As Everitt mentioned in his comment here, I also received OOIDA’s “Call to Action”. This is where OOIDA sends out Legislative alerts so you can write your Congressperson and support OOIDA’s cause. Here’s the excerpt from the email

Last night U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced legislation which will require that 100 percent of fuel surcharges paid by shippers be passed through to whoever actually pays for the fuel to haul the shipper’s goods, obviously in most cases that’s truckers.
S. 2910, the “Trust in Reliable Understanding of Consumer Costs Act” or “TRUCC Act” will ensure that middlemen will no longer be able to skim or pocket fuel surcharges that should be going to truckers. Senators Snowe and Brown worked closely with OOIDA on this legislation.
Please call the offices of your 2 Senators to ask them to support S.2910. Ask your Senators to commit their support for S. 2910 by signing on as cosponsors of the bill.

The legislation was just introduced so the Senators and their staff may not yet be familiar with the bill; this may be a great opportunity for you to educate them on fuel surcharges and the trucking industry.

Like most things that have come out of Congress, this will only cause more paperwork for shippers and brokers and it’s not going to help truckers unless complete visibility is inserted into the bill. And what broker or logistics company is going to allow that?

I really don’t think every single shipper splits up their linehauls with a fuel surcharge. Whoever is taking care of their transportation just says, “it’s going to cost $1000 to ship this.” I feel this is the case because every load I get, I’m told, “we’re going to pay you $1000 to haul this.” If it’s not up to what I think it should be, I say yes or no. I don’t ask, “What’s the fuel surcharge?” Now they want to put in a fuel surcharge on every confirmation? You want a fuel surcharge with that? The linehaul is $800 and here’s $200 for a fuel surcharge. Where am I getting more money?

There are carriers that pay fuel surcharges. When I drove for a carrier that had a guaranteed fuel surcharge they also had a guaranteed rate per mile. It was something setup by the carrier, not their shippers. Now that I haul loads for them and the company I’m with brokers loads to them, that’s not how their rates are set with the shippers or other brokers. Forcing carriers to come up with, charge and hand out fuel surcharges and prove they’re 100% from the shipper, but it’s the price the carrier charged in the first place is only going to produce more paperwork and bureaucracy.

Another question this bill probably doesn’t answer - Who’s going to enforce this? Most carriers advertise they already pass along 100% of the fuel surcharge, but how do you know? How are you going to know after this bill gets passed? Unless they are showing you the customer invoicing, you don’t know and you’re not going to know.

The last time a fuel surcharge bill was raised it didn’t get very far. This one might only because fuel prices are in the headlines. This is just another example of how more Government is going to cause more problems and fix NOTHING.

So now they’re going to force a fuel surcharge. Are they going to force the amount of the surcharge too? If not what good is it? Even if they do force my hypothetical $1000 load to have a $300 fuel surcharge, the linehaul drops to $700.

What’s the answer?

My answer is the government is either all out or all in. The only way you’re going to get real fuel surcharges tied to real rates is regulating everything, not just the fuel surcharge and who’s going to do that?

But the Congresspeople will get in the news looking like they’re helping out the truckers. The trucking associations can feel important and say they accomplished something with the dues money you send in. And the stupid truckers can feel like they’re being taken care of and the government is doing something for them. Another typical day of politics in America accomplishing nothing.

What about actually reading the bill?

What a concept! You might actually want to read it before you write your Congresspeople and tell them to support it.

This is from http://thomas.loc.gov/

Thomas Jefferson, Library of Congress is the best resource for finding and reading the actual bills and legislation. Bookmark it NOW.

The text of S.2910 has not yet been received from GPO
Bills are generally sent to the Library of Congress from the Government Printing Office a day or two after they are introduced on the floor of the House or Senate. Delays can occur when there are a large number of bills to prepare or when a very large bill has to be printed.

I’ll probably post again after I’ve actually read it. As a side note - You want to be really disgusted about government? Read all the bills they passed in one day. The time and resources wasted on some of those bills, like they’ve got nothing better to do. I couldn’t get through the whole page without blood shooting out of my eyes.