toledoblade.com --

Trucking firms, agriculture interests, and the City of Toledo have joined to protest a large statewide fee increase by the Ohio Department of Transportation that they say will kill local jobs.

Jeffery Wingate, president of the Toledo Trucking Association, said he was shocked to learn via email that overweight and oversized truck permits from the state were increased on Oct. 16 from $55 a year to $800 a year. Mr. Wingate spoke yesterday during a press conference in the office of Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

The fee for oversized and overweight trucks will increase again on March 1 to $1,400 a year, and on July 1 to $2,000 a year . That makes a 3,536 percent increase in just nine months.

"I think it was snuck through, without any input from northwest Ohio and with no consideration as to what it would do to our economy," said Mr. Wingate, president of Wingate Transport, a steel hauler based in Toledo.

The fees disproportionately affect northwest Ohio and the Port of Toledo because weight limits in Michigan are twice those of Ohio, and the majority of trucks bringing bulk goods like grain, cement, and fertilizer from Michigan to Toledo or vice versa would have to pay the increased permit.

In a letter yesterday to James Beasley, ODOT director, Mr. Finkbeiner said the fee increases "come at a time when economic conditions are extremely challenging in the Buckeye state. The negative economic impact such dramatic fee increases will have on many businesses in the Toledo area is deeply concerning."

The mayor said yesterday that the fees undermine efforts to promote and grow "intermodal" transportation assets in the area and threaten economic development prospects involving the Port of Toledo.

"It's mind-boggling because it's very, very hurtful to the economy," Mr. Finkbeiner said.

The fee increase schedule was done "administratively" by the Ohio Department of Transportation and reviewed September 15 by the Ohio legislature's Joint Commission on Agency Rule Review, ODOT spokesman Scott Varner said. He said the fee increases were part of a comprehensive overhaul of rules involving overweight and oversized truck loads across the state, and that the fees were increased to better reflect the added wear and tear caused by heavy trucks.

"For so long, the permits were so low that they did not reflect similar fees in other states, and they did not account for the impact of these heavy trucks on roads and bridges," Mr. Varner said.

Contact Larry P. Vellequette at:
lvellequette@theblade.com
or 419-724-6091.

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