finish line in an infrastructure package they’re hopeful for in 2026. We’ll hear about the prospect for continued pursuit by FMCSA or likely perhaps not of a speed limiter mandate. We’ll hear about where OOIDA feels the broker transparency proposal could go with a vocally deregulatory administration. Incoming. We’ll hear about core problems of compensation for and of the bedrock value of any driver’s time.
Todd Spencer: In most instances the value of a driver’s time is determined by the market to be zero. Zero. Not minimum wage. Not minimum wage with overtime. It’s zero. And what’s among the biggest complaints that drivers have was having my time wasted. And that exists simply because it doesn’t cost anyone. If there’s a, there’s actually a value placed on that time then the market adjusts to eliminate that time to the extent that it’s possible.
Todd Dills: Will the incoming administration and republican majorities though slim and both houses of congress have materially good impacts on those dynamics. Keep tuned for more from Spencer after the break.
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Todd Dills: Get over to the Howes website for much more information about all of the company’s fuel treatments. That’s HOWES, Howesproducts.com. Here’s Spencer laying out central long standing issues OOIDA can fully be expected to continue to push forward. Here we go.
Todd Spencer: Our issues are going to pretty much stay the same in that we’re going to be looking for ways to make sure that dry the folks behind the wheel are u are the priority that some of the things that the urgent needs that they have you know for parking and things like that remain in the conversation. quality of life things. I mean things like I Suspect I suspect the fascination that some have with speed limiters should get, should be diminished quite a bit. I’m gonna, and I’m going to say that with a certain caveat in that, you know there is a segment within trucking that is all about speed limiters and more regulations and things like that. And that’s, that’s the really big carrier segment, right? And you know, they don’t care. They don’t care if they frustrate drivers and make the job tougher and in many ways less safe. So, you know, they’ll have a voice too.
Todd Dills: The American Trucking Associations indeed has long supported a speed limiter mandate. Its most recent position I could find being a requirement of 70 mph for Class 7 and 8 trucks outfitted with technologies like adaptive cruise control, 65 mph without. Yet when Trump was elected in 2016, regular Overdrive readers will recall, FMCSA had an effort toward mandating speed limbers in progress then, too. With the deregulatory focus of the first Trump administration, though, that effort quickly disappeared from the DOT’s active regulatory calendar, only to be resurrected when the Biden administration arrived four years later.
I asked Spencer whether he expected the current speed limiter effort to make the same journey. That is would it be likely to be tabled by this Trump DOT.
Todd Spencer: We’re optimistic and we’re at the same time we’re also absolutely certain that we’re going to do everything we can to make sure this is a conversation that stays in the past.
Todd Dills: So there is legislation of course, called the, called the DRIVE Act I believe. Would it halt just the current effort or would that. … I mean that would be a significant blow to efforts to, to move forward with any kind of speed limiter mandate.
Todd Spencer: You know, you’ve actually sort of characterized it pretty well. Ah, I, I mean obviously its design, I mean it’s that focus specifically on the current effort, but would still have the same impact going forward. To kind of reiterate my point, we never would have had an ELD mandate had not big carriers wanted it and pushed for it and were successful with Congress in getting it mandated.
Todd Dills: The central reason that it was either unable to be and or chosen not to be bothered with, when Trump’s in there the first time, because it was a congressionally mandated requirement, and the rule was long in process and.
Todd Spencer: It just went through and latest, the latest ruleemaking there were quite a few truckers and you know that commented on the that conveyed their objection to the idea. When FMCSA asked for comments.
Todd Dills: I think Spencer’s referring there to a 2022 request for comments from the agency about potential changes to the ELD mandate rule. One of the questions the notice asked was whether the exemption to the mandate for pre 2000 engines could be modified to potentially include some of those engines. Significantly Spencer said big majorities voiced opposition to the mandate generally therein overdraft found similar in reporting from the time period I believe the headline quoted one commenter saying simply, leave us alone.
Todd Spencer: When numbers get really really big it’s certainly harder to ignore them. And you know it’s kind of our mission here is to turn truckers into activists.
Todd Dills: Activists in the sense that large numbers of voices raised have the ability to influence policy decisions. One key part of the next four years for Spencer and OOIDA he said is the next package of infrastructure funding legislation with the expiration otherwise of the Biden 2021 Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act thats happening in 2026. Spencer was hopeful about a particular aspect of that.
