Steve Parker, chairman of the American Truck Dealers (ATD), called on the nation’s commercial truck dealers to urge Congress to explore reforming or possibly repealing the 12-percent federal excise tax (FET) on the retail sale of trucks, trailers and other commercial truck products during his speech at the ATD Convention & Expo last weekend in New Orleans.
“The FET was originally imposed to help finance the cost of World War I,” says Parker. “But since 1955, the tax rate on our products has increased by 300 percent – ballooning from 3 percent to 12 percent.”
Parker, president of Baltimore Potomac Truck Centers in Linthicum, Md., which operates five full-service commercial truck dealership locations with Mack, Volvo and Hino Trucks franchises in Maryland and Virginia, added that any increase in the FET would depress new truck sales and slow the deployment of cleaner, safer and more fuel-efficient trucks into America’s trucking fleet.
