The next Membership and Board of Directors meetings will be held at the Sheraton Sable Oaks in S. Portland prior to the MMTA Annual Banquet on January 12, 2023. The meeting starts at 2:30pm and you can see the Membership Agenda HERE and the Board Agenda HERE.

We are looking forward to presentations from Irving and Unitil about hydrogen and CNG energy developments relating to Medium and Heavy Duty trucking applications as well as updates and reports on issues of importance to MMTA members. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE ON THE MMTA BOARD TO ATTEND THESE MEETINGS – WE ENCOURAGE ALL MMTA MEMBERS TO JOIN US!

We will also have a roundtable discussion about the future of MMTA engagement. Our hope is to identify strategies that will encourage more participation from the next generation of truckers. We hope to see you on January 12th in South Portland!

November 29, 2022 - Host Matt Gagnon and MMTA's Brian Parke discuss trucking's workforce issues leading into the holiday season.

Washington, DC – The American Transportation Research Institute today issued a call for motor carriers and drivers to participate in a new ATRI data collection on the impact of predatory towing in the trucking industry.

Predatory towing is any incident in which a tow truck operator egregiously overcharges, illegally seizes, damages by use of improper equipment, or withholds release of a truck and/or cargo. Recognizing its persistent negative impact on the industry, ATRI’s Research Advisory Committee (RAC) identified the need to better understand this problem as a top research priority earlier this year.

A proposal by federal regulators to require unique electronic identifiers on large trucks wasn’t well received by many of the nation’s motor carriers and independent truckers.

In fact, the large majority of the more than 2,000 comments sampled on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s website were clearly either vehemently opposed to the idea, or took a wait-and-see position.

WASHINGTON — Full electrification of the U.S. vehicle fleet would require a very large percentage of the country’s current electricity generation, and some states would need to generate as much as 60% more electricity than is presently produced to meet the demand.

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released these and other findings in a new report that assesses the infrastructure requirements for converting the U.S. vehicle fleet to battery electric.

PARIS—The European Union reached an agreement to impose a tax on imports based on the greenhouse gases emitted to make them, inserting climate-change regulation for the first time into the rules of global trade.

The deal on Tuesday morning between European national governments and the European Parliament ends more than a year of negotiations on the details of the plan. The EU is expected to adopt it in the coming weeks as part of a sweeping package of legislation that would step up the bloc’s efforts to limit global warming.

FMCSA’s CDL Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse retains records of positive tests and test refusals for all CDL drivers subject to FMCSA’s Drug and Alcohol Testing Program. If you employ CDL holders such as school bus drivers, municipal equipment operators, limousine drivers, or construction equipment operators, make sure they are not prohibited from operating CMVs—register in the Clearinghouse and meet your query requirements.

The trucking industry and supply chains could face chaos if the Biden administration’s Department of Labor changes how independent workers, such as owner-operator truck drivers, are classified by the federal government. That is according to opponents of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division’s proposal on worker classification.

The Department of Labor has nearly 50,000 comments to sift through on its proposed new federal rule designed to determine if workers are employees or independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The proposal, filed on Oct. 13 in the Federal Register, would guide the classifying of workers and reduce employee misclassification, according to the Labor Department.

A bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would address problems with truck parking, authorizing $755 million in grant funding to expand commercial truck parking capacity.

The Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act was introduced Dec. 1 by U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ).

The 2023 Training & Event Schedule has been completed and registrations are now open. Hours of Service training is January 27. Save the date and reserve your seat today!

January 12, 2023

Sheraton Sable Oaks,

South Portland

January 27, 2023

8:30am

MMTA Office, Augusta

February 3, 2023

8:30am

MMTA Office, Augusta