We appreciate the invitation to discuss the Department of Transportation's failure to properly conduct the required analyses to determine the full impact of proposed rules to govern the hours that truck drivers may work. Trucking is vital to the Nation's economy.
Trucks move the majority of the freight that moves in America.
Seventy percent of America's communities depend for freight service exclusively on trucks. So, DOT regulations restricting what companies can do with trucks and drivers directly affects a huge segment of the American economy. Although some trucking companies are multi-billion dollar companies whose names you know, most of the trucking industry is small business. ATA spent two years forging an industry-wide consensus on a proposal for new rules that would meet these requirements. We filed the ATA proposal with the Department of Transportation in December 1999.