UPS’ Thomas Brings Advocacy Skills to Position as ATA’s New Chairman
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For Pat Thomas, senior vice president of state government affairs at UPS Inc. and the new chairman of American Trucking Associations, Big Brown’s gargantuan hub here epitomizes freight connectivity.
Worldport, the largest fully automated package-sorting center on the planet, is home to UPS’ airport facility, a truck corral, a network of warehouses and expansive sorting spaces that together handle 416,000 packages per hour. Every machine is synchronized to help workers ensure packages reach their destinations as scheduled.
“If you were going to pick one spot anywhere within our network around the world, this is the best place where you get the most diversity of what our business is,” Thomas told Transport Topics during a visit through the facility.
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Thomas is acutely aware that the success of UPS’ finely tuned operations, as well as those of other trucking and transportation firms, hinges in part on the laws and regulations shaped in Washington, D.C., and by state legislatures.
His mission at UPS is to ensure that the legal and regulatory environment remains favorable to his company, and he brings that experience to his role as ATA chairman. For more than a dozen years, he has honed those skills educating members of Congress and state legislators about UPS’ priorities.
He also learned Congress’ inner workings by watching his father, the late Craig Thomas, a Republican senator from Wyoming, navigate Capitol Hill’s political landscape.
Thomas’ chairmanship commenced Oct. 20, at the culmination of ATA’s Management Conference & Exhibition in Philadelphia. He is the first chairman to come from UPS. The package-delivery firm, headquartered in Atlanta, holds the top spot on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada.
Thomas said he will focus on promoting safety and push Congress to make permanent the rollback of an unfavorable change to truckers’ hours-of-service rules.
In interviews here with TT and at ATA’s Capitol Hill office, Thomas stressed that his familiarity with Congress, the rapport he has developed over the years with key lawmakers on the transportation panels and his proximity to Capitol Hill will be invaluable assets as ATA pushes to reform regulations.
“I’m ready at a moment’s notice. And I’m happy to fill that slot,” Thomas told TT. “We all know that constