Back in the 70’s, when trucking was regulated by the federal government, all the regulations were uniform throughout the country. At this point, we are having a run on the defederalization of trucking where individual states and regions of the country are trying to make their own rules for trucking. So the rules in one part of the country aren’t necessarily consistent with the rules in another part of the country.

The biggest example would have to be California. They are single-handedly trying to change the equipment that is allowed in the entire trucking industry by virtue of the rules they’re setting regarding what equipment they’ll allow at the Long Beach Port.

The State is trying to set strict environmental standards for the trucks in order to increase the level of efficiency of the equipment entering their ports. These regulations would result in the prevention of certain older model trucks from entering the port. They’re also trying to bar owner operators from having access to the Long Beach Port. As many trucking companies working out of the Long Beach Port use both older model trucks and owner operators, they are effectively trying to dictate how companies do business.

Increasingly we are seeing litigation around broker liability, not on the company hauling the freight, but the company that assigned the freight to be hauled – the broker.

When there’s an accident involving a shipment that was hired out by a broker, we’re seeing brokers being sued more and more often by the injured parties claiming that the broker somehow contributed to the accident by providing that load to the trucking company that was allegedly negligent in the transport of that freight.

Congestion may not literally be a legal hazard, but it can, and does have legal side effects. For example, the congestion that is building due to lack of infrastructure in our country is causing a number of problems with driver hour of service. Drivers are unable to complete their loads in the amount of time that’s been allotted; we see the number of accidents increasing because there are more vehicles on the road than there were formally; fuel costs on a per mile basis are going through the roof because of congestion because vehicles that aren’t moving are less efficient. Congestion is also beginning to affect driver morale as they need to be on the road longer because they’re being held up in heavy traffic, making it more difficult to get them home when they want to be home.