Finishing Strong

By Bill Graves

President & CEO

American Trucking Associations

In many fields, one of the most prized attributes a person can have is finishing strong. Runners are praised for having a late kick to the finish line. Good politicians and lawyers are renowned for delivering a strong closing argument. In baseball, you’ll often see hitters finish their batting practice on a line drive so they can “remember the feeling.”

Well, this year, as a result of a lot of hard work, the team here at ATA finished strong in Washington and for that, many people need to be praised.

First, let’s look at what happened late in the year that’s so worthy of celebration. After a long and hard push, we were successful in convincing leaders from both parties in Congress that we needed relief from unjustified and potentially risk-raising restrictions on the hours-of-service restart.

It has been said many times, but this was not easy. We took on powerful labor interests, anti-trucking advocacy groups and even Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. However, because of champions such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the efforts of professional staff here, our state association and federation partners, and the countless e-mails, phone calls and visits to lawmakers during Call on Washington, we prevailed with a common-sense solution that will return immediate benefits to our industry and to the country — in the form of increased operational flexibility and reduced risk of crashes.

This was just one important victory ATA secured on your behalf as the year closed.

We were able to get a number of beneficial tax breaks — including on bonus depreciation, increased expensing, a propane fuel-tax credit and a $1-per-gallon credit on the production of biodiesel — into a bill the president is expected to sign soon. While not as high-profile as our hours-of-service fight, this was an equally important win for our Capitol Hill team.

On the regulatory front, it was announced that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was eliminating the requirement for drivers to submit, and for carriers to retain, vehicle-inspection reports if no defect has been found — a proposal ATA supported.

FMCSA says that change, which the agency estimates will save our industry more than a billion dollars in paperwork-related costs, is the largest paperwork reduction enacted by the Obama administration.

As good as that is, we believe the agency can grant even more important regulatory relief for our industry by reducing the minimum random drug-testing requirement consistent with FMCSA’s own rules and our industry’s performance in keeping impaired drivers out of our trucks.

So while we’re closing strong, we still have work to do.

In closing the year, ATA is stronger than ever before. Our membership team is out on the road, convincing more and more fleets of the value of belonging to an association that can deliver on its promise to improve the safety, efficiency and productivity of our industry.

The wins we racked up as a group serve not only as a great sales pitch, but as a marker for looming important policy discussions that ATA and the trucking industry are not to be taken lightly.

And those coming debates will be huge for our industry. How do we fix our crumbling infrastructure? And how do we pay for it? What is the federal government’s role in transportation going forward? And how do we make our highways even safer?

We hope many of those questions are answered next year as the new, Republican-led Congress starts work on a new highway bill and legislation to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent. And after this year, the policymakers who will be writing these bills know that ATA will certainly make its voice heard in advocating for this great industry.

Trucking is the lifeblood of this country. Your efforts truly move America forward every day; delivering the critical goods that our economy requires without fail and with a commitment to safety and efficiency that is second to none.

And participation is the lifeblood of this association. So if you joined ATA’s efforts on hours-of-service, or shared with us how important extending these tax breaks were, or weighed in on how best to fund our system of roads and bridges, I say, “Thank you.” Without your support, our efforts here in Washington would very well have fallen short of our goals.

To bring it back to the beginning, I want to close strong and wish you all a happy and safe holiday season. I hope this year has been as productive and energizing for you as it was for us here at ATA. Take some time as the year closes to reflect on all that’s positive in this industry and in our country, and prepare for what promises to be a 2015 full of opportunities to achieve even more.

American Trucking Associations, the largest national trade federation in the trucking industry, has headquarters in Arlington, Va., and affiliated associations in every state. ATA owns Transport Topics.