TCA Keeps Spotlight On Business
The TCA board of directors convened at the Ritz Carlton Hotel June 16 to report on the organization’s finances and to review policy issues being handled by the ATA. They also came to be brought up to date on the Truckload Academy and the six TCA management panels formed earlier this year.
TCA officials have said the group will leave advocacy issues — such as hours of service, meal deductibility and size and weight — to ATA, while throwing its energies into education and networking efforts.
Truckload Academy co-chairs Jim Roy and Kris Ikejiri told an audience of about 100 people that TCA would seek creative ways to save money as it creates the new school for truckers.
Summarizing the decisions made during the TLA organizational meeting on June 15, Roy stressed the group’s desire not to compete with state trucking associations or with ATA councils. He also said one priority would be to develop distance-based learning programs.
TLA is envisioned as a wholly owned subsidiary of TCA, governed by its own board of directors with TCA’s board giving final approval to budget and staffing decisions.
The academy is expected to require about $250,000 in start-up costs. Organizers hope to break even within 18 months after the program begins.
Pat Quinn, reporting on the Just in Time to Wait panel, reminded the audience that inefficiencies at the dock cost trucking $1.5 billion a year, not including driver turnover costs.
The panel met with shippers April 13 in Chicago and June 15 at a National Industrial Transportation League meeting to discuss ways of speeding drivers’ visits to loading and unloading docks.
Quinn said NITL is “philosophically allied” with trucking on the basic issues and that there is a “window of opportunity now to make progress” on the problem.
The panel will continue to hold such meetings with selected shippers into next year, he said.
n the subject of driver recruitment and retention, which most carriers cite as the No. 1 problem facing the industry, panel chairman Ronnie Dowdy stressed the need to bring young, minority and foreign drivers into American trucking fold. Crucial to that goal is persuading the Department of Labor to classify truck driving as a skilled profession. Currently, truck drivers are classified as unskilled laborers, which makes it difficult to get work visas for truckers from overseas.
Dowdy also focused on the need to devote resources to driver training.
“Gone are the days of Brother Bill and Uncle Sam training our drivers,” he quipped.
The only management panel to spark even moderate debate was the one on truck stops, which was dissolved due to lack of carrier interest. Only four TCA members had agreed to serve on the panel, said panel Chairman Donna Weinrich-Lucht.
Two of the chief truck stop issues — the sale of alcohol and the dearth of parking spaces — will likely be taken up by another management panel or an ATA body.
