The Trucking Alliance, which in terms of numbers is one of the smaller industry lobbying and support groups but which includes some of the bigger players in trucking, has long focused on safety issues in its efforts to shift public policy.
After a tumultuous 2025 in the intersection where trucking, safety and politics all came together in often unexpected ways, the group is laying out its agenda not just for 2026 but for years to come, freely acknowledging there are some shifts in the regulatory landscape that will take a few years to ferment and develop.
In this three-part joint video and editorial series, Freightwaves is presenting highlights of an interview editor at large John Kingston conducted with key members of the Trucking Alliance’s leadership team: Steve Williams, the co-founder and president of the Trucking Alliance, as well as the chairman and CEO of carrier Maverick USA; Lane Kidd, managing director at the Trucking Alliance; Greer Woodruff, senior vice president of safety, security and driver personnel at J.B. Hunt Transport Services (NASDAQ: JBHT); and Brett Sant, senior vice president at Knight Swift (NYSE: KNX).
In this joint video/editorial offering, those four officials discuss advocacy for steps that would have a direct impact on drivers behind the wheel. While theoretically all regulatory measures in trucking can make their way down to those steering the tractors, these recommendations would be felt the most inside the cab.
There have been some recent wrecks that have caught the public’s attention in part because of video that showed tragic crashes where the truck driver very much appears to be at fault. There was a November crash in California that took three lives. An August illegal u-turn by an immigrant in the U.S. without authorization also led to three deaths. Video of both were widely circulated online and by various media outlets.
“With many transformational changes, sometimes it just takes one episode of incident for huge changes to occur,” Kidd said. With the attention these two crashes created, Kidd said, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy also has taken notice. “Sean Duffy and the leadership at FMCSA are probably more attuned to the trucking industry than any previous appointees I’ve seen in the last 20 years,” Kidd said.
Hair testing remains a priority
While the two cited fatal wrecks had no evidence of drug involvement, they had the effect of bringing up that issue as well. If there’s been one issue that has defined the Trucking Alliance, it’s been not just drugs but advocacy for hair testing of drivers, rather than urine testing, to determine if a driver should be removed from the road.
“These other drivers that use drugs and drink behind the wheel, and you know aren’t properly trained and do unsafe things out there damage the reputation of the overwhelming majority of safe professional drivers,” Sant said. “That’s part of why we have this agenda. We want to protect the reputations of the really good companies out there and the really great drivers out there.”
Despite the growing acceptance of recreational marijuana usage–though not yet at the federal level–Kidd said “I don’t think it will be a heavy lift to keep marijuana as a prohibited drug in the industry as it relates to hair testing.” But he also noted the paradox: the Department of Transportation will “disqualify a truck driver if that driver fails a urine exam for drug use. The Department of Transportation will not disqualify a truck driver if he fails a hair test for drug use.”
Progress on requiring a hair test, which can detect marijuana usage long after actual consumption, had been making progress in fits and starts for several years. The Trucking Alliance was optimistic about hair testing becoming part of standard driver regulation, “but we saw the Biden administration stop on a dime after the first Trump administration left office,” Kidd said.
The regulation had been moving through the Department of Health and Human Services, “but for whatever reason, the Biden administration stopped it and it did not move forward for four years,” Kidd said.
Finding another route
A traditional rulemaking to achieve hair testing is not likely, Kidd said. “I think we have to find another way,” he added. There are “some other ways that we’re looking at and under consideration that would give the FMCSA the ability to go ahead and recognize hair testing today.” A strategy to get that implemented is expected to be disclosed by the Trucking Alliance in the coming weeks and months.
One significant safety reform the Trucking Alliance backed fully was the establishment of the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse, the vault of names identifying drivers who have failed drug or alcohol tests. Woodruff described it as “hugely successful.”
“It has identified drug and alcohol use and it has taken those drivers out of service until such time as they go through the substance abuse and professional requirements to return to a safety sensitive job,” Woodruff said.
But returning to the Alliance’s consistent theme, its lack of hair testing means the Clearinghouse is “deficient.”
Looking at training schools
Another area of reform the Trucking Alliance seeks that would have an impact on drivers themselves is tighter regulation of driver training schools.
In the white paper the Alliance produced in conjunction with its list of goals, it said “the most persistent criticism of truck driver training schools is that many schools prioritize speed and profit over safety, producing graduates who have only the bare minimum skills necessary to obtain a CDL. This can pose a risk to public safety and sets new drivers up for failure in their careers. The core issue stems from schools that have a short curriculum, rather than a comprehensive safety education.”
Kidd said an initiative by DOT’s Duffy would “revoke the privileges of about 3,000 schools because it looked like they weren’t performing as they should have been.” The end result, he predicted, would be “a better curriculum and a more robust training system at the schools.”
Looking over the sweep of the proposals being made by the Trucking Alliance, Woodruff said the priorities were “aspirational, and they’re not going to be solved quickly.”
“We’ve got to build consensus within the industry and with the regulators,” he said. “There may be some legislation required. So there’s a lot of heavy lifting here to get things done, and we’re committed to that.”
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The post Trucking Alliance’s safety agenda 1: reforms that hit the driver cab first appeared first on FreightWaves.
