News

From Hartford Business Journal. Worker’s compensation insurance rates will be 14 percent lower starting Jan. 1, the Connecticut Insurance Department announced. It will be the fourth consecutive year of falling premiums, following drops of 11 percent, 3.9 percent and 6.3 percent in 2016, 2015 and 2014, respectively. “The continued decrease is a result of the…

You will need to haveElectronic Logging Devices (ELDs) unless your operations are covered by an exemption. Here are the only exemptions from the ELD regulation: ELD Rule Exceptions The following are not required to use ELDs (but carriers may choose to use ELDs even if they are not required): Drivers who use paper logs no…

MTAC is supporting a Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) application for a INFRA grant which will partially fund the Charter Oak Bridge project. The Charter Oak Bridge project will relieve congestion at one of CT’s worst freight bottlenecks by doing several things. It will widen I-91 NB from Interchange 27 to Interchange 29; replace and…

Connecticut DOT has announced that the limits of the Divisible Load Truck permits for Interstate 95 (trucks up to 76,500lbs) are now reduced to reflect all the bridge rehabilitation and widening over the last 10 to 15 years or more. This corridor is better able to handle these loads and this change in the limits…

From Transport Topics. Federal trucking regulators have been angling for a flexible sleeper berth pilot program since 2010, but a request for public comment posted in the Federal Register in late October showed that plans for the program are behind schedule. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration website said the pilot was supposed to begin…

From Transport Topics. President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser raised the possibility of increasing the federal gasoline tax next year to help pay for the administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, U.S. Representative Tom Reed said. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn brought up the fuel tax as a way to help fund promised upgrades to…

From ATRI. The American Transportation Research Institute, the trucking industry’s not-for-profit research institute, today unveiled its top industry issues report, which includes the list of the top ten critical issues facing the North American trucking industry. For the first time since 2006, the driver shortage is the top-ranked issued. The significant need for qualified drivers…

From Transport Topics: A new survey shows support for an increase in the gas tax is widening. The survey of 800 registered voters in June also showed Americans increasingly view the condition of the nation’s transportation infrastructure as a problem and believe it should be a spending priority, said pollster Neil Newhouse, who authored the…

From MTAC President Joe Sculley’s Letter to the Editor of the Hartford Courant: In your Oct. 12 editorial – Five Reasons Connecticut Needs A Budget Now – you state “Connecticut will have to do what states from Maine to North Carolina have done: install tolls on the state’s highways, the third busiest in the nation.”…

From American Transportation Research Institute. The American Transportation Research Institute today released the findings of its 2017 update to An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking. Using financial data provided directly by motor carriers throughout the country, this research documents and analyzes trucking costs from 2008 through 2016 – providing trucking industry stakeholders with…