By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Oct. 17 print edition of Transport Topics.
Agricultural lobbyist Jon Samson has been appointed executive director of American Trucking Associations’ Agricultural and Food Transporters Conference.
Samson, 29, joins ATA after more than three years of lobbying for the Agricultural Retailers Association, where he concentrated on issues affecting the agriculture retail and distribution industry, including energy, transportation, environmental stewardship, taxes and other financial issues, as well as immigration and the 2008 farm bill.
He also has been a staff member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and legislative assistant in the office of its chairman, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
Samson grew up on a hog farm in southwest Montana, 10 miles outside a town of 1,900 people where he went to high school. He left the farm and came to Washington in 2004 as an intern for the National Pork Producers Council.
“Ever since I was in kindergarten, I was down on the farm helping my dad,” Samson told Transport Topics. “It was a good way to grow up and see how agriculture affects everyone around us.”
His family’s hogs were shipped from Montana to either Idaho or California, so he understood early on the importance of transportation to America’s famers.
Samson succeeds Russell Laird, who left AFTC in April to become vice president of corporate relations for the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corp.
“We’re happy to have Jon join our team, representing our interests before lawmakers and regulators,” said AFTC Chairman Rick Yost, vice president of V-Y Truck Line Inc., Sterling, Colo. “Jon’s personal and professional history with our industry makes him uniquely suited for this role.”
Samson received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Montana State University in 2005 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at George Mason University.
“I’m very excited to be undertaking this new challenge and look forward to representing AFTC’s 300-plus members and supporting the critical work they do in delivering goods to the tables of America and the rest of the world,” Samson said.
ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said he’s confident that Samson will do an “exemplary job” advocating for AFTC.
Samson said the current political climate in Washington makes it tough to tell trucking’s story.
“The past couple of years, it’s become a little more difficult to reach out and fully engage members,” he said. “Compromise shouldn’t be a bad word, but it seems like there’s a lot of people up there on both sides of the aisle that it’s either their way or the highway.”
The AFTC’s biggest issue right now is preserving the agriculture exemption to the hours-of-service rule during the planting and harvest season, Samson said.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has called the exemption of the hours rule for fertilizer and other agricultural transport from a terminal or pipeline to a retail site an “abuse” of the exemption, Samson said.
