Earlier than he was the Transportation Secretary withholding lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} from states for not implementing laborious sufficient, Sean Duffy spent 9 years in the US Congress. From 2011 to 2019, he put his identify on roughly 820 items of laws. 4 concerned trucking. A clarification of the agricultural exemption from hours-of-service guidelines, so sure farm haulers might drive longer. The Drug-Free Industrial Driver Act, backed twice, the hair-testing recognition invoice, and the Secure, Versatile, and Environment friendly Trucking Act of 2015, the invoice to place heavier vans on the interstate. All 4 died in the identical place: referred to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, by no means heard from once more. The purpose is that Secretary Duffy has tried even earlier than changing into Secretary. The guardrails of bureaucratic authorities don’t all the time result in a vacation spot.
In equity, Duffy sat on Monetary Providers, not Transportation, and a Secretary’s job is to execute legislation, not write it. Yesterday I pulled enforcement throughout states, and in the present day I pulled the policymaker portion of that knowledge.
Each invoice launched within the 118th and 119th Congress, all 36,608 of them, was screened for trucking, which produced 79 payments. Each sponsor and cosponsor on all 79, cross-referenced towards committee assignments, after which towards the numbers from yesterday’s enforcement piece: the crash deaths, the inspections, and the enforcement {dollars} in every member’s personal state.
Following yesterday’s State accomplice MCSAP bang-for-buck rankings, in the present day we convey you the trucking laws bang-for-buck ledger. It isn’t flattering to anyone. Cross time period limits as a result of there’s a complete lot of partisan politics and sound bites that don’t monitor to actual motion or outcomes.
79 payments. Three legal guidelines.
Begin with the output of the entire machine. Over two Congresses, practically 4 years, the US Congress launched 79 payments touching trucking. Three turned legislation.
Two of the three are worthy however modest CDL housekeeping measures: the Veteran Enchancment Industrial Driver License Act, easing the trail for veterans to get their CDLs, and the Strengthening the Industrial Driver’s License Info System Act, a data-plumbing improve to the system that states use to share driver data. Good payments. None places an inspector on a ramp or a harmful service out of enterprise.
The third is the one which tells you the place the power truly went: a Congressional Overview Act decision placing down California’s Superior Clear Vans guidelines. No matter you consider California’s emissions mandates, and loads of drivers cheered that repeal, together with me, discover what it means. The only most consequential piece of trucking laws enacted by this Congress was a deregulation. In 4 years, Congress didn’t move one invoice that added enforcement capability, funded inspections, or tightened service oversight. Not a single one.
The 76 that didn’t move? Sixty-nine died the identical week they have been born, have been referred to a committee, and by no means touched once more. 5 fought their approach by way of committee, obtained reported to the Home calendar, and died sitting on it. Two of these are payments this trade has spent years asking for.
The Motor Provider Security Choice Commonplace Act would have created a nationwide commonplace for vetting carriers earlier than hiring them; the query the Supreme Court docket simply made pressing for each dealer in America in Montgomery v. Caribe. Reported out of committee. Positioned on the calendar. Died. The Truck Parking Security Enchancment Act, the highest quality-of-life ask of practically each driver survey ever taken. Reported out. Positioned on the calendar. Died. The system labored precisely as much as the purpose of mattering, then stopped. So we must always ask why.
The workhorses
Not many go-getter workhorses among the many legislators. Why? Properly, as a result of they’re shopper politicians that you just and I constantly feed no matter what they do or fail to do. 79 payments didn’t sponsor themselves, and the folks doing the work aren’t principally those you’d guess.
Within the Home, the heaviest lifters over two Congresses are Rep. Tracey Mann of Kansas with 12 trucking payments carrying his identify, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas, himself a former sheriff whose district sits on the Houston freight hall, with 11, Rep. Rudy Yakym of Indiana with 10, and Rep. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, the main Democrat, with 9. On the Senate aspect, Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska stands out because the chamber’s most prolific creator of trucking laws, with Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis and Michigan’s Gary Peters among the many most lively. Observe the geography: Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Indiana, New Hampshire. Freight-corridor and agricultural states, principally, whose members dwell with trucking whether or not they selected the difficulty or not.
Give the workhorses their due however what did all that work produce? Mann’s 12 payments, Nehls’ 11, Fischer’s portfolio, practically all of it’s sitting in the identical subcommittee graveyard as Duffy’s 4 payments from a decade in the past. Effort isn’t output. Which brings us to the individuals who management output.
The chairman’s zero
The Home Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure owns trucking. Each a kind of 79 payments that touched the Home handed by way of its jurisdiction. Its chairman is Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri.
Variety of trucking payments Sam Graves has put his identify on throughout the previous two Congresses: zero. The committee’s high Democrat, rating member Rick Larsen of Washington: zero. The 2 strongest folks within the Home on trucking coverage, with many years of mixed service on the committee, didn’t sponsor or cosponsor a single one of many 79.
