Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. The next witness will be Mr. Matt Triggs of the American Farm Bureau Federation, 261 Constitution Avenue NW., in Washington.

You may proceed Mr. Triggs.

STATEMENT OF MATT TRIGGS, ASSISTANT LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION

Mr. TRIGGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Members of the committee the American Farm Bureau Federation recommends the enactment of H. R. 3203.

The various actions of the Interstate Commerce Commission on November 30, amending MC-43, and announcing hearings with respect to possible further amendment of such order, have not changed our viewpoint with respect to the need for legislative action to secure the right to continue the practice of trip leasing. The reasons for this position are set forth below.

MC-43 was originally issued in May 1951. Concurrently the Commission issued a 53-page statement-M-7271-setting forth the reasons for, the objectives of, and the effects of the new ruling. Surprising as it may appear, this statement contains not one sentence reflecting any consideration by the Commission to the possible effect of the order upon farmers, upon the costs of transportation of farm products, upon the efficiency of marketing of farm products, or upon other impacts of the new order upon the interests of farm people. Between the issuance of the order and the consideration of the issue by the House Commerce Committee, a period of approximately 2 years elapsed. During this 2-year period the Commission had adequate opportunity to consider possible amendments to the order to take care of the needs of agriculture. They did not do so.

It was not until it appeared probable that the bill would be approved by the House Commerce Committee that the Commission approved amendments moderating to some degree the impact of MC-43 upon agriculture.

The CHAIRMAN. Was MC-43 suspended during

Mr. TRIGGS. Yes, sir; it was suspended by court action.

The CHAIRMAN. By court action?

Mr. TRIGGS. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And it didn't become effective until the Supreme Court decision?

Mr. TRIGGS. It has never become effective in all its aspects.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what I was going to ask you. It has never been put into effect?

Mr. TRIGGS. Portions of it are in effect now.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. TRIGGS. It was not until the bill had been approved by the House and was under consideration by the Senate Commerce Committee that the Commission approved amendments moderating to a more material extent the impact of MC-43 upon agriculture.

We submit that the record indicates that the amendments approved November 30, 1953, and the announcement of further hearings on the

same date, were the result of the legislative situation and did not happen as a result of any change of viewpoint of the Commission. Unless H. R. 3203 is approved, the Commission will be free to reamend its regulation in the future to accomplish, by one means or another, further encroachment upon the practice of trip leasing.

We do not charge bad faith by any member of the Commission, but Commission membership and Commission majorities change. It is not unlikely that a few years from now that agriculture may be faced. with new Commission rulings designed to gradually curtail the practice of trip leasing.

If H. R. 3203 is not approved by the Congress, those who oppose the practice will argue in the years ahead that the Congress had the matter before them, that it failed to act, and that, therefore, it is the intention of Congress to permit the Commission to curtail or restrict trip leasing.

Unless the committee believes that the Commission should be left free to curtail the practice of trip leasing in the future, we can see no objection to the enactment of H. R. 3203.

Even though we were confident that MC-43 as currently amended, would not be reamended in the future to further restrict the practice of trip leasing, it would be our recommendation that H. R. 3203 be approved. In our opinion, MC-43 as it stands represents an impractical and undesirable regulation.

In the first place, the endeavor of the amended regulation to distinguish between agricultural and nonagricultural haulers is unrealistic. Most independent truckers will fall into both classifications. Independent truckers may haul agricultural products part of the year and nonagricultural products at other periods. If they are not permitted to haul nonagricultural products, on a "trip lease" basis, during periods in which agricultural commodities are not moving, it is not likely that they will be able to remain long in the business. When such truckers are needed to move seasonal agricultural commodities they will no longer be available.

These independent operators perform, in many cases, a type of service for farmers that common carriers cannot perform. Many of them live in farming communities. They are willing to load on farms, to help load, to put up with loading inconveniences. They are willing to move from the farm in any direction-and this is very importantso as to most effectively reach all market outlets to the best advantage of the farmer. They are willing and able to provide an individualized service on the farm, on the road or at the market that common carriers are unable or unwilling to provide.

