The American Trucking Association is working to increase maximum weight loads for trucks on the nation’s interstate highways.

Heavier trucks, more highway spending, and safer drivers and carriers are high on the trucking industry’s wish list, an industry lobbyist says.

“As an industry, we think it’s time to have larger and heavier trucks on the road, but there’s a lot of pushback on Capitol Hill on this,” said Michael C. Robinson, director of legislative affairs for the American Trucking Associations. He spoke at a trucking industry roundtable sponsored by the Intermodal Freight Transportation Institute at the University of Memphis.

The current maximum on interstates is 80,000 pounds. Trucks up to 97,000 pounds are being allowed on interstates in Maine and Vermont as part of a one-year test.

“We’re going to work to try to get that expanded, but it’s an uphill struggle,” Robinson said. “We think it’s important for the economy and for the environment.”

Robinson said congressional opposition to heavier trucks is predictable.

“We in the trucking industry get beat up a lot in Congress. People don’t like big trucks driving around.”

The industry needs to continue to promote positives like improving safety statistics and trucking’s vital role in delivering goods to American consumers, he said.

Robinson said the ATA has been working with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to fine-tune Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, a safety initiative implemented this summer. The initiative uses a centrally coordinated point system to track safety records of drivers and carriers.

But Lee L. Piovarcy, who defends trucking companies for the Martin Tate Morrow & Marston law firm, said troopers in some states have stepped up ticket-writing for relatively minor violations, rather than issuing warnings.

Robinson said the ATA strongly supports a drug-and-alcohol clearinghouse that would let companies share information on driver applicants.

There’s currently no way to know whether a driver flunked a drug test at a previous employer, then went drug-free just long enough to get a clean result, said Mike McFarland, president of West Tennessee Express in Jackson, Tenn.

Impaired drivers need to be taken off the road, Robinson said.

“All of these things could be avoided if we get better drivers out there.”

The lobbyist said a comprehensive federal highway spending bill appears to be at least a couple of years away, although the nation’s highways badly need investment.

“Finding the political will to find the money is very difficult,” Robinson said.