Your July 30 Pre-Trip: House votes to extend highway funding through Oct. 29

July 30, 2015

House votes to extend highway funding through Oct. 29.

Here are five things worth knowing today: 1. The House on Wednesday voted for a bill that would extend spending authority for transportation funding programs through Oct. 29, according to U.S. News. The plan will replenish the federal Highway Trust Fund with $8 billion, which is enough to keep states supplied with highway and transit aid through December, U.S. News reports. This is the 34th short-term transportation funding extension since 2009, and “the three-month patch puts off House action on a long-term transportation bill, adding one more messy fight to a fall agenda already crammed with difficult, must-pass legislation,” U.S. News said. The Senate plans to take up the House bill before a midnight Friday deadline.2. The White House said Wednesday that President Barack Obama would sign a three-month highway extension, according to The Hill. White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters that a “level of distrust among Republican leaders in Congress has prevented lawmakers from moving forward on a multi-year highway bill,” The Hill said. The Hill has more. 3. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found while examining the FMCSA’s hours of service rule that the safety oversight administration “followed most generally accepted research standards.” It did, however, find that FMCSA did not completely meet certain research standards such as reporting limitations and linking conclusions to results, GAO said. GAO was asked to review a 2014 hours of service study on the rule to generally accept research standards and identify assumptions used to estimate the rule’s costs and benefits and driver-operation, economic, safety and health effects, GAO said. Based on its findings, GAO recommends that FMCSA adopt guidance outlining agency research standards, and FMCSA agreed with that recommendation. 4. The owner of Highland Township trucking company and his family are fleeing federal investigators, according to My Fox Detroit. Court documents say Viorel Pricop made hundreds of thousands of dollars transporting stolen cargo from semi-trailers in several southwest states, Fox said. Feds caught him in February, when, according to the report, Pricop admitted to the criminal operation. Neighbors caught on to Pricop and his family after seeing trucks coming and going all night. According to the report, the feds uncovered a bogus trucking operation under the name Good Time LLC and linked it back to Pricop. Feds are still looking for Pricop and his family, and they seized more than $1 million in goods from their home, according to the report. 5. Roadrunner Transportation Systems announced that it netted $16.5 million in the quarter ending June 30, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That is up from $14.8 million a year ago, the report said. The company’s earnings came to 44 cents a share and $1.2 million was discounted in severance payments, which were tied to the termination of Roadrunner’s COO Brian J. van Helden, the Journal Sentinal noted.

About the Author

Cristina Commendatore

Cristina Commendatore was previously the Editor-in-chief of FleetOwner magazine. She reported on the transportation industry since 2015, covering topics such as business operational challenges, driver and technician shortages, truck safety, and new vehicle technologies. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.