We, therefore, view with concern any regulation which would tend toward making it difficult or impossible for independent truck operators to continue to operate.

In the second place, farmers have a major interest in the efficiency of operation of the private truck operator hauling his own products to market. Under the amended regulation MC-43, after March 1, 1955, private truck operators will no longer be permitted to trip lease home. For example, a slaughtering plant hauling its own meat, or a poultry dressing plant delivering dressed chickens, or a cannery hauling canned goods, or a dairy plant delivering cheese and other dairy products, or any other processor delivering its own products

in its own trucks, will be denied the opportunity of obtaining a return haul, no matter how many loads might be available or how economic the practice might be.

This involves waste of manpower, gasoline and equipment. Such wastes are reflected in higher costs of distribution. They must be borne either by producers or by consumers.

I would like to interpolate a comment in this connection at this point.

It has been pointed out here that the amendments to MC-43 of November 30 provide everything that agriculture should want and expect, but I would like to point out they do not provide the freedom to agricultural haulers to trip lease that appears to be provided at first glance.

Any truck starting home empty must continue empty. It is only authorized to trip lease if there is a continuous series of loading movements. No matter how many loads may be available, it will have to go home all the way empty. Thus, a truck hauling vegetables from Texas to Chicago, if it found no load available in Chicago, and started home empty, it would have to go home empty all the way.

Furthermore, any truck which trip leases away from the reasonably direct route home would not be able to trip lease the balance of the way home and would have to go home empty.

Trip leasing is also of major significance to efficient operation of truck common carriers. No company can afford to own equipment adequate to handle peak loads and seasonal movements. It is uneconomic to maintain idle equipment to meet such contingencies. Even when a company has sufficient equipment to handle current movements, it may not have equipment of the right kind at the right place at the right time to meet certain needs. In order to efficiently service their customers at all times, it is imperative that truck common carriers be able to dip into the transportation pool represented by exempt haulers to meet such needs.

Finally, we submit that the amended regulation, as it becomes effective March 1, 1955, is unenforceable. It invites noncompliance, in the form of contracts between shippers and unauthorized carriers, what the previous witness referred to as moonlighting, in the form of fictitious sales contracts, in the form of misrepresentations with respect to the character of the previous load, in the form of 30-day leases canceled by mutual consent at the end of the first trip, and so on and so forth.

It would be our belief that the endeavor to enforce the provisions of the amended MC-43, as effective March 1, 1955, would contribute in a very material way to the breakdown of ICC regulation of the trucking industry.

True, the Interstate Commerce Commission has announced hearings to consider possible modification of the most recently amended version of MC-43. In view of the demonstrated hostility of the Commission to the practice of trip leasing, we do not feel that agriculture's interest in this matter should be left to their determination, a determination which will be presumably made after the Congress had adjourned and any progress made toward legislative action on this matter has been lost.

We have not proposed that trip-leased trucks should be free of regulation. H. R. 3203 itself provides specific statutory authority for com

prehensive regulation of the practice of trip leasing. Nor have we proposed that exempt trucks should be free to enter into contracts with shippers for hauling nonexempt loads, but rather that the exempt truck can haul such products only on the basis of a lease with an authorized carrier, who should be responsible for the compliance of the trip-leased truck with ICC regulations.

It seems to me that some of the testimony presented upon behalf of the Commission by Commissioner Cross should be rebutted.

In response to a question, Mr. Cross stated that the enactment of H. R. 3203 would "recreate the conditions that led to the passage of the Motor Carrier Act in 1935." That this is not just an incautious statement of a witness under pressure is indicated by the fact that in its sixty-seventh annual report the Commission states:

Enactment of H. R. 3203 would undermine the rate structure and recreate the confusion which prevailed prior to the passage of the Motor Carrier Act in 1935.

This is an extraordinary statement to make in view of the fact that if H. R. 3203 had been incorporated in the original Motor Carriers Act in 1935 not one of the regulations which the Commission has placed in effect from 1935 to this date would have been invalidated in any respect; yet the Commission testifies that during this period much has been done to stabilize the trucking industry.

