By Michele Fuetsch, Staff Reporter This story appears in the Jan. 17 print edition of Transport Topics.
David Barefoot, American Trucking Associations senior vice president and chief operating officer, has retired after 12 years of service to the federation.
“It’s time for me to pass the baton to new leadership in the finance and administration department,” Barefoot said in a December letter notifying ATA President Bill Graves that his last day would be Jan. 14.
Barefoot, who has pursued Civil War history as an avocation, said his immediate plans are to answer a call from the Civil War Institute at his alma mater, Pennsylvania State University.
He said he will work on the celebration of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, which begins this year.
“There’s a consortium of universities that are putting together a set of events, symposia, for folks presenting papers and educating the public at various Civil War locations over the next four years,” said Barefoot.
“I’m an administrative guy, so I help organize events. I did some of that for the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.”
“I greatly value Dave’s significant contributions to ATA during my tenure,” Graves said. “He departs with an institutional knowledge . . . impossible to replace. He has an opportunity to fulfill a lifetime dream. I wish him all the best in his new endeavors.”
Before joining ATA in 1998, Barefoot was executive vice president and chief financial and administrative officer of the Association of American Railroads.
Barefoot graduated from Penn State, where his father was a professor, but he told Transport Topics he will remain in Washington.
Barefoot told Graves he regrets he will not be at ATA for the completion of its three-year, $20-million rebuilding of the association’s Capitol Hill office building. The project, which Barefoot has overseen, includes building a three-story parking garage under three structures, two of them historic.
The building is set to be completed in March, and will generate “a very significant” source of income for ATA from the garage and lease of 12,000 square feet of office space, Barefoot said.
“I am fortunate to be a Capitol Hill neighbor of this new local landmark. I hope the whole membership will be as proud of it as I will be whenever I pass by in future years,” he stated.
Barefoot also said in his letter that he departs with “profound respect” for ATA’s member companies.
“As I drive the nation’s highways in the future, seeing the names and logos of their well-managed companies on their trucks . . . will spark, I’m sure, many pleasant memories of time spent working for them here at ATA.”
