It's been a "little bit hectic up here" this week, said House Rep. Mike Collins, first-term Congressman representing Georgia's 10th district and part proprietor of the Collins Trucking fleet out of Jackson, Georgia. Collins joined owner-operator Shawn Mitchell and trucker John Grosvenor, also a CDL Drivers Unlimited council member, Wednesday evening on their Truckers Independent Broadcasting Network livestreamed show. Collins fielded calls from drivers amid ongoing debt-ceiling negotiations and just one day after he was part of the mark-up session in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Tuesday, clearing several trucking-related bills for further debate and a potential vote on the House floor.
Those bills included measures to dedicate a specific amount of funding to states for truck parking projects, grease the skids for CDL test-takers, boost participation in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's under-21 interstate pilot program, establish a carrier-selection standard for brokers and shippers when it comes to carrier vetting, and more. (Read about all the bills that cleared House T&I via this report, if you missed it.)
[Related: Truck parking funding, weight flexibility bills advance in House]
Hectic is not a strange condition for Collins, though. "Good hectic," he said. "In our [trucking] business, it's 24/7 anyway. The past few years our sons have been running" Collins Trucking, "so I'm glad to be back in the fight."
Collins emphasized issues of the need for greater Congressional oversight of federal regulatory agencies, the litigious nature of business in America today, and more throughout, on a week in which he joined others in the call for rollback of the Environmental Protection Agency's latest Phase emissions regulations.
"These federal agencies have gotten out of control and we need to rein them in," Collins said. "They just cram stuff down our throats with no regard to what it may actually cost trucking."
Collins referenced the derating of diesel engines experiencing emissions-systems problems as an example. "Instead of derating my truck because a sensor went off," he said, why not take a different approach that utilized technology for enforcement? "Don’t derate me where it’s unsafe" on the road, then necessitating a very costly tow in some cases due to little more than a faulty sensor. "The way they overreach and overregulate is just so apparent."
