Graves Focuses on Bipartisan Coalitions in Efforts to Advance Industry’s Agenda
By Eugene Mulero, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Sept. 22 print edition of Transport Topics.
Bill Graves, president of American Trucking Associations, said he expects to remind the federation’s members and others attending the 2014 Management Conference & Exhibition Oct. 4-7 of the need to build bipartisan coalitions.
That will help advance trucking’s interests, he said, rather than focusing on legislative gridlock in Congress.
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Graves, a former two-term Republican governor of Kansas, recently discussed with Transport Topics some of what he planned to say in the State of the Industry address:
TT: Many political observers viewed last year’s State of the Industry address as scolding the tea party. How is this year’s address shaping up, and will that faction again be targeted?
Graves: This year, I don’t intend to get into as much trouble with some of the more conservative Republicans over my comments, but I certainly don’t intend to back away from telling the truth, which is that, if we want to be successful on Capitol Hill, we have to figure out how to work both sides of the political aisle and to some extent we have to figure out how to push out into the extremes — left and right — in the two political parties, because it’s very difficult to form a working majority, especially in the Senate. You have to build relationships and develop a compelling case. And I think, again, the road map from hours-of-service is a great place for us to start.
What is your view of the current national political landscape?
Not everybody obsesses over Washington, but they do pay attention. They do sort of hear and feel what’s going on. And there is certainly an anti-incumbent sentiment right now that manifests itself everywhere. So I think there’s probably going to be some surprises in November.
Last year’s address also criticized the “Freight Rail Works” national advertising campaign. A year later, what has trucking learned?
Everybody ought to be very comfortable that we’re going to have plenty of freight to move by truck. And with the challenges that we discuss with the drivers, the costs are going to continue to grow to be in the trucking industry. We’ll have our hands
full, and I don’t think we ought to be fretting about the railroad industry.
What other issues do you think merit more attention?
The issues with the twin 33s (trailers) I just think it’s a wonderful opportunity. It’s a really solid productivity gain for trucking, albeit LTL (less-than-truckload) is a pretty small slice of the total freight movement pie. It would be an enormous benefit to that segment of our industry. But I think it also potentially serves as, again, a blueprint, a way forward to demonstrate the value of productivity gains and gives us hard data to actually use on, perhaps, other initiatives in the future.
