ORLANDO – Derek Barrs received a standing ovation when he completed his address to the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA), and it felt completely spontaneous and genuine.

The new administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration spoke to his first TCA annual meeting Monday, fiercely defending the steps that the agency and other parts of the federal government have taken to either enforce existing rules governing driver eligibility or create new standards that have led to a significant decrease in the number of truck drivers on the road.

That decline in capacity has been seen as the primary driver of an increase in freight rates and rejection rates that may be leading the attendees at the TCA conference to cautiously accept the idea that maybe the freight recession is over. It isn’t because of any large-scale increase in demand, as Bob Costello, chief economist of the American Trucking Associations, said in an address to the audience after Barrs finished his speech. It’s a supply issue.

Barrs began his ATA address by discussing President Trump’s recent State of the Union and his inclusion of truck safety in the speech, specifically to boost recently-introduced legislation known as Dalilah’s Law that would even more severely restrict the ability of non-English speakers and non-domiciled residents from obtaining a CDL. The bill is named after a young girl seriously injured who survived a crash with a truck driven by a driver in the U.S.