Todd Spencer: We are hoping we can finally build the momentum that Congress will actually authorize significant amounts of money to be spent for parking. And the last infrastructure bill, we were able to convince the House of Representatives to set aside a billion dollars for truck parking. Now the Senate didn’t go along with that figure so we got a much lesser amount but you know the need is great and there’s a broad acknowledgement that it’s great. And the House of Representatives passed our bill for more money for truck parking but they didn’t take it to the floor. I mean there was absolutely no objection to it. They just didn’t take it to the floor this time and we’re optimistic we can go, we can get it over the finish line now that infrastructure.
Todd Dills: Is due for a re up or a new package I guess in 2026, am I right about that infrastructure legislation?
Todd Spencer: Yep, yep. The discussion starts now. What’s going to be in it?
Todd Dills: The last infrastructure legislation was a mixed bag when it comes to regulatory attention to trucking issues. It included an automatic emergency braking mandate that’s seen some action since in terms of regulatory comment periods in which many around trucking voiced displeasure with the state of that technology and current equipment. Yet it also sent money to roads and as mentioned truck parking to an extent and set up the truck leasing task force which has gone on to raise the profile of predatory lease purchase arrangements.
Todd Spencer: We’re the reason those things were in that bill. We want, we’d like to see, we’d like to see some recommendations come out of the truck leasing task force on best practices to go forward to make these programs much more likely to be successful. I’m successful for all the participants. you know, and again there’ll be recommendations and it’ll be up to us and others to basically turn those into priorities with lawmakers.
Todd Dills: They should be coming up pretty soon, I suspect.
Todd Spencer: Yeah, next month. The compensation task force that they put together, that you know, to kind of address the. Well, that would go a long way to addressing driver shortage claims. Well, they weren’t really successful in making the connection directly to safety with compensation and that’s largely because carriers refuse to participate. I mean they just wouldn’t come across, they wouldn’t come across with with you know, the hard data to actually draw a safety conclusion comparison. But you know, intuitively we know there’s a connection and u, you know, we’re optimistic we can find some ways to find other ways to demonstrate that going forward. And again, everybody’s for safety. And if you can demonstrate if you can demonstrate with real data that this makes a difference, well then it’s harder for people to ignore lots of other issues. You know, broker, the broker transparency thing, that’s a real issue. And you know, the agencies u, ah, open now to listening to more folks, an opportunity to make a, to make a case. And we’re certainly encouraging truckers to get involved in that. Folks get all kind of all locked up in the notion of well look these, these folks just want to look at your margins and things like that. Well that all of this stuff, the transparency stuff is essence after the fact. So it’s not a tool going in the door. You still make your own deal. Now over time you’re going to figure out real quick where the better deals are and who’s going to treat you fairer. And those are the folks that truckers ought to be doing business with and you know, to create a real partnership. But the other thing that sort of gets lost in this transparency discussion is what happens when there’s a problem, what happens when there’s a claim, what happens when anything out of the ordinary takes place and suddenly truckers are either losing hundreds of dollars or maybe thousands of dollars or losing even more than that and there’s no disclosure requirements. Come on, there’s nothing fair about that. And no one is well served by a system that basically just disadvantages one party.
Todd Dills: I think about the transparency proposal and when it came here right at, right at the end of the Biden tenure, you know, I’m sure we’re going to see headlines when the Trump administration does its routine regulatory freeze and has an expressed, quote unquote deregulatory agenda, that the transparency rule has been put on hold, you know, which all rules will be, at least temporarily. Do you think that, I shouldn’t really call it a rule. It’s a proposal. But do you think, do you think that, FMCSA will be able to go forward with that?
Todd Spencer: That’s gonna be a really, really interesting one in that while it’s not uncommon for regulations to be put on hold, this is not gonna be a totally new issue to President Trump. Basically four years or so ago, well a little over four now, truckers were in Washington D.C. out in front of the White House blowing their horns. And they were blowing their horns because of these issues with brokers. Yeah, he heard the horns. He sent Mark Meadows out to meet with guys.
Todd Dills: Then Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows actually met with reps from the group of those protesting inside the White House during that event, which began May 1 of 2020 along Constitution Avenue outside the White House and went on for weeks.
Todd Spencer: If my memory serves me correctly, he said he would have the Attorney General of New Jersey look into the issues because, and I forget what his exact words were, but the message he conveyed was he thought guys were getting taken advantage of. So this may be an issue. Certainly this is going to be an issue that we’re going to point out to the new administration that, hey folks, this is old business that we need to get, get after and fix it this time.
