Uphill push resumes for expanded use of 33-foot trailers nationwide

The push for nationwide use of 33-foot trailer combinations is back. Currently limited to twin 28-foot trailers, companies such as UPS and FedEx would gain an estimated 18% in productivity if twin-33s were allowed nationally.

A group called Americans for Modern Transportation is renewing the effort to allow twin 33-foot trailers on the nation’s highways.

In a letter to House transportation leaders, coalition Executive Director Randy Mullett said years of underinvestment and a lack of attention to the nation’s infrastructure has left American families in harm’s way, spurred economic inefficiencies, and put undue stress on the environment.

Mullett is a veteran Washington lobbyist who knows these arguments have been made before – only to be rebuffed by a Congress keenly aware of the visceral emotions against anything having to do with longer trucks. He knows this is an uphill fight.

“The opposition is vocal and it’s strong,” Mullett said of the anti-truck faction that includes safety advocates, railroads, Teamsters union and even some large truckload carriers. “You have a few TL carriers who are vocal about it. They have pricing power right now. They’re afraid that any increase in capacity, even if it’s not directly in their segment, somehow reduces they’re pricing power.

“It’s a competitive thing and that goes for the railroads as well,” Mullett told LM. “UPS is the railroads’ biggest customer, but that doesn’t matter. Then there are the safety groups which are the hardest of all. We’re trying to make a logical argument and their opposition is based on emotion.”

Despite those odds, Mullett told LM that twin-33s eventually will be allowed nationally. “It’s a heavy lift for us, but I’m confident it’s going to happen eventually. It doesn’t cost the government anything. It improves safety and the environment and lowers shipping costs for everyone. Tell me what’s wrong? That’s our logical argument.”

Against that backdrop come the Association of American Railroads, National League of Cities, U.S. Conference of Mayors, Railway Supply Institute, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, American Public Works Association, Coalition Against Bigger Trucks and a handful of other groups actively lobbying Congress against any further use of longer combination trucks.

“We also urge you to oppose legislative language that would allow bigger trucks in individual states, including any ‘pilot programs,’” the group wrote in a Feb. 25 letter to Congress. It said any move would be “detrimental” to infrastructure, costing “billions of dollars” in added bridge and pavement costs.

Two years ago, FedEx CEO Fred Smith led the charge to allow twin 33s – which would be an 18 percent increase in productivity over the currently used twin 28s. The major beneficiaries of such a change would be Smith’s various FedEx LTL and small package units, Amazon and UPS and perhaps a handful of less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers.

The last time the LTL carriers tried to lobby Congress for expanded use of twin-33s, they ran into unexpected turbulence from another part of the trucking lobby, the Truckload Carriers Association, representing the $320 billion TL industry. There is no indication that opposition has changed.

On the TCA website, the organization cite a study by the research firm Mingo and Burton shows that new configurations, specifically twin 33-foot trailers, would “inflict” an additional estimated cost of $5.5-$10.5 billion annually to roads and bridges.

TCA says it “recognizes the benefits” that would be bestowed upon our Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) counterparts by adding additional cubic feet of freight space. “We acknowledge that those benefits may contribute to productivity,” TCA said on its website.

Truckload interests say further use of twin-33s would yield “little to no advantage” of the added cubic space that larger trailers would bring to the industry. When the industry experienced previous trailer specification adjustments from 48-foot trailers to 53-foot trailers, truckload executives say, the financial burden was dramatic and any change from the current standard of 28- or 53-foot trailers would be no different.

In addition, TCA says intermodal truckload carriers would be put at a disproportionate disadvantage if Congress mandated longer, heavier trailers. That’s because railroad container cars have been developed to accommodate the most prominent trailer configurations that exist in trucking today.

“Any change to these trailer configurations will render obsolete not only the existing fleet tractor trailers across our nation, but also the corresponding counterparts in the rail industry,” TCA says.

Mullett listed what he called “immediate and meaningful improvements” in allowing 33-foot trailers. Among them:

• Fewer trucks and less congestion because gains from twin 33-foot trailers would translate into 53.2 million hours saved due to less congestion.
•  At least $2.6 billion in economic savings to operators and shippers of LTL freight.
• Improved safety because twin 33s “perform better” than many other truck configurations on four critical safety measures, including stability and rollover, according to Mullett.
•  Adopting twin 33-foot trailers would result in 4,500 fewer truck accidents annually, Mullett said.
• Because truck combinations would be traveling some 3.1 billion fewer miles, there would be fuel savings as well as extended highway life use times.
• Because of fuel savings, an estimated 255 million fewer gallons of fuel would be burned, equating to 2.9 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions.

“The private sector continues to make investments in our workforce, new technologies, and existing equipment to ensure that our fleets are as efficient, sustainable, and safe as possible,” Mullett wrote.

A report issued last year by freight transportation consultancy FTR concluded that twin 33s are not a “generic option” for truckload carriers in that its usage by TL carriers would be very limited. Instead, FTR’s analysis, as expected, noted that LTL and parcel carriers would be what it called the “prime users” of Twin 33s, adding that load conversion would be around 1-2%.

Mullett said this year “there is a sense of urgency” to get an infrastructure package through Congress. That is the measure FedEx and UPS are eying to attach a “rider” to allow greater use of twin 33s.

“There are technological ways to make this work,” Mullett told LM. “We’re even offering to include mandatory safety measures such as front crash warning, lane departments, those things that would mandate safety devices on trucks nationally.”

Perhaps the oddest opposition is from the truckload carriers. The percentage of freight that moves back and forth between large TL carriers and what would be hauled on twin-33s is estimated to be about 3 percent. “It’s just not a huge truckload play,” Mullett said. “No truckload customer is forcing them to do this.”

But the clock is ticking in Congress with fewer than 40 legislative days remaining before the August recess.  If something regarding infrastructure isn’t passed something by August recess out of the House chances are nothing will get passed before the 2020 elections.

“I think it’s going to happen eventually because it’s the right thing to do,” Mullett concluded.  

   In a letter to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Ranking Member Sam Graves, D-Mo., the coalition identified longer trailers as a way policy makers can leverage technologies and efficiencies developed by the private sector to create “the infrastructure system of the future.”

“At no cost to taxpayers, Congress can act to modernize trucking equipment and increase the national twin trailer standard from 28 feet to 33 feet,” Mullett said.

UPS Freight President Rich McArdle recently told LM that there “are still headwinds we are facing, for this issue, within the industry” as well as outside the trucking sector.

“When you break the industry down between LTL and truckload, those headwinds vanish, given the [arguments] on both sides,” McArdle said before adding: “There are headwinds outside the industry, with the railroads, for example, being very concerned about twin 33s.”

Last year Michael Ducker, former CEO of FedEx Freight, and McArdle both supported twin 33s in a Wall Street Journal opinion editorial.  “We will continue to make this one of the things we push for in making it a very easy way to reduce some of the congestion on the roads without adding safety concerns. Adding five feet to trailers brings more stability. There is a 10-mile per hour difference when you are on the road. So if you are in a car passing a twin-33 versus a twin-28, with a 10-mile per hour differential, it takes less than one second, 0.7 seconds, to do so.

“We are going to continue to push for it, and we need more than the 20 states that allow it right now.
McArdle added: “We are looking for a nationwide network solution, and are continuing, for now, on a patchwork solution, which is state by state by state.”

As for other drivers, FTR said that while the cube advantage of twin 33s over 53-foot trailers is minor, an impetus for carriers looking to use twin 33s is to “avoid the re-sorting required to consolidate many customers’ shipments as the freight moves across the hub and spoke terminal networks.”