Members of The Tennessee Trucking Association are scheduled to deliver a presentation before the State Senate Transportation and Safety Committee on Wednesday morning.
Staff for various members of the committee, including Chair Becky Duncan Massey (R-Knoxville) told The Tennessee Star on Tuesday that even they didn’t know what, specifically, members of The Tennessee Trucking Association plan to discuss. Members of the Tennessee Trucking Association did not return our requests for comment on Tuesday.
Members of The Tennessee Trucking Association, as of late, have publicly discussed the nation’s supply chain crisis.
Tennessee Trucking Association Vice President of Safety and Member Services Donna England appeared on Huckabee last fall to advocate that 18-to-21-year-old drivers operate Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMVs) in interstate commerce. This is something they are not allowed to do right now, per federal regulations. But changing those regulations, she said, would increase the number of truckers on the road.
“Right now, they can operate in their states, depending on state laws, as each state is different, and go from one end of the state to the other end of the state,” England told host Mike Huckabee.
“So, if I am in Chattanooga, and I want to go to Georgia and I’m 19-years-old then I cannot do that, even though I am only going 10 miles into Georgia. In Tennessee, we limit those 18-20-year-olds on how much distance that they can drive. They can only go within 100 miles of their terminal, but the majority of the states out there don’t have limits on how many miles they can run in their state.”
Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) and nearly 90 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives last fall urged Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to allow certain 18-20-year-olds to operate Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMVs) in interstate commerce.
Mike Collins, a Republican who wants to replace U.S. Representative Jody Hice (R-GA-10) and owns a Jackson, Georgia-based trucking company, commented on the matter last November. He said trucks are safer to drive now thanks to automated transmissions, better rollover stability, and collision mitigation systems.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star and The Georgia Star News. Follow Chris on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, and GETTR. Email tips to [email protected].
Will allowing 18-21 year-olds to operate huge tractor trailer rigs on our freeways, let alone on curvy old two-lane highways, increase the accident rate that these vehicles cause? Shouldn’t the Transportation Department devote far more of its funds to more practical transportation projects as more mass public transit, both urban, suburban, and rural, and more pedestrian-friendly streets and walk-ways instead of allowing huge gas-guzzling and accident-prone vehicles and the construction of ever more highways simply to add to sprawl and more accidents? When all is said and done, the ability to move PEOPLE is far more important than moving VEHICLES!
William, get the hell off the internet. You don’t have a clue wtf is going on. Do you not understand how goods get to a store? It’s not by a ‘coal fire’ Chevy Volt. Yes, it runs off coal…think about it for a minute, moron. The only accident that happened is the night you were conceived.