Back in 2025, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association asked Congress to create a highway bill package full of legislation aimed at improving truck drivers’ lives.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s highway bill, which advanced through the committee in May, does that. However, in addition to listening to OOIDA about what should be included in the bill, lawmakers also got the message on many of the provisions the Association believes would be bad for truckers and highway safety.
So, yes, OOIDA is calling the BUILD America 250 Act the “most pro-trucker highway bill in recent memory” because of its provisions on truck parking, restroom access, predatory lease-purchase agreements, cargo theft, chameleon carriers, increased standards, DataQ and electric vehicles. But maybe just as importantly, OOIDA supports the bill because of the provisions the House T&I Committee chose to exclude.
During OOIDA’s testimony in 2025, Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh urged lawmakers to oppose increases to minimum liability insurance, mandates for speed limiters and side underride guards. So far, OOIDA has been successful in keeping those items out of the highway bill.
Minimum insurance
In April, Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill., reintroduced a bill to increase trucking companies’ minimum liability insurance from $750,000 to $5 million. This would represent a whopping 566% increase.
OOIDA said the increase would “cause insurance premiums to skyrocket and would be absolutely devastating for small businesses.” Additionally, the Association says that the increase is unnecessary, as the most recent study found that current minimum insurance levels adequately cover damages in 99.4% of cases.
“Not only is such an increase wholly unnecessary, it would do nothing to improve highway safety, needlessly jeopardize countless blue-collar jobs and destroy many small trucking businesses,” Pugh told lawmakers in 2025.
In the last highway bill, the House included a provision to increase the minimum liability insurance required of motor carriers to $2 million. The measure remained in the House version of the highway bill, but OOIDA quickly called the provision a “poison pill.” The Senate version, which ultimately became the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, did not include an increase to the minimum insurance.
And, so far, lawmakers have kept the measure out of the BUILD America 250 Act.
Speed limiters
The previous administration pushed to require speed-limiting devices on most commercial motor vehicles. Although FMCSA never proposed a specific top speed, some supporters of a mandate wanted large trucks limited to 60 miles per hour.
OOIDA believes such a mandate would create a safety hazard, as it would create speed differentials of 20 mph or more between cars and large trucks.
The House T&I’s bill does not include a speed limiter mandate.
Side underride guards
Truck safety groups have long advocated a measure mandating the use of side underride guards.
OOIDA has pointed to operational challenges regarding navigating rail crossings, loading docks and low-ground clearances.
“Additionally, there are no commercially available side underride guards that have demonstrated a capability to fully prevent passenger compartment intrusion among passenger vehicles in highway driving conditions,” Pugh told lawmakers in 2025.
A previous cost-benefit analysis by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that a mandate would cost up to $1.2 billion each year, while saving fewer than 20 lives annually.
The current version of the BUILD America 250 Act does not include a side underride guard mandate.
Where do we go from here?
Whether you are a trucker who likes what’s in the highway bill or what’s left out, OOIDA is asking you to visit its Fighting For Truckers website. There, truckers can easily write a message to their lawmakers in support of the BUILD America 250 Act.
Those messages are important because there’s still a lot of work to be done before the highway bill becomes law. The BUILD America 250 Act must advance on the House floor and in the Senate before it can be sent to the White House. There’s also a time clock as the current highway bill expires in September. LL
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