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Foxx hears concerns about fuel prices, regulations during city stop
Statesville, NC,
July 1, 2011
Rep. Virginia Foxx was in Statesville on Friday as part of a tour of businesses in her district that may be especially hard hit by above-normal and unstable fuel prices and other aspects of the still lagging economy.
By: | Statesville Record & Landmark
Rep. Virginia Foxx was in Statesville on Friday as part of a tour of businesses in her district that may be especially hard hit by above-normal and unstable fuel prices and other aspects of the still lagging economy. Foxx, whose 5th Congressional District takes in the northern two-thirds of Iredell County, made a stop at Holland Transfer and spoke with company president and CEO Jeff Harvey. Harvey said his transportation company — which burned nearly 344,000 gallons of diesel fuel in 2010 — is paying more than $1 per gallon more to fill its trucks this year than at this same time last year. “It’s disconcerting to us because we have to ask ‘where does it all end?’ And, even though we have been around for more than 100 years, ‘can we survive it?’ ” Harvey said. Holland Transfer, which was founded in 1907, is the oldest transfer company in North Carolina. But Harvey told Foxx that it is not just the price of fuel that is impacting his outlook on the future and informing the way he runs the company, but the fact that he has to keep his eyes on an ever increasing number of federal regulations. One new law being proposed by the Federal Carrier Safety Administration would restrict the number of driving hours truckers can log from 11 to 10 and the on-duty hours from 14 to 13. “We won’t be able to go as far and it will affect our drivers’ pay,” Harvey said. “This will also force me to put more trucks on the road, which I can’t afford, and to increase my environmental footprint, which I don’t want to do.” Harvey told of one regulation that is already on the books, which requires drivers to write the name of the city and the state in their log books. He said one of his drivers was fined because he only had “Atlanta” written in as his destination and not the state of Georgia. “And he was on I-85 heading towards Atlanta,” Harvey said. “Well, that’s stupid,” Foxx said. She then spoke of how she was able to change a state law, during her time in the North Carolina General Assembly, that placed a fine on truck drivers who could not produce their physical permit even though the permit information is filed in state databases and is easily accessible to law enforcement officers. Foxx said excessive regulations are a bane of society. “Our government should only be doing those things that are truly concerned with the health and safety of our citizens and not with looking for people who forget to write ‘Georgia’ on a piece of paper,” she said. “Who benefits from that?” Foxx said the government has become far too invasive. “We live in a society whose government examines every jot and tittle of our lives,” she said. “We should let people know what the laws are and punish people harshly when they break the law, but what the federal government does is put in layers and layers and layers of regulations.” Regarding the price of fuel, Foxx stopped just short of reciting the mantra of the 2008 Republican National Convention of “Drill, baby, drill.” But not too much short of it. Foxx said the move by President Obama to release 30 million barrels of oil for the emergency stockpile last week was a pittance that is “not going to make a bit of difference.” She said that option was available to President George W. Bush during periods of fluctuating gas prices but that he declined. “What he did do was lift the ban on drilling and the prices started to go down instantly,” she said, and added that it will take “a different senate and maybe a different president” to lift current bans on off-shore drilling. Foxx said that while she is a supporter of alternative fuel options, she is also a big fan of the current means of moving things along the highway. “I agree with the president on using renewable energy, but the combustion engine is the most efficient device on the planet,” she said. “And we are not going to get an airplane across the country on solar power. Not right now anyway.” |