00:00Senator Moreno for questions. Senator? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for doing this hearing.
00:07I thought maybe, Mr. Biden, I'd start with you. There was some conversation about terrorists,
00:13not that this is a hearing about terrorists, but let's say that real quick. I think when I look
00:16in your eyes and I've met with you, you actually cared deeply about making certain that we have a
00:22growing, thriving middle class in this country. I mean, that's not an act. That's something that
00:26you believe in your heart and soul. Yeah, I think someone referred to me as a self-promoting
00:33union boss in one of their articles, but I'm not a self-promoting union boss. I'm a truck driver from
00:38a middle class family that appreciates and embraces the preservation of the middle class.
00:44Right. So when we think about terrorists, we can go out and find the cheapest labor on earth,
00:49slave wages in China, massively subsidized industries. And there's this mentality that
00:56somehow tariffs are bad for America, when in reality, wouldn't you say that it's good
01:03to have trade barriers to put American workers on a level playing field with workers around the world?
01:09Yeah, I mean, there's no secret what our position is as a union on tariffs. And I know there's a concern
01:15with when these tariffs are implemented, if they're implemented or when they're implemented.
01:20What is that? What effect is that going to have on the consumer? Now, we have to go back in history
01:25a little bit. Remember when we had plenty of industry in this country where we were producing goods and
01:31services, we were manufacturing still, we were doing a lot of this work. And then these bad trade deals
01:35that happened in 1993 with NAFTA and everything else had an impact on jobs and they went away and
01:41our jobs and everything went overseas. And that level playing field was completely uneven to the
01:48American worker. Now, fast forward where we want to repel a lot of these trade deals, we want to impose
01:53these tariffs unilaterally, I believe, to what we're paying, what they should be paying. There's a concern
02:00that we're going to diminish jobs and where's all this cost going to go? Now, we got to take a look.
02:05There's a lot of factors here. We got to take a look at excessive compensation with a lot of these CEOs
02:10and these corporations and their willingness to reward Wall Street instead of the people that work in these
02:17jobs. So we can have that debate as well on, hey, you know, if these tariffs come in, take a little less
02:22in your own pocket, stop giving more to Wall Street and just reward your workers and don't pass this cost on the
02:29consumers. The fear of the unknown is always the worst.
02:31But ultimately, it's important, I think I'm hearing you say, which I agree with 100%, I just hope my colleagues listen to this,
02:36is that we want to have these jobs in America. That's very important because these are good working-class jobs
02:43that allow a mom or a dad to be able to provide a living for their family, retired debt-free.
02:48That's really important. So totally, totally with you on that one.
02:52Let's dig a little deeper into this English requirement. I wasn't born in this country.
02:57My mom made me learn English pretty quickly. And I don't think there's a lot of legal immigrants that
03:04think differently than I do. They believe that we should assimilate, learn English, learn the language.
03:09But what are the implications for you and your members when, during the Biden years, you had 10 million
03:15people coming to this country illegally, a lot of them under the guise of independent contractors
03:19started becoming truck drivers. You had a giant spike that happened. These are people that spoke
03:24no English, had no idea of our traffic laws, and yet they were unleashed on our roads. What was it like
03:30for your members to be able to drive on the roads with people that, again, had no idea what they were
03:35doing, no idea about our safety requirements? Well, I think it's extremely frightening, to be honest
03:41with you. You had a lot of trucking companies that were actively recruiting in foreign countries
03:46to bring people over here on those work visas, whatever they're called, and train them and put
03:49them on the roads. Where they're not from this country, they don't know this language. So our
03:53members are very passionate. By the way, our membership of 1.3 million is well representative from
03:59first-generation immigrants who came over here the right way, who learned the language, learned the laws,
04:05obtained their CDLs properly, and went to work and everything else. But it was frightening times,
04:14and it still is. I mean, we heard a comment today about Mexican truck drivers coming over these
04:19borders and doing the cabotage. We are 100 percent in agreement that shouldn't be happening. Matter of
04:24fact, we'd rather have Mexican drivers drop their trailers at the borders and let American companies
04:29pick them up and do the deliveries. Yeah, I mean, so clearly that's something that should be in
04:33legislation. I'll switch over to you, Mr. Spear, real quickly. There's this conversation about,
04:38you know, what's a threat to the trucking industry. I think we need to,
04:41maybe if you could briefly describe what it meant to the trucking industry to have the Congressional
04:47Review Act that eliminated the advanced car truck rule and what that meant. Because we forget,
04:52we forget that that was a mere six or seven weeks ago. What would that have meant to the industry if
04:57we had gone through down the cliff of electrification and semis? You would have witnessed consolidation in
05:02our industry that has never happened since 1980 during deregulation. I mean, the medium and small
05:09companies, 68 percent of our members are less than 100 trucks, 35 percent or less than 25 trucks.
