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  • January 24, 2024 10:46 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    Civil courts in Georgia and Pennsylvania have tied as the nation’s top “Judicial Hellholes” listed in a new 2023-24 report, primarily due to large nuclear verdicts, ethically questionable events and court orders the report viewed as severely biased.

    In all, nine jurisdictions or states are on the American Tort Reform Foundation’s Judicial Hellholes most recent program list as having the most adverse laws and judicial civil rulings for defendants which, when sued, can determine a defendant’s financial fate.

    The court systems highlighted in the report include Georgia and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas; Cook County, Ill.; California; New York City; South Carolina; Lansing, Mich.; Louisiana; and St. Louis.


  • December 29, 2023 10:12 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    I attempted to enclose the file but it was too large.  The link to the Federal Register is here:

    https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/12/28/2023-28066/revisions-to-civil-penalty-amounts-2024


  • December 28, 2023 11:00 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

     

    Dear ATA Member:
     

    We wanted to update you on two recent and significant announcements out of California regarding pending regulations that affect fleets who operate in the state. 

    1. Advanced Clean Fleets Enforcement Stay 


    Following discussions between the California Trucking Association and the California Air Resources Board, CARB agreed to allow flexibility for fleets in reporting their California vehicles as required by the regulation. Under this agreement, fleets can voluntarily register their trucks under the program but will not be mandated to do so unless or until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants a waiver for the Advanced Clean Fleets rule. A waiver determination from EPA is not expected for months, and could take up to a year.

    Under this agreement:

    • CARB has agreed not to enforce the reporting or registration requirements of the ACF as it applies to high priority fleets and drayage until a waiver determination is issued by EPA. "High priority" fleets are defined in the regulation as those with $50 million or more in revenue or operating 50 or more trucks.
       
    • Fleets may voluntarily report and apply for flexibility provisions.
       
    • CARB reserves the right to take enforcement action to remove internal combustion trucks added after January 1, 2024 that would not otherwise be in compliance with the ACF.
       
    • CTA will continue to move forward with its litigation against the ACF.
       
    • CARB will publish a detailed enforcement advisory in the coming days.


    2. California Clean Truck Check Registration Extended 


    CARB is extending the Clean Truck Check reporting deadline to January 31, 2024, allowing vehicle owners additional time to complete their initial fleet reporting and meet the 2023 $30 compliance fee for each truck. Vehicles must be registered in the California Clean Truck Check, Vehicle Inspection System (CTC-VIS) portal. 

    CARB is planning to hold a training webinar on the database on January 9, 2024 from 1:30pm to 5:00pm PST. 


    Please reach out to Mike Tunnell, ATA's executive director of environmental affairs, or Jacqueline Gelb, ATA's vice president of energy & environmental affairs, with questions on either of these announcements.


    Sincerely,

    Bill Sullivan
    Chief Advocacy and Public Affairs Officer
    American Trucking Associations
     

     

     


  • December 27, 2023 7:41 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    Systems using ELDs and GPS must comply beginning January 1, 2024.


    The International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) has finalized changes to requirements for electronic records to tightly define what data elements are required and what formats are acceptable.


    For distance records produced by a vehicle tracking system that utilizes latitudes and longitudes (ELDs and GPS), a record must be created and maintained at a minimum every 10 minutes when the vehicle’s engine is on.


     This action is even more stringent than recent changes for electronic records under the International Registration Plan (IRP), which require a minimum record creation rate of every 15 minutes while the engine is on.


    Mirroring changes under IRP, electronic records under IFTA must be accessible in an electronic spreadsheet format such as XLS, XLSX, CSV, or delimited text file. Formats from a vehicle tracking system that provides a static image such as PDF, JPEG, PNG, or Word are not acceptable.


    The effective date for the changes – January 1, 2024 – also aligns with changes recently finalized by IRP.


  • December 22, 2023 10:15 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    Screenshot 2023 12 18 At 7 18 42 Am

  • December 20, 2023 12:47 PM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    HERE IS A LINK TO A VIDEO PRODUCED BY THE NEVADA TRUCKING ASSOCIATION CONCERNING MOTOR CARRIERS THAT GO INTO CALIFORNIA AND COMPANIES THAT HIRE CARRIERS TO TRANSPORT GOODS INTO CALIFORNIA.  WATCH, LEARN AND PRAY:


    California Air Resources Board (CARB) has a new set of requirements for any truck that will be traveling in California. Below you can find a 4-page informational piece, put together by our friends over at the California Trucking Association.

    Yesterday, we hosted a zoom meeting to discuss these new requirements, and what this could mean for you.You may find the link and passcode to the recording from yesterday morning's webinar below.

    video1601432752.mp4

    Also, a few questions were asked in the meeting regarding the transportation refrigerator unit (TRU) regulations, and who it may apply to. You may click below for more information:

    https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/ED-Training/mscd_tru/content/index.html#/lessons/NvQYgJG26FHO_Ww04nWnZ4zuN0N9rK7K


  • December 19, 2023 8:58 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    This is an important issue affecting the safety of all residents of the Commonwealth.  This is a great article and deserves a full read:

    Having heard witnesses say America’s largest power grid remains unreliable nearly a year after a close call with blackouts last Christmas, Pennsylvania State Sen. Gene Yaw called the testimony “a little scary.”

    Glen Thomas, a former Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission chairman who consults on grid issues, testified during a joint hearing of Pennsylvania and Ohio legislators. “Reliability challenges are likely to get worse, not better,” he said.

    Other witnesses were no more encouraging.

    “We cannot operate a system with 100 percent renewables,” said Asim Haque, a senior vice president of the PJM Interconnection, which serves 65 million people in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia.

