Graves Calls 2012 a Successful Year for ATA, Citing Policy, Regulatory, Budgetary Issues

This story appears in the Dec. 24 & 31 print edition of Transport Topics.

Like many of the nation’s businesses, American Trucking Associations operated cautiously in 2012, said Bill Graves, the federation’s president.

Nonetheless, ATA membership held steady, its budget health im-proved as revenue increased, and many of the trade group’s legislative and regulatory battles produced generally positive outcomes, Graves said.

ATA became smaller and leaner in 2012 than it was just a few years ago, but the accomplishments of its staff were “remarkable,” Graves said.

“I’m quite frankly really proud of what a successful year we’ve had in all ways — policy issues, regulatory issues, and budgetary issues,” Graves said. “And we’ve done it with a pretty thin staff, who have all stayed committed to this organization and the members we serve in spite of some of the financial challenges and the hangover from 2009, 2010 and even 2011.”

Dan England, ATA’s immediate past chairman, whose tenure ended in October, said decisions made in 2012 have secured ATA’s future.

“There were some hard decisions that had to be made to balance the budget, but revenues increased and we did a good job of retaining membership,” said England, chairman of C.R. England Inc., Salt Lake City.

“Transport Topics was able to see more advertising revenue. That helped secure the ship, and there have been good initiatives to develop other sources of income,” he added.

England also said some “good persuasion, good arguments and good reasoning persuaded federal regulators to take another look at some of the important issues.”

With a presidential election looming for much of 2012, Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for ATA, said there seemed to be a slight regulatory slowdown during the last half of the year, the result of an unofficial pre-election moratorium on policy or regulatory controversy.

It didn’t last long. Less than a week after the election, the regulatory flood gates began to burst with a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposal to clamp down on unsafe trucking officers and managers. Several other regulatory initiatives also were expected by year-end.

“These issues, they tend to just keep going on,” England said. “Obviously, one of the biggest issues in 2012 was CSA — and continues to be.”

Among 2012’s other hot issues for trucking were a new hours-of-service rule; substantive tweaks to FMCSA’s safety measurement system known as the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program; and a contentious fight just to get a transportation bill through Congress essentially maintaining current funding levels.

“We clearly would have preferred a longer-term piece of legislation with a more significant investment in infrastructure and a plan that would have clearly identified a funding mechanism going forward,” Graves said of the highway bill that President Obama signed in July, “but so many of the policy issues we had pursued for such a long time finally happened.”

Still, regulatory fights in 2012 also produced reams of legal briefs and several visits to federal courtrooms.

Although ATA won its clean-trucks lawsuit against the Port of Los Angeles, it asked the U.S. Supreme Court this year to consider overturning several remaining burdensome provisions included in the plan to reduce port diesel emissions.

ATA also filed a federal lawsuit primarily calling for striking down the restart provisions of the hours-of-service regulation.

Moreover, ATA filed a petition seeking greater flexibility in a proposed electronic-stability rule and pushed for the Department of Homeland Security to streamline the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, increased visibility of driver records for motor carriers and raising the broker security bond requirements to $75,000 from $10,000.

“But a lot of items are still yet to be resolved,” Graves said. “We’re fighting legal battles with our Los Angeles port case and with hours of service. We continue to have an ongoing challenge with some toll initiatives around the country and with some efforts to limit the use of independent contractors.”

England said ATA took a significant step in 2012 to establish a special task force to preserve the independent contractor business model, the elimination of which is one of a number of “unreasonable regulations” that he said the Obama administration is pressing.

“One of the things I really worked hard on was establishing an independent contractor task force,” England said. “It’s now well-funded and has a lot of expertise on it.”

But England said his proudest accomplishment of 2012 for ATA has been to develop “areas of measurement” intended to rate the performance of ATA staff.

Areas to be rated: advocacy, membership, federation relations, image and financial, England said.

“For the first time, we’ve got a tool that will be refined over the years,” England said.

Even so, the staff reductions in 2012 have left ATA facing a major organizational challenge.

“We could do more, but we’re probably at the point that, in order to do more, we’re going to have to have strategically placed additional people and have the financial resources at our disposal to do those things,” Graves said. “We’ve stretched this team and this budget as far as we can.”

He added, “Sometimes you have to turn the lights out on some things and focus the spotlight on new initiatives, as opposed to trying to add on top of what you’re doing.”