Opinion: Trucking’s Single Most Authoritative Voice
This Opinion piece appears in the Feb. 3 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
By Bill Graves
President and CEO
American Trucking Associations
Last week, we announced several changes here at American Trucking Associations — changes aimed at strengthening and improving an already sturdy organization.
For more than 80 years, ATA has stood as the single most authoritative voice on behalf of the trucking industry — a tireless advocate for all motor carriers regardless of size, region or niche. ATA has evolved the way it has over that time through trial and error, and, while we are mindful of our history and traditions, we also understand that we need to keep evolving and changing not just to meet the challenges of representing this industry but to make sure we are fully in step with our members.
What I have been hearing from members for several years now is they want us to be more efficient and more strategically focused on the most basic function of a trade association: advocacy on behalf of its members.
We’ve had a great deal of success in that regard over the years. Just in the past two years, ATA:
• Has had a unanimous victory at the United States Supreme Court in our challenge to the Port of Los Angeles’ harmful and anti-competitive concession rules.
• Has pushed an electronic logging device mandate through Congress and will continue to push its implementation through the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
• Has worked with the Environmental Protection Agency on the creation of first-of-their-kind emissions standards for large trucks.
• Has been one of the very few industries to get anything passed by an impossibly gridlocked Congress when both chambers unanimously approved legislation to prevent FMCSA from using “guidance” to address the important issue of sleep apnea and to require the agency use the normal rule-writing process.
And that’s just some of what ATA’s hardworking and dedicated professional staff have done for this industry — but, frankly, that’s not enough for us. Just as our members are demanding more from ATA, ATA is demanding more from itself, which is where we hope this realignment of resources will make us even better able to meet not just our members’ high standards but our own expectations for ourselves.
So let’s look at the physical changes: We’ve consolidated all of ATA’s functions into three main groupings — Advocacy, Communications, and Finance and Operations.
In our first group, Advocacy, which is headed by new Executive Vice President Dave Osiecki, our regulatory policy, legislative affairs, legal and federation relations teams will be more strategically aligned. I believe that by putting all our advocacy efforts in one team, it will help us not just to identify and prioritize our issues better but to coordinate better our strategies for success.
If we have an issue with the hours-of-service rules or FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, for instance, by having just one group headed by one person leading the advocacy efforts, we can better evaluate our options: Does this require us to go to Congress? Do we need to work just with the regulatory agency? Do we need to take the agency to court? Should we try multiple strategies? These are questions we now can answer more quickly and, we hope, those quicker answers will produce quicker results for our members.
The second piece of our new structure is our communications team. What good are legislative or regulatory victories if no one knows about them? Executive Vice President Jeff Mason is going to be spearheading these efforts, making sure our public affairs team, as well as our image and outreach efforts, continue providing all the news and information our members need — and ensuring that the general public understands what our industry does for our economy and our country.
This newspaper will play a role in these efforts. Transport Topics will continue to produce the same high-quality reporting on trucking and freight transportation that readers have come to rely on, but TT also will use its place as the premiere publication for the trucking industry to ensure ATA’s voice on behalf of the industry is heard loud and clear.
Finally, we come to Finance and Operations under Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Karla Hulett. Karla’s group — which includes membership, marketing and meetings, as well as all our back-office support units — might be the most important one in our new structure.
No advocacy gets done and no communications get sent unless the bills get paid and the lights stay on. Finance and Operations will be responsible for continuing to grow ATA’s revenue through dues, sponsorships, product sales and putting on first-class events.
So that’s the physical restructuring — but that’s only half of it. Our members have asked us to be better about prioritizing the things we do on their behalf. So, under this new direction, we’re going to be spending a lot more time working with
members, building consensus among them and deciding what are really the most important things they want us to do on
their behalf.
That may mean that some lesser issues don’t get the attention they once did, but it certainly will mean that our highest priorities — infrastructure funding, CSA, creation of a new freight program aimed at eliminating highway bottlenecks, hours-of-service and the like — will see even more.
These changes have been several years in the making and have not been taken lightly. We have talked with our members, with senior industry leadership and with our staff. We continue to be dedicated to the core principle that advocacy on behalf of our members is our primary mission, and I believe the vision we’re beginning to lay out with these changes will lead this association to even greater accomplishments and success in the future.
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.
