The National Transportation Safety Board is recommendIng that truck drivers and other commercial drivers be banned from using cell phones or texting while driving.

That recommendation came after a hearing in Washington Tuesday that revealed a truck driver making a call with his cell phone caused an accident that killed 11 people in Kentucky in 2010.

The truck driven by Kenneth Laymon, 45, of Jasper, Ala., crossed the median and crashed into a van carrying a Mennonite family and friends to a wedding in Iowa. Laymon and 10 people in the van were killed.

Some Grand Strand haulers are already on board with a cell phone ban. At New South Express in Conway, which has 43 trucks hauling lumber products to four Southern states, company policy prohibits drivers from talking on cell phones or texting while they're behind the wheel.

"Any kind of distraction when you're pulling 80 thousand pounds down the road and the way the highways are so congested now, you just don't need that," said Carl Hamilton, New South's general manager for transportation and logistics.

Hamilton said New South has GPS units on all of its trucks, so the company knows where its drivers are at any time. If company officials need to talk to a driver, they'll contact him on the truck's message board. "And then we instruct them to, at the next safe spot, pull over and call into the office," Hamilton said.

Hamilton said his company's drivers weren't opposed to a ban. "We've got a very safety focused group here and they all agree with that."

Other truckers we talked to agreed that trying to talk on the phone or send a text while driving can be dangerous, though some say there ought to be a way it could be done safely.

"If you had a headphone or earpiece or something like that, maybe, but I think it's just too much of a distraction," said Michael Shaw of Charleston.

Shaw admits he has used a cell phone while driving, but he tries to avoid it as much as possible. Shaw said an NTSB ban on cell phone usage wouldn't have much of an impact on his job. "I'd throw it on the console and leave it there," Shaw said of his cell phone.

NTSB officials predict a ban wouldn't be popular with many truckers, but it has to be done.

The NTSB can't prohibit cell calls and texting by itself. The agency's recommendation goes to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and all 50 states for action.