Counties may very well be overstep-
ping their bounds—we think the legisla- ture enacted the 2060 permit to allow trucks to move through counties in accor- dance with that law. Counties are arguing the law does not prohibit them from man- dating certain appropriate truck routes. “Trying to keep track of where each
truck is going can be very labor intensive, and there is at least one county judge out there thumping his chest and advocating that every truck will need to contact the appropriate county commissioner and say
mother may I,” Findeisen went on to say. At a recent county meeting on the
issue one of the commissioners noted that one of the wells in his precinct required 2,968 truckloads of material to bring the well in. The number of truckloads collates directly to the depth of the well. “That would be 2,968 phone calls for
each well in a precinct,” said Findeisen, illustrating the magnitude of the problem such a requirement creates. “This particu- lar precinct currently has 48 permits for drilling.”
Counties share in a portion of the
monies derived from the 2060 permits that trucking companies are purchasing. The main reason for the creation of the 2060 permits in the late ’80s was to streamline the process for permitting trucks on state and county roads. “This tolerance permit is named after
the House Bill that created it, HB 2060 authored by Representative Sam Russell and sponsored by Senator Ken Armbrister in 1989. A few years later, in 1995, the house bill that amended it to add an addi- tional fee based on the number of counties a truck would travel in, which is what we have in place today, was HB 1547,” said Jody Richardson, an attorney and lobbyist for Allen Boone Humphries & Robinson LLP, who lobbied on behalf of Scurlock Permian Corporation at the time (Plains All-American today) and is widely credited in policy and political circles for the bill’s passage. “This permit allows a truck to weigh
up to 5 percent over gross weight (84,000 pounds) provided the trucks is not more than 10 percent over the axle weight allowed. It is truck specific and is valid for one year.” The actual permit cost is determined
by the number of counties in which the truck will be permitted to travel at such weight. There is a $95 base fee, plus a coun- ty fee that ranges from $175 to $1,000 depending on the number of named coun- ties a carrier wants to include in its permit. According to the Texas Department
of Public Safety, the state maintains 16,124 miles of load-zoned roads. These consist of Farm to Market and Ranch to Market roads that have a weight limit of 58,420 pounds or less. These roads are located throughout
all 254 counties of the state. In addition, virtually all county roads have weight lim- its much lower than 80,000 pounds. So, how do you load a truck with a
legal weight to go down an interstate or U.S. highway and travel across the state when the last five miles requires you to tra- verse a load-zoned road? “That’s simple—it’s the reason we have
the 2060 permit today,” said Richardson. The 2060 permit becomes the stan-
48 Winter 2015
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