Opinion: Many Positive Changes in One Year

This Opinion piece appears in the Oct. 21 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

By Bill Graves

President and CEO

American Trucking Associations

As our industry adds more and more safety technology, an increasing number of your trucks have equipment installed that alerts drivers and dispatchers when the vehicle changes lanes.

If our industry itself had similar technology, those alarms would be sounding due to our state of rapid — sometimes disconcerting — change.

A lot of the changes we’ve seen since we gathered last year in Las Vegas have been overwhelmingly positive. The economy, despite our government’s best efforts, has changed for the better. We’re seeing in Bob Costello’s tonnage reports more and more evidence that the recovery we pined for in Dallas and Phoenix — and maybe saw a little of in Las Vegas — may truly be upon us.

With that improvement comes challenges. We continue to face a shortage of safe, qualified drivers to move America’s freight, and addressing that may require more change. I said earlier this year that in order to fill the seats we need to fill, we may need to change how we compensate our drivers or how much we compensate them.

At our American Trucking Associations Executive Summit in Dallas this December, we should see more of how our industry is going to change. We’ll be focusing on the technologies and strategies that will separate healthy, profitable companies from those struggling on the margins.

ATA is also looking to change — to think and act more strategically so we can better advocate for you, for your company and for this industry. Now, I say “better advocate,” because — and I may be biased — I think that in this most challenging of environments, the staff and leadership of ATA have done a tremendous job on your behalf.

Just this year, ATA attorneys beat back rules on independent contractors at the Port of Los Angeles that could have led to a disruptive nationwide patchwork of rules.

Let’s take a minute to talk about ATA’s other big legal scuffle this year: hours of service. The rules did go into effect, and we still think that they are too much cost for no safety benefit, but let’s not lose sight of the big victories the decision contained. First, the court exempted shorthaul drivers from the 30-minute rest-break provision — a provision it made little sense to apply to drivers who are working in a local area. Second, and perhaps most significant, while the court chided the administration for its tactics and decision-making, it flatly rejected, once and for all, the specious arguments of Public Citizen and its allies.

This, we hope, means the end to their interference in these rules. If these regulations change going forward, it’ll be based on real research and data, not theories.

ATA’s staff also secured a big win from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, getting the regulators to commit to addressing the issue of sleep apnea through a regular rulemaking — not through guidance. It is hard to get Congress to agree on much these days, but it seems they agreed with us, with Congress passing a bill in near-record time (and by one of the most bipartisan votes in recent memory). That win comes from the strength we have as a united voice for the industry. And that voice is there only if you’re all there with us.

We’ve made significant progress on other things we think will change our industry for the better: electronic logging devices, hair testing for drivers, improved pre-employment screening (including for drug-and-alcohol test results) and in continuing to thwart efforts to put tolls on our interstates.

ATA has been at the forefront of supporting changes that will make our trucks more environmentally friendly — either through changing our fuels to cleaner-burning natural gas or through supporting standards to reduce emissions from conventional diesel engines.

Now, with all this change and uncertainty, it is normal to feel a little apprehensive — as I know many of you do. For some, change is coming too slowly to our industry, and they push ATA and their peers to run to catch up to them. For others, change is coming too quickly, and they urge us all to slow down and look back to simpler times with a sense of longing.

But I can assure you, ATA is prepared for whatever changes come our way. We’ve got a first-rate staff doing excellent work on your behalf. We have dedicated drivers on America’s Road Team working to educate the public and to burnish our image. We have excellent researchers at ATRI helping provide us all the data to make good policy decisions going forward.

Between now and when we gather in San Diego next year, we can expect even more changes. Big, small, slow, fast . . . we’re in a dynamic industry that could be looking at significant changes in how our vehicles operate, how we bring in drivers, how we power our vehicles, how we pay for our roads and how we manage and work with our customers.

Some of these changes will be easy. Others may be painful. But to move ahead, we need to adjust, adapt and prepare — just as we would when we change lanes on the highway so we can do so safely and efficiently.

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