05:15Those companies would be gone. Gone. Because they can't have access to that kind of equipment,
05:20because there's not enough of it under those rules. And it would be three and a half times more than what
05:25they pay for a brand new diesel today. Which, by the way, emits 98 and a half percent less than what it did in 1988.
05:33So 60 trucks today emit what one truck emitted in 1988. That's how far we've come. We didn't need,
05:40you know, the United States of California telling our industry operating in 50 states how to work with
05:46the EPA to get clean air and water. We're already doing that. So revoking these through the CRA,
05:52you just took off one of the biggest threats to our industry in a matter of eight months. And it's now
05:58allowing us to do a whole host of other constructed things, such as the safety title. So I thank you for
06:03that vote. No, that's great. And let's talk about, uh, so Mr. Pugh or Mr. Spear, if you want to answer,
06:08what does the one big beautiful bill and bonus appreciation mean to your industry? The ability
06:12to, uh, make an investment and have that be able to be appreciated. Is that positive or negative for you?
06:17Mm-hmm. Yeah, um, we appreciate the big beautiful bill and understand it. What we need to see happen now, though.
06:24I'm talking about just the bonus appreciation, the ability to write off your equipment.
06:28Is that a net positive or net negative? That's definitely a net positive bill
06:32right off equipment for sure. Right. So, so I just want to just recap real quick,
06:36um, to my Democrat colleagues, wrong on tariffs, wrong on immigration, wrong on EVs,
06:42and wrong on voting against the one big beautiful bill. And if my colleague, would you mind one more
06:48question? I just, oh, you would mind? Okay. Always ask permission, uh, for my great colleague here
06:55from Nebraska. Uh, so one last question, Mr. Spear. What's the average age of the semi in America?
07:03On the road, more or less. Yeah, we assessed that a couple years back, uh, particularly in California,
07:07but nationally, uh, 53 percent of the commercial vehicles operating in the country are 20, 10 or older.
07:14And what level of autonomy do those have? I'm sorry? What level of autonomy do they have?
07:19Well, it's. That would be level zero. Uh, these things have no safety technology. They,
07:24they're much worse emitters of, uh, and what's, what's keeping people from buying new cars? I'm
07:29going to answer my own question. This federal excise tax. Absolutely. 12 percent. So if we can,
07:35if we can massively reduce the federal, uh, excise tax and allow people to open the door to buying new
07:41semis, talk real briefly, uh, because I'm worrying on the patience of my colleague, uh, on, uh, taking
07:47over time. She's still nodding, so I think we're safe, but Senator Cantwell alluded to this in her
07:51opening statement, too. The, the added cost from the FET, the federal excise tax, by the way,
07:55this dates back to the Titanic sinking. This was put in place by Congress, a couple with a number of
08:01other provisions that no longer exist. Ours do. It's a 12 percent tax on trucks and trailers,
08:07and that's about $35,000 for both total, uh, each purchase. So, you know, if you've got somebody
08:14out there that's buying, say, 1800 new tractors, you know, for a third of their fleet that they turn
08:19over every year, that's $65 million. That's real money. So that's going to the federal government,
08:26not to them. So we would argue for repealing this. It was put in place to fund trench warfare in World
08:32War I. It's outdated. We can take that money. It's our money, not the government's. We can invest
08:38it in training, pay, equipment. Get that brand new equipment out there and replace the old stuff.
08:44You'll reduce emissions by 83 percent just by putting new diesels out on the road.
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