Todd Dills: There are other things too that are in process, that I think there’s a general consensus that, at least among owner-operators and small fleets and there’s probably good attention being paid to them. One of them is the safety rating. Potential revamp of the rating system, I guess. and potentially doing away with the conditional rating. Do you see that moving forward, is that a big priority? and you know, as it is now, a lot of, I think a lot of one truck motor carriers with authority are kind of put at a disadvantage in this system because the chances of getting an actual satisfactory rating or any rating at all is pretty small.
Lewie Pugh: Well I guess the way we look at it is you probably should get a satisfactory rating to you have an unsatisfactory rating. I mean if they you have your insurance and do everything, why wouldn’t you be satisfactory until proven that you’re not.
Todd Dills: The voice there is that of Lewie Pugh, OOIDA Executive Vice President.
Lewie Pugh: With that being said, I don’t look for it to move too far because there’s too many different people with too many different ideas. I don’t think. I think the problem is they don’t know exactly how to do it to where they may not get get where they won’t get sued. So they’re just sitting on it and I think they’ll continue to sitit on it. But it is frustrating especially for because a lot of our guys, they don’t get inspected.
Todd Dills: They just don’t get audited. right.
Lewie Pugh: Yeah, well they don’t have enough people to do entry level audits right now. Let alone then going back and doing other audits.
Todd Dills: What about the picks at EPA, Department of Energy and Labor? The situation around the emissions regulation landscape at federal level and, and you know you’ve got California out there and some other states that, that are going the same way. What do you guys hope to see out of, of out of this change here? Anything positive to come out of it?
Lewie Pugh: Yeah, I think some of that a lot of this stuff is going to get drawn back. I dont necessarily think that EVs are going to go away but I think some of this mandate rush to EVs in California and some of these other states will stop. I mean the only thing we have to go on was when Trump was in power last time with Wheeler and Wheeler tried to bring everybody in and talk about this and set up a plan that worked for everybody and lost the election and it all changed. But I think it will change. I think we well have a different attitude at least for the next four years. But with that being said, I don’t think EVs and I mean Trump was big on AV’s last time so we have that the concern. But with Elon Musk there, I don’t really think that this stuff’s going to go just disappear.
Todd Dills: The technology’s out there, exists and there’s been a lot of money thrown at it for sure. You know it could be a much bigger part of it if provided Infrastructure and the right pricing, right?
Todd Spencer: Well, yeah, but the dilemma. We don’t have the. We don’t have the grid.
This stuff, I mean, realistically, this stuff needs to evolve in a way that makes sense. and, you know, and certainly EVs are much more practical as automobiles than they ever would be for big trucks. Now they would work for big trucks in certain situations, but I don’t think we’re talking over the road. We’re talking local situations where you can sort of control your environment. for over the road trucks, you have a totally different environment. And we’re nowhere close to having a grid that would support, you know, significant use of EVs over long distances. And we’re not gonna be there. I mean, we can get there in time, but it, would make a whole lot more sense to expand the network out for automobiles than for trucks. And you know, again, folks aren’t so resistant to things, to technology. They are resistant to man, to mandates. And from our perspective, for the little guy, there’s no way you can rationalize a mandate because it just ain’t gon toa work.
Todd Dills: In both Congresses under the Biden administration, legislation was introduced in each house to remove the motor carrier exemption from having to pay employee drivers overime as required by the Fair Labor Standards act for most workers. Neither effort went past a basic introduction in Congress. Yet OOIDA and many other individual drivers and owner operators have championed an overtime change for many, many years. I raised the prospects for that effort, and Spencer cast the central issue this way.
Todd Spencer: That’s our effort, and obviously we think it. When it comes to employee drivers, certainly it is an issue of basic fairness. But let me point out the obvious. The biggest problem, or among the biggest problems we have in trucking is in most instances, the value of a driver’s time is determined by the market to be 0. 0. Not minimum wage, not minimum wage. With overtime, it’s zero. And, what’s among the biggest complaints that drivers have was having my time wasted. And that exists simply because it doesn’t cost anyone. If there’s a, there’s actually a value placed on that time, then the market adjusts to eliminate that time to the extent that it’s possible. And that’s an issue of basic fairness. But I mean, how can, how can you in anyone in good conscience say we’ve got this shortage of drivers and, you know, our drivers, it’s not uncommon for them to spend 20 to 30 hours a week, Just waiting around for somebody else to do what they should be doing and they do it for nothing. I mean we shouldn’t be shocked that drivers decide they want to do something else.
