ATA Rejects TCA Proposal; Alters TMC Membership

ARLINGTON, Va. – Leaders of American Trucking Associations rejected a proposal to allow the Truckload Carriers Association to pay a monthly affiliation fee rather than require its members to join the federation.

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Don Bowman, TCA’s representative to ATA and president of D.M. Bowman Inc. in Williamsport, Md., cast the only vote in favor of the proposal.

ATA’s Executive Committee also voted unanimously June 22 to drop the requirement that trucking companies be ATA members in order for their employees to belong to The Maintenance Council.

The vote on TCA came two days after that group released the results of its mail-in referendum on its proposal to pay ATA $10,000 a month and have its members pay a monthly fee of $1-a-truck, in lieu of having to join ATA and pay full dues.

According to TCA Chairman Robert Hansen, 76 TCA board members supported the proposal while 36 opposed it. Another 69 board members did not return their ballots, he said.

ATA Chairman Lee P. Shaffer said the committee’s action was consistent with the restructuring plan adopted by the association in 1998.

“The TCA plan, if adopted, would allow some TCA members to draw value from ATA at a fraction of the cost of belonging to ATA, fail to secure the financial future of state trucking associations and would result in unfairness to members of other conferences who have agreed to the full dues requirements of ATA’s strategic plan,” said Shaffer, who is also president of Kenan Transport in Chapel Hill, N.C.

TMC is a different story altogether, according to Shaffer. While TCA is an independent organization, TMC is owned and operated by ATA, which expects the organization to provide nearly $2.5 million to ATA’s bottom line this year.

Historically, truck maintenance and engineering professionals could participate in TMC whether or not the company for which they worked was an ATA member or even paid their membership dues for them. Limiting membership in TMC to employees of full-dues-paying members of ATA and a state trucking association would result in the disqualification of 600 of TMC’s 900 motor carrier employee members unless their employers joined ATA.

The committee that developed ATA’s strategic plan assumed that TMC membership was so valuable to a motor carrier that limiting access to ATA member companies would spur ATA membership growth. “It now appears that the assumption may have been flawed,” Shaffer wrote in a June 19 memo to Executive Committee members. "Employers have been unwilling to join ATA simply because their employees want to participate in TMC."

ATA will begin charging a $50 surcharge to TMC members whose employers do not belong to ATA. A company’s second employee membership would cost $20 above the TMC dues. Current TMC dues are $285 annually. Carriers can add a second employee for an additional $75. ATA member fleets receive one free membership in TMC and other ATA councils.

Associate TMC members, who are largely employees of industry suppliers, would not be affected by the plan.

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