6 Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch FROM THE PRESIDENT Jana Jarvis OTA President/CEO AS YOU READ through this edition of the Oregon Truck Dispatch, you will likely come to the conclusion that there are a wide variety of governmental policy regulations that will have significant impacts on the trucking industry in the coming years. From efforts to mandate electric truck purchases to small rebate programs to encourage these purchases, Oregon has adopted a number of California regulations aimed at significantly transforming our industry. These programs are fraught with issues ranging from having enough electric grid capacity to questions concerning the availability of charging equipment. And those questions don’t even address concerns over productivity due to the equipment not meeting our industry’s needs. It is clear that the environmental community sees the need to transform the trucking industry away from diesel as our primary power source. And at the same time, they have no interest in addressing our concerns over cost, energy constraints, productivity and application. “If you mandate it, they will change” seems to be the common underlying theme in policy discussions held at all levels of government. It is also clear that they are winning the public’s support with their one-sided narrative. We have much work to do to change this narrative. In the same vein, they are moving the needle in the public’s mind around the need to limit access to roads in an effort to address climate change. The recent efforts on the part of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to implement tolling in the form of congestion pricing is an attempt to price people off our roadways. As someone who has sat through countless hours of discussion over tolling, it is interesting to see how the public has reacted. Largely as a result of the backlash from those communities who would be most affected by ODOT’s proposed plan, this tolling discussion has been tabled for the moment. But it will come back. ODOT has been meeting with policymakers for months, sharing their concern over their lack of funding. They bring charts indicating that 2025 is the year that their revenue significantly declines due to the transition to electric passenger vehicles that don’t pay road usage taxes in the form of gasoline taxes. For the past several years, ODOT has been contemplating implementing road usage fees, or VMTs, on passenger vehicles to capture additional revenue in addition to gasoline taxes. This need for revenue is not only driven by electric cars, but also by today’s vehicles that have significantly higher mileage efficiencies. For passenger vehicles, ODOT’s revenue has been flat, or even declining, while total miles driven have increased. Nationally, ODOT talks glowingly about Oregon’s weight-mile system of taxation for heavy vehicles and touts this approach as the way to help solve their funding shortages. For the trucking industry, however, the weight-mile system is fraught with problems. It is an extremely expensive form of tax collection for both the user and the government. Gas tax collection costs run less than 3% while tolling, VMTs and weight-mile tax collection can cost more than 30%. Evasion factors into this calculation as well. Travelers from out-of-state can easily ignore the tolling bill that shows up at their home after their trip. And we know from experience that there is a significant amount of evasion that factors into the weight-mile tax. In fact, your weight-mile tax rates are calculated using an assumed amount of evasion. If the number is 10%, then increase the rates. It is easily apparent why Oregon’s trucking taxes and fees are the highest in the nation and the spread is only increasing. It isn’t because our roadways are the OTA is “All In” to Protect Members from Upcoming Policy Regulations With this imbalance continuing to grow and legislative leadership unwilling to address this for several years, the OTA Board of Directors made the decision late last year to file a lawsuit.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Nzc3ODM=