To state that the enactment of the bill would take us back to pre-1935 is to disregard the whole history of ICC regulation under the act. It is an example of the attitude of the Commission on this issue which we in agriculture have felt necessitates congressional action on H. R. 3203.

In his presentation of his testimony, and even more so in answer to questions, Mr. Cross reviewed what he considers to be some of the evils associated with the practice of trip leasing, but what he failed to do was to point out that (1) the Commission will be free to regulate with respect to most of their practices if H. R. 3203 is approved, and (2) that many of these practices will continue to exist irrespective of whether or not H. R. 3203 were approved.

It is our viewpoint, as stated above, that the Commission's order MC-43, as effective March 1, 1955, is unenforceable and will result in more, rather than less, violations of Commission regulations.

In response to a question, Mr. Cross indicated that the Commission was assured by the Department of Agriculture that the amended regulation "would take care of agricultural commodities." Mr. Cross may have been so advised by some individual in the Department of Agriculture, but it is and continues to be the position of the Department of Agriculture that H. R. 3203 should be enacted.

Now, Mr. Chairman, the previous two witnesses stated that the farm organizations, the teamsters union and the Interstate Commerce Commission had worked out the present amendment relating to the agricultural exemption and the agricultural group were now backing away from this agreement.

Well, the witness is just uninformed on this point. This is just simply not so.

We did have a conference, several conferences, with the Interstate Commerce Commission to discuss the problem, and our position at all times was as we have stated it here. We never made any promise, any commitment, implied or definite, that we would withdraw our

support of H. R. 3203. In fact, it would be entirely impossible for us as representatives of agricultural groups, organizations which have policy in this field, to make any such deal.

Also, Mr. Chairman, some of the witnesses yesterday and today have talked extensively about safety on the highways. They have predicated their whole case on safety; and if the facts do not support them, then their case fails.

They have made some persuasive arguments and produced some horrible examples to demonstrate that trip-lease trucks have a worse safety record than trucks operated by certificated carriers. These horrible examples alone don't prove anything.

My wife once had her neck broken because a driver of a truck common carrier ran into her from the rear, apparently because he was enjoying the scenery.

I once was delayed for 2 hours in a traffic jam because two common carrier trucks hit head-on at 50 miles an hour or more, scattering drivers, trucks and cargo over 4 lanes of a 4-lane highway.

These examples don't prove a thing as to the safety practices of common carriers, nor do the horror stories of the safety practices of exempt haulers presented to this committee prove anything, either.

It will be noted that the Commission itself has carefully avoided any contention that the safety practices of trip-leased vehicles are any worse than those of trucks owned by authorized carriers. If the Commission had had any statistical information to support this position, they would no doubt have submitted it.

In his comprehensive testimony on May 10, Howell Ellis demonstrated conclusively that the experience of many truck common carriers is that trip-leased vehicles have a better safety record than owned vehicles.

Many of the witnesses that have filed testimony before the Commission with respect to the hearings now under way have testified to the same effect. For example, J. R. Oden, president of the Malone Freight Lines, testified:

It has been our experience that by the use of owner-drivers we have reduced our accident frequency to one of the lowest in the trucking industry, and we have the lowest frequency of any risk carried by Markel.

We feel this is due in a large measure to the recognized fact that it is only natural for an owner-driver to be more careful in operating a piece of equipment in which he has his own money invested and because the safety and maintenance work is largely delegated to him and the responsibility placed on him.

I could add in this connection that the Commission's ruling, if it should go into effect, is going to mean more empty trucks returning home. It is going to mean more trucks on the highway, more traffic congestion, more hazard.

I would make the observation-my own observation-that the most dangerous truck on the highway is an empty truck.

Some of the witnesses have testified rather scornfully with respect to the so-called gypsy truck operator. It is our opinion that the great majority of these maligned operators are responsible businessmen providing a real service to shippers. For example, Norman Foster of the American Freightways Co., testifying on MC-43 before the Commission, states:

In our particular area—

he is in the New York area—