To be truthful. Chairmen historically don’t cosponsor. A boss’s energy is the gavel, not the signature; he decides what will get a markup, and several other of the payments that made it to the calendar obtained there as a result of Graves’ committee moved them. Judged as a site visitors cop, Graves let some site visitors by way of. Maintain the 2 information aspect by aspect as a result of the loudest yr of federal trucking enforcement politics in reminiscence, carried out solely by the chief department, occurred whereas the chairman and rating member of the committee that might truly legislate on it signed their names to nothing, and the 2 payments the trade needed most died on a calendar the bulk controls. Down on the subcommittee degree, the image is simply barely higher: Highways and Transit chairman David Rouzer has 4, and rating member Eleanor Holmes Norton has 2, and Norton, because the delegate from the District of Columbia, doesn’t even maintain a flooring vote.
The alignment desk: legal guidelines versus graves
Yesterday’s enforcement knowledge meets in the present day’s legislative knowledge. For each state: what number of of its Home members put their names on any trucking invoice, what number of truck crash deaths the state suffered in fiscal 2025, and the way its enforcement operations carry out. The query is alignment. Do the locations bearing the burden produce the legislators doing the work?
Generally, sure. Texas is the bleakest column within the crash knowledge, 21,006 crashes and 323 deaths in fiscal 2025, and Texas can be probably the most legislatively lively delegation within the nation: 21 of its 38 Home members put their identify on trucking laws, 60 sponsorships in all, plus Nehls close to the highest of the person desk. Texas exhibits up. Whether or not Texas’s payments handle Texas’s issues is a good follow-up, however no one can say the delegation ignored the difficulty.
Then there’s my residence (embarrassment), I imply state. Virginia misplaced 104 folks to truck crashes in fiscal 2025. Yesterday’s piece confirmed Virginia operating the most costly inspections amongst massive states, $424 apiece, and one of many thinnest packages, 26,259 inspections all yr. Put these collectively, and Virginia has the worst enforcement protection ratio in America: practically one crash on its books for each 5 inspections it performs. California, for comparability, runs 45 inspections per crash. Virginia’s legislative response to being probably the most under-inspected freight state within the nation? Sixteen sponsorships from a delegation of 11, none of them among the many Home leaders. 104 funerals, the nation’s thinnest inspection protection, and a delegation within the legislative center of the pack. If the alignment desk has a face, it’s Virginia’s.
Georgia runs it shut: 188 deaths, the second-worst protection ratio at one crash per seven inspections, middling exercise. On the far finish sits Hawaii, the one state within the Union whose total congressional delegation, Home and Senate, put their identify on zero trucking payments throughout two Congresses. Fifteen truck crash deaths in fiscal 2025 and never one signature. Hawaii’s freight profile is genuinely uncommon, an island economic system with no interstate trucking within the mainland sense, so I’ll say it plainly fairly than indicate in any other case: Hawaii’s zero is probably the most explainable zero out there. It’s nonetheless a zero, and Hawaiians nonetheless buried fifteen folks.
Ledger taken as a complete
Learn the entire desk, and a sample emerges: legislative consideration tracks freight geography; hall and agricultural states produce the lively members, which is sensible, but it surely doesn’t monitor the burden. The states the place the crash-to-inspection math is most damaged, Virginia, Georgia, the coverage-gap states from yesterday’s rankings, are legislatively unremarkable. The enforcement struggle consuming the trade, ELP, licensing, and funding withholdings, is being fought solely by the chief department, whereas the legislative department produced two CDL housekeeping legal guidelines and a deregulation in 4 years. The folks with probably the most formal energy over trucking legislation signed the least.
That’s the reply Duffy’s document opened. When the folks demanding enforcement held the pen throughout two Congresses, that is what they did with it: 79 makes an attempt, three legal guidelines, none of them enforcement, and the payments that may have mattered most died on a calendar. The Secretary’s four-bill congressional document is the sample, and he’s now probably the most aggressive enforcement govt in this system’s historical past exactly as a result of the enforcement lever doesn’t require Congress.
How was this constructed?
The numbers come from the federal government’s personal data, assembled this week. Each invoice within the 118th and 119th Congress, 36,608 in whole, was screened towards a decent set of trucking phrases, motor service, CDL, hours of service, FMCSA, and the like, yielding the 79. Tight means conservative: a broad web catches freeway payments that point out vans in passing; this one catches payments about trucking, so if something, the 79 overstates focus fairly than understating it. Sponsorship and cosponsorship for all 79 got here from the Congress.gov API, committee assignments from the Congress-legislators public dataset, and Secretary Duffy’s full nine-year document, all 820 payments, from his member file. Crash and enforcement figures are the identical audited dataset as yesterday’s piece: deduplicated federal crash data and a pair of.9 million fiscal 2025 inspections.
Two limits. This ledger counts names on payments, not votes; a member can vote for each trucking measure that reaches the ground and by no means cosponsor one, although notice that nearly nothing reached the ground for a vote. Sponsorship counts measure consideration, not high quality; one good invoice outweighs ten messaging payments, which is why the piece names the payments and never simply the tallies.
What’s subsequent
That is half two of three. Yesterday: what the enforcement greenback buys. In the present day: what the legislative pen produced. Half three follows the cash, the marketing campaign contributions, the PACs, the lobbying disclosures, and who testified for what, joined to those similar names, as a result of the final query the ledger can reply is the oldest one: whether or not the signatures observe the districts or the donors.
The pen has been principally idle for 4 years. Subsequent, we discover out who’s been holding the hand that holds it.
The submit Trucking Legislator Rankings. 79 Payments, 3 Legal guidelines. appeared first on BigRig.