McComb Enterprise-Journal
Log Trucks Able To Use Interstates In Miss.
By Matt Williamson
Log trucks are returning to interstate highways, thanks to recent federal legislation, and can abandon the circuitous routes through cities and towns they had been forced to use.
U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., last month spearheaded the efforts as part of a transportation and housing appropriations measure.
President Joe Biden signed the FY2024 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (T-HUD) Appropriations bill into law.
Hyde-Smith’s office said she played a key role in writing the legislation as the ranking Republican on the Senate T-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee.
She secured a provision to increase the weight limitations for certain agricultural vehicles on Mississippi interstates, lifting a prohibition that forced large trucks to operate only on state and county roads.
Permitted vehicles hauling agricultural products such as grain and timber will be allowed to carry up to the existing state limit of 88,000 pounds on an interstate highway within Mississippi.
“This provision corrects a discrepancy between state and federal statute that for too long has forced large trucks onto narrow, poorly lit, and often less-maintained roads, just to get to the port, rail yard or lumber mill,” Hyde-Smith said. “Removing these heavy trucks from Mississippi’s state and rural roads is a matter of safety, and I think this needed change will improve public safety and commerce in our state.”
The American Loggers Council praised the changes, saying allowing log trucks on interstates is safer, uses less fuel, leads to fewer emissions, better fuel mileage, less wear on vehicles and shorter routes.
“These trucks and weights have been legally operating on rural and state road systems across the state of Mississippi and other states,” the council said in a news release. “This legislation does not increase the weight of trucks or introduce heavier trucks to the roadways. It only allows trucks currently operating at the state authorized weights to access the safest route and allow them to divert from less direct rural routes that required them to drive through small towns, school zones, pedestrian areas and residential neighborhoods.”
The council called the U.S. interstate system “fragmented” in terms of where log trucks can operate.
“New England states allow agricultural product trucks permitted for higher weights to transit the interstate systems. Minnesota allows agricultural products to be transported at state maximum weights along a 23-mile interstate transportation corridor,” the council said.
“Wisconsin and North Carolina interstate segments, newly incorporated into the interstate system, are grandfathered in at the prior (higher) state weight limits. Now, with Mississippi securing similar authorization, ample precedent has been established to support other states in pursuit of comparable authorization.”