    Haque’s statement contradicts what many “green” energy proponents claim about wind and solar power—technologies that account for most new energy sources proposed for PJM because subsidies and regulations have made more reliable sources uneconomical.

    Without grid reliability in Pennsylvania (the nation’s largest electricity exporter), there is none in PJM. And reliability has often taken a back seat to the politics of energy policy. That puts Pennsylvania policymakers at the heart of the matter.

    Repeated—even urgent—warnings abound that the power grid is increasingly prone to failure. Some of these warnings come straight from grid overseers, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

    In PJM and neighboring regions, severe cold “can lead to energy emergencies as operators face sharp increases in generator forced outages and electricity demand,” according to a recent NERC assessment. “Forecasted peak demand has risen while resources have changed little in these areas since Winter Storm Elliot (December 2022) caused energy emergencies across the area.”

    The bottom line is Pennsylvanians are in dire danger of life-threatening winter blackouts. Let’s not forget the 2012 cold snap in Texas that killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in economic damages.

    The reason is painfully clear: States and utilities are shutting down reliable power plants, especially coal-fired and nuclear facilities. They are replacing these reliable sources with unreliable sources, such as wind and solar generators, which do not work on cold, windless nights.

    Since its present program clearly is not working, PJM has proposed significant changes to how it secures reliable power plants. Commendable as PJM’s effort is, it has been a long time coming.

    Grid reliability wilted for years under conflicting state and federal policies that favored wind and solar at the expense of more reliable fossil fuel and nuclear plants. In addition, ever more stringent federal environmental policies have forced the closure of some of the world’s cleanest coal-fired plants, increasing dependence on other less reliable or more vulnerable sources during cold weather.

    For more than a decade in Pennsylvania, subsidies for so-called alternative energy sources have worked against grid reliability. In 2019, then-Gov. Tom Wolf tried to impose a carbon tax on electricity generation by joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Wolf’s proposal not only discouraged the construction of new natural gas-fired plants but also hastened the July closure of the state’s largest coal-fired plant at Homer City. Meanwhile, developers canceled plans in 2023 for two gas-fired power plants after failing to get approvals from a state regulatory regime described by some industry sources as the nation’s most hostile.

    Although a court ruling killed the carbon tax, Gov. Josh Shapiro has decided to appeal RGGI’s dismissal to the state Supreme Court. Separately, he has proposed increasing alternative energy subsidies. Both actions go in exactly the wrong direction.

    Instead, here are some things for Pennsylvania policymakers to consider as a course correction:

    ·        Focus first on cold winter nights with no wind or solar power. Obvious solutions are adequately winterized gas-supply systems and coal and nuclear plants with on-site fuel supplies that protect against the vulnerabilities of just-in-time pipeline deliveries.

    ·        Stop claiming wind and solar can replace coal, gas, and nuclear. They can’t.

    ·        Allow construction of pipelines to supply fuel to gas plants. More than two-thirds of voters support such infrastructure development, according to a poll by the Commonwealth Foundation.

    ·        Resist federal regulations that undermine reliability and change state policy that does likewise.

    Grid reliability can be complicated, but it should not be scary.


  • December 18, 2023 11:37 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    Each year OSHA releases preliminary data for their top 10 most cited violations. Here are the topics that made this fiscal year (FY 2023) from Oct. 1 2022 – Sept. 29, 2023.

    1. Fall Protection – General Requirements (29 CFR 1926.501): 7,271 Violations
    2. Hazard Communication (29 CFR 1910.1200): 3,213 Violations
    3. Ladders (29 CFR 1926.1053): 2,978 Violations
    4. Scaffolding (29 CFR 1926.451): 2,859 Violations
    5. Powered Industrial Trucks (29 CFR 1910.178): 2,561 Violations
    6. Lockout/Tagout (29 CFR 1910.147): 2,554 Violations
    7. Respiratory Protection (29 CFR 1910.134): 2,481 Violations
    8. Fall Protection – Training Requirements (29 CFR 1926.503): 2,112 Violations
    9. Eye and Face Protection (29 CFR 1926.102): 2,074 Violations
    10. Machine Guarding (29 CFR 1910.212): 1,644 Violations


  • December 07, 2023 10:08 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    At least one state gets it.

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue has turned down $320 million in federal money aimed at reducing tailpipe emissions, arguing federal transportation officials are overstepping their authority in the program.

    >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<

    Perdue on November 13 notified U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg the state will not participate in the federal Carbon Reduction Program, a five-year, $6.4 billion effort focused on emissions that contribute to climate change.

    “Rather than support the continued politicization of our roadways, FDOT’s (the Florida Department of Transportation’s) time, money, and resources will be focused on building roads and bridges --- not reducing carbon emissions,” Perdue wrote.


  • December 07, 2023 7:38 AM | John Rigney (Administrator)

    The Transportation Security Screening Modernization Act cuts through red tape to allow workers to apply existing valid background checks to multiple TSA-managed credentialing programs, such as the Transportation Worker Identification Credentials and Hazardous Materials Endorsements. By eliminating duplicative screenings and harmonizing these programs, the bill would codify formal recommendations by the Government Accountability Office dating back to 2007.  These recommendations were reaffirmed in 2020 in a comprehensive security assessment conducted by the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC).

John's Safety Minute

My name is John Rigney and I am a retired Pennsylvania State Trooper. I retired in July of 2011 as a Sergeant in charge of Staff Services at Troop J, Lancaster. While there I received extensive training in emergency response with PEMA and FEMA. I was heavily involved in Motor Carrier safety and was certified by PADOT and FMCSA as an instructor for the roadside inspection processes. I hold a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Forest Products from the Pennsylvania State University. I also hold a Certified Safety Supervisor accreditation from the National Transportation Management Institute (NATMI) which is administered by the University of Central Florida. 

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