Todd Dills: Do you see hope for that, that legislation, working its way through this Congress in particular?
Todd Spencer: To be candid with you, I would say not to the Republican Congress. Now that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a frequent topic of conversation, but do I expect them to embrace that as a fix? Not quickly.
Lewie Pugh: I would say with our Department of Labor pick is probably the best choice. We would have opportunities for somebody that would support that. I think she probably would.
Todd Dills: Former Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeMere out of Oregon is Trump’s pick for Secretary of Labor. She has shown favor for Teamsters-endorsed policies, one being the failed PRO act — that stands for protecting the right to organize, PRO act. And part of that legislation would codify an ABC test like California AB 5’s fives at the national level, worrying plenty among leased owner operators about further contracting pressures. Yet as Lewie Pugh suggested, she’s also likely to be a potential ally on a push to amend the Fair Labor Standards act to bring employee drivers under overtime pay requirements.
Todd Spencer: You know, again this is a topic that should remains something that’s, that’s, that gets just discussed regularly. It’s not different than the parking stuff. Bear in mind, we’ve been trying to make as much noise as we could about the need for more truck parking going back to the administration of George W. Bush. It’s been a critical problem for all of this time and it’s only gotten worse.
Lewie Pugh: If you want highway safety, you gotta train them, pay them and give them a safe place to rest tonight. That simple.
Todd Spencer: One of the few trips that Mr. Johnston and I took together in a big truck was we took our Spirit truck then from our office here in Grain Valley down to Atlanta, Georgia for a safety symposium that the DOT down there was holding. And leaving here we went through Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia and, and we went through those places at night. Not a single place to park to stop at a rest area. I mean we did stop at one that you know, where we weren’t able to park in the rest area but we were able to park on the exit ramp just out of the way long enough to go to the bathroom. and then when we left there we went up to Cincinnati Ohio to be on Bozo radio show and going north going up 75 heading into Cincinnati. The truck stops are on the Kentucky side. Not a single place to park in any of those truck stops. And we’re not even there late.
I mean we’re there at like 7:00. One of them was so crowded you could barely get through it. Again, this is going back. this was back in the administration of George W.
Todd Dills: The association remains hopeful nonetheless on that front and others heading into what’s sure to be an eventful time for trucking these next four years.
Todd Spencer: well, we want to see some changes. We want to see some changes to make life better for the people behind the wheel. Trucking has always been a cyclical industry with ups and downs. And you know, we’re kind of not kind of. We are directly in the, in the bottom of the down cycle that’s lasted longer than they traditionally do. And, and it’s brought on by Covid. you know, the stimulus that Covid put it injected into our economy, you know, I mentioned, when I mentioned a while ago the trucks at the White House, this was shortly after Covid became a real issue and companies started shutting down. That’s companies here, that’s companies in China. And then folks went home and they passed the CARES act funding and some other stuff that put people, and put money in people’s pockets. and they started spending that money creating this humongous demand that truckers couldn’t keep up with. Got gobs of new people came in. The industry grew like crazy in terms of the numbers of players and you know, that overcapacity that Covid created, you know, we’ve been working off for the past 18 months. There are certainly signs u, our folks that follow the statistics around here, tell us that second quarter of 25 should be upswing time truckers.
Lewie Pugh: As this starts to turn around and come out of this, they need to look back at their business plan, their business model and make adjustments because it should come back up, but it will go back down again sometime in the future and make sure you’ve leveraged yourself so you’re in a better place. Using less brokers, building relationships with customers to have your own customers and stuff like that. There’s no better time or easier time to get a customer when customers need trucks.
Todd Dills: You’ve heard that before. I know. Suffice it to say both men are hopeful for their membership and others among owner operators on that score. Heres a big thanks to OOIDA president Todd Spencer and Executive VP Lewie Pugh for the time, no doubt. You can find them at ooida.com. And for members, keep an out for mail and electronic mail about the board elections upcoming. As noted early on, good luck to 2024 Trucker of the Month Mike Nichols there. Find a few links to some of our past coverage of issues raised in this podcast in the show notes, wherever you’re listening.