A bill dubbed last year by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association as the “poison pill” has reared its ugly head again.
Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill., announced last week that he plans to reintroduce the Insurance Act, which would increase the minimum insurance requirement for motor carriers. While the text of the bill still has not been released, previous versions of the bill called for increases that would have been devastating to small-business truckers.
Garcia’s 2019 version of the bill called for the current minimum insurance of $750,000 to increase to nearly $4.925 million – and increase of more than 550%. Last year, Garcia tacked on an amendment to the highway bill that would have boosted the requirement to $2 million – an increase of 167%. In February, OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh testified to a House committee that even the increase to $2 million could make a trucker currently paying $10,000 per year to have to start paying $20,000 each year
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association brought a straight forward message to a Congressional hearing on behalf of the nation’s truck drivers with regard to surviving COVID-19: Truckers are struggling under COVID, but their biggest concern is being run out of business by lawmakers in Washington.
OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh spoke as the only witness who has worked as a truck driver at the Protecting Transportation Workers and Passengers from COVID: Gaps in safety, Lessons Learned and Next Steps hearing on Feb. 4 before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Pugh was a trucker and small-business operator for nearly 23 years with roughly 2.5 million miles of safe driving before joining OOIDA’s staff in 2017.
One of the issues the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association will try to address in the 117th Congress is the repeal of the truck driver overtime exemption in the Fair Labor Standards Act. The organization said it wants drivers to be paid for all of the time they spend on duty.
OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh said repealing the exemption would benefit owner-operators as well as employee drivers.
“For far too long, drivers have had to give their time away for nothing,” Pugh said. “That’s one of the biggest problems in the industry … but that’s become the norm. You only get paid when you’re driving. You don’t get paid when you’re fueling. You don’t get paid for waiting to load or waiting to unload. As a company driver, trucking is the only profession I know where you work 70 hours but you only get paid for maybe 40 of them when you’re driving the truck.