For example, a motor carrier with authority to travel from Cleveland to Buffalo that purchased another carrier or the carrier’s rights to go from Buffalo to Pittsburgh was required to carry goods destined for Pittsburgh through Buffalo, even though the direct route was considerably shorter. Because the commission disapproved of “trafficking” in rights, it was hostile to mergers and purchases and attempted to restrict authority as much as possible. By the seventies the authority to carry certain goods on certain routes was selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Purchasing the rights of an existing trucker became the only practical approach to entering a particular market. The effect was to stifle competition from new carriers. Even if the proposed service was not being offered by existing carriers, the ICC held that a certificated trucker who expressed a desire to carry the goods should be given the opportunity to do so the new applicant was denied. In 1948 Congress authorized truckers to fix rates in concert with one another when it enacted, over President Truman’s veto, the Reed-Bulwinkle Act, which exempted carriers from the antitrust laws.įrom 1940 to 1980, new or expanded authority to transport goods was almost impossible to secure unless no one opposed an application. If the proposed tariffs were protested by another carrier (such as a trucker, a regulated water carrier, or a railroad), the ICC normally suspended the rates pending an investigation of their legality. Anyone, including a competitor, was allowed to inspect the filed tariffs. The law required motor carriers to file all rates-also called tariffs-with the ICC thirty days before they became effective. New trucking companies, on the other hand, found it extremely difficult to get certificates.
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Truckers already operating in 1935 could automatically get certificates, but only if they documented their prior service, and the ICC was quite restrictive in interpreting proof of service. The Motor Carrier Act of 1935 required new truckers to seek a “certificate of public convenience and necessity” from the ICC.
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Truckers were brought under the control of the ICC in 1935 after persistent lobbying by state regulators, the ICC itself, and especially, the railroads, which had been losing business to trucking companies. The federal government has been regulating prices and competition in interstate transportation ever since Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to oversee the railroad industry in 1887.