BLP: 380 2.5 Million Safe Miles, Now He Lobbies Congress

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Lewie Pugh drove for 25 years and logged 2.5 million safe miles before he ever set foot in a congressional office. Today he is Executive Vice President of OOIDA, and he describes himself as the closer: the one who follows the association's four Washington lobbyists into a meeting and puts an issue into plain language a lawmaker can actually understand. We sat down with him at OOIDA headquarters in Grain Valley, Missouri to talk about what moves in Washington, what does not, and why he thinks truckers get painted in a bad light by people who have never done the job.

He joined OOIDA in the mid nineties as a 22 year old with a new authority, ran for the board in 2004, and has now served 22 years. He is from a rural county in southeastern Ohio with about 12,000 people in it, has a vocational school education, and does not take for granted that someone with his background can testify in the halls of Congress. He talks about why he still misses the road, why he likes the DC work and the truck shows and hates the day to day office stuff, and what he tells members who call in angry or working off bad information: he is not going to tell them what they want to hear.

The conversation gets into the money and the mechanics. Truckers have been exempt from overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act since 1938, which is why company drivers give away hours at loading docks, and Lewie explains why OOIDA is fighting to remove that exemption and why it would raise rates for owner-operators too. Where the surface transportation reauthorization stands. Why the Highway Trust Fund is running dry when federal fuel taxes have not been raised since 1993 and electric vehicles pay nothing at the pump. Why tolling and vehicle miles traveled taxes worry him more than a fuel tax increase. Why OOIDA stands with the railroads against longer and heavier trucks, with a story about hauling steel in Ohio that shows exactly how more weight turned into less money per hundred. He also clears up a common misconception: roughly 20 percent of OOIDA's membership are company drivers, and the organization advocates for them too.

Chapters:

0:00 Four Lobbyists and the Closer

0:52 Started by Truckers, Still Run by Truckers

1:45 What He Misses About the Road

3:29 2.5 Million Safe Miles

4:22 They Have Money, We Have Members

5:12 How to Actually Reach Your Lawmaker

6:04 A Vocational School Kid in the Halls of Congress