Maine Motor Transport Association partnered with United Insurance Group and Great West Casualty to honor professional truck drivers, as part of National Truck Driver Appreciation week. Travel mugs, work gloves, and safety vests were handed out to professional drivers at Irving locations in Medway, Auburn, Houlton, Fairfield, Rumford, and Farmington as well at Dysart’s in Hermon.

A special thanks to Dysart’s and Irving for graciously making their locations available for us to recognize the drivers.

MMTA thanks all professional drivers (and their families) for their hard work and the sacrifices they all make every day. Truckers truly move America forward!

UCR stands for Unified Carrier Registration program. It is a federally-mandated system for registering operators of commercial vehicles who are involved in interstate and international travel. This annual registration must be renewed by December 31st each year.

Registration for the 2024 UCR registration year will open October 1, 2023. Fees will be reduced from the 2023 fees and are currently listed on the UCR website.

Truckers traveling along the Pennsylvania Turnpike will notice some big changes, from modernized tolling infrastructure without toll plazas or booths and new fee structures starting in 2025.

Work is taking place on the turnpike, which opened in 1940 as the nation’s first superhighway, to convert its 550-mile statewide road system to a cashless, free-flowing toll-collection system called open-road tolling.

A proposed law in California would require large corporations to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the pressure on businesses to publicly measure and reduce their carbon footprints.

Four groups in the fashion and clothing sector today announced support for the bill, saying it aligns with their stance unveiled in January on setting standards “to achieve the highest ethical and responsible standards across our global supply chain and production practices.” The groups call their framework the “THREADS Sustainability and Social Responsibility Protocol” and say it will help unite business groups with policymakers in pursuit of environmental sustainability and social responsibility efforts in global supply chains.

Climate policy keeps colliding with economic and technological reality, and California is ground zero. The state’s latest effort is a forced sprint to ban diesel trucks with nary a concern for costs or consequences.

Truckers are raising alarms about a new mandate proposed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to electrify their fleets. Starting next year, drayage operators that transport goods between state’s ports and distribution centers would be prohibited from registering new diesel trucks. By 2035 almost all package delivery, drayage and box trucks would have to be “zero emission.”

President Joe Biden's administration finalized plans for a program it argues will further reduce air pollution from heavy-duty engines and vehicles across the United States, but truckers argue the proposed standards will crush the supply chain and put the American food supply at risk. 

The new emission standards put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "are significantly more stringent," "cover a wider range of heavy-duty engine operating conditions" compared to previous standards and are aimed at reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides and other pollutants. The rule officially went into effect on March 27 of this year, but will be implemented for new trucks sold after 2027.

The California Air Resources Board’s controversial Advanced Clean Fleets rule requires a phased-in transition toward zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, but concerns are growing that the state is falling behind in its ability to provide enough charging options to meet its own aggressive targets.

Washington, DC – The American Transportation Research Institute, the trucking industry’s not-for-profit research organization, today launched the 2023 Top Industry Issues Survey. The annual survey asks trucking industry stakeholders to rank the top issues of concern for the industry along with potential strategies for addressing each issue.

Now in its 19th year, ATRI’s annual analysis not only ranks the issues overall but also provides insights into how critical topics are ranked differently by motor carriers and professional drivers. The report also allows stakeholders to monitor issues over time to better understand which issues are rising, or falling, in criticality.

The world could face a shortage for lithium as demand for the metal ramps up, with some analysts forecasting that it could come as soon as 2025. Others, however, see a longer time frame before that shortfall hits.

BMI, a Fitch Solutions research unit, was among those that predict a lithium supply deficit by 2025. In a recently published report, BMI largely attributed the deficit to China’s lithium demand exceeding that of its supply.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will publish a notice proposing the development and implementation of a federal appeals process for Requests for Data Review (RDRs) submitted to the agency through its DataQs system.

First-ever biofuel achievements have been recorded in recent months. The U.S. Energy Information Administration revealed Sept. 5 that for the first time, production capacity for renewable diesel and other biofuels in January reached 3 billion gallons per year, outpacing biodiesel’s capacity of 2.1 billion gallons.

September 29, 2023

8:30am

MMTA Office, Augusta

October 4, 2023

9:00am

MMTA Office, Augusta

October 13, 2023

8:30am

MMTA Office, Augusta