Freedom of the Highway

Last week twelve years of civil war were at an end in Texas. It began in 1928, when Texas highways were narrow and motorists found big truck and trailer haulers pushing them right off the road. The State adopted the lowest maximum truckload limit in the U.S.: 7,000 lb. Among growers and shippers in the fertile Rio Grande Valley, rebellion has been popping almost ever since.

Since Valley crops (oranges, vegetables, grapefruit) have to be moved in a hurry or wither under the hot sun, truckers tried to get by with overloads. But only one highway leads out of the Valley, and weight inspectors had little trouble catching them. In 1939's spring shipping season, this game of hide-&-seek nearly turned into a battle. The inspectors threw up a blockade on the highway, soon had some 50 trucks lined up. The drivers started their engines and pushed ahead, daring the inspectors to get in their way. None did.

In the next big shipping season the inspectors backed up their blockade with armed highway police, sheriffs, constables, deputies, even a few game wardens. On a peak day they had 100 trucks lined up, 29 drivers in jail, another 30 out on bail. Next day a group of Valley shippers formed the Growers & Shippers Cooperative League* to try to keep their produce moving.

The league raised a war chest from members and truckers, used it to bail out arrested drivers, furnished them with lawyers to keep down the fines and costs. Once it had 2,000 men out on bond. At the same time it started hacking away at the 7,000-lb. regulation. Court tests failed to upset the law, but a quiet campaign to have the legislature change it fared much better. A new law upping the load limit to as much as 24,000 lb. (depending on type of truck) was passed last month; this week the league, its job done, votes on a proposal to disband.

As pleased as Valley shippers at this victory was stocky Ted V. Rodgers, longtime head of the American Trucking Associations, Inc., trade organization and lobby for the U.S. trucking business. In its fight for higher maximum loads the association is having a good year: since Jan. 1 four other States (Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, North Dakota) have upped the limits. Four others (Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, South Dakota) have new laws in the legislative works. But the trucking industry still is hampered by State-to-State differences in maximum loads, maximum sizes, license fees and port-of-entry restrictions. Of all the interstate trade barriers condemned last week by TNEC (see above), trucking regulations are still in the front rank.

*First called Growers & Shippers Protective League but changed because members thought "protective" smacked of racketeering.

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