The owner-operator of Washington State-based Tecco Trucking, Tilden Curl, may be familiar to lot of readers from past coverage of his advocacy efforts around a variety of issues, in part in his capacity as a member of the board at the Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association for a few years now. He’s active with the National Truck Parking Coalition, as I’ve written before, and we talk about that and more in this week’s Overdrive Radio podcast.
Connect with owner-operator Tilden Curl via his Tecco Trucking website.Also on offer, Curl’s thoughts on just why so many small fleets and owner-ops feel as if regulators’ targets are on their backs, and the necessity of a “unified, large, loud voice” in order to counterbalance the “constituency of the dollar” that has seemed to dominate trucking-regulatory change for so long, in his words, also quoted in my post from Monday.
Oh a-and, speaking of that self-insurance “privilege,” as Curl’s called it in the past, that exists for large carriers sizable and profitable enough to take advantage of it. Removal of the ability to self-insure has been included in early drafts of a couple rounds of highway bills now, only to be scrapped in the Congressional mish-mash that occurs with each one.
Curl believes removal of the option might, “dare I say it, ‘level the playing field’,” he says when it comes to the price put on risk in underwriting standards applied to carriers of all sizes, with ripple effects and implications throughout issues of training, pay, safety and more. Take a listen:
