WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Josh Brecheen is again leading the charge to keep regulators from capping truck speeds below the legal limits posted on highways and interstates.
The Deregulating Restrictions on Interstate Vehicles and Eighteen-Wheelers (DRIVE) Act, introduced on Thursday by the Oklahoma Republican, would prohibit the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from requiring that trucks over 26,000 pounds be equipped with a speed limiting device set to a maximum speed.
When FMCSA notified the public in 2022 that it intended to propose a speed limiter mandate, the notice received over 15,000 comments, mostly opposition from owner-operators and small trucking companies.
Similar legislation introduced by Brecheen in 2023, which ultimately failed, had 43 co-sponsors, all Republican. A formal rulemaking is scheduled to be published in May, according to the Department of Transportation’s latest regulatory agenda.
“Under the Biden Administration, we saw blatant overreach that would have required speed-limiters as low as 60 mph for heavy-duty trucks,” Brecheen said in a press release.
“I have spent years driving a semi hauling heavy equipment and years in different ranch vehicles hauling livestock and farm equipment. Safety is enhanced in keeping with the flow of traffic as set by state law, not on a one-size-fits-all regulation enforced by bureaucrats in Washington.”
Brecheen’s speed limiter pushback has strong support from truck drivers and smaller carriers. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, and 15 other trucking and affiliated groups sent a letter in January to President-elect Donald Trump a week before he took office asking that he postpone and rescind the speed limiter rulemaking.
“Truckers required to operate below the posted speed limit must drive longer hours to cover the same distance, which increases their fatigue and places even greater stress on them to comply with burdensome hours-of-service regulations,” the letter states.
“This mandate will also literally slow freight movement across the country. To account for this, more trucks will be needed to carry the same amount of freight in the same amount of time, which would increase road congestion. All of these effects would unnecessarily hamper economic growth under your leadership.”
Many large trucking companies, in contrast, already use speed limiters in their fleets and consider trucks unencumbered by speed limiters as having a potential competitive advantage.
The American Trucking Associations, which represents such carriers, has supported a mandatory 70 mph limit set in trucks equipped with automatic braking and adaptive cruise control systems, and a maximum set speed of 65 mph in trucks without them.
