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Trucking officials in Memphis expect the Transportation Security Administration to take on more regulatory power. At the ABF terminal Thursday, Jimmie Joiner splits a load of freight onto outbound pallets.

Driving to work one morning, the government official charged with keeping the trucking industry safe from terrorists spotted an Osama bin Laden look-alike on the Capital Beltway.

The tall, bearded, white-robed foreigner tending to a stalled Toyota on the American Legion Memorial Bridge, the official later learned from police, was just a Sikh fixing a flat tire.

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Driver Lee Hughey checks his manifest before he hits the road.

But Bill Arrington, general manager of the Transportation Security Administration’s Office of Highway and Motor Carrier, said he felt pretty good about calling the cops with his suspicions. “What if that bridge had been blown up and I had done nothing?”

Speaking to transportation professionals at the Traffic Club of Memphis last week, Arrington brought to the forefront the TSA’s largely advisory efforts to ward off terrorist threats to commercial transportation.

“More and more we’re seeing people stepping up to the plate and getting involved, and that’s what we need. They’re picking up the phone and saying, ‘I don’t know what this means, but it don’t look right.’ “

Applying that test might have averted the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and 1993 World Trade Center bombing, both of which would have crossed Arrington’s jurisdiction. “We didn’t know any better then. We do know better now.”

Local transportation officials look for TSA to become more of a factor in regulating trucking, tour buses and school bus fleets.

“I think it’s just a matter of time,” said Marty Morelli, director, strategic solutions, for ABF Freight System Inc. “It may take an unfortunate incident to occur, but everything will be in a ‘known shipper’ database with a lot more visibility and restrictions regarding ground traffic.”

Already TSA’s influence is felt by trucking companies that handle air freight and shipments associated with rail and river ports.

“On the air freight side, which I’m involved in, I’ve gone through TSA’s annual testing and certification for air freight shipments, but nothing I’m aware of has happened on the ground side,” Morelli said.

Some trucking companies are struggling with a TSA requirement that drivers must have a transportation worker identification credential card to do business at ports, said Dana Workman, director of national sales for Titan Transportation, which has a Brownsville terminal.

“Many drivers are concerned about that and aren’t doing it. A lot of trucking companies are not picking up or delivering at ports because their drivers don’t have these cards.”

Combining driver reluctance with time and cost considerations (the cards cost $30), “You’re talking about, do you want the headache? The driver’s got to be fingerprinted and background checked. The driver’s like, ‘Just give me a load and let me go to Chicago.’ “

For the time being, trucking firms are more concerned about the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 program, Workman said. Provisions include listing all drivers in a nationwide database for closer monitoring by state and federal governments, and presumably the TSA.

“We’re behind it, we’re believers in it, but where’s the money going to come from?” asked Workman.

Arrington said his division has been busy performing risk assessments of key sectors, starting with the school bus industry; doing free, voluntary corporate security assessments for trucking firms; and expanding the First Observer program, an anti-terrorism variation on the old Highway Watch, in which truckers were trained to look out for bad guys.

Jim Kerschbaum, new truck sales manager for Diamond International and a former Highway Watch participant, said there isn’t a lot of awareness in the trucking community about First Observer, which also targets bus fleet operators.

Kerschbaum said truck operators are willing to help, but need more information about what to do when they encounter suspicious situations.

“I think we all need to be more aware,” he said.

– Wayne Risher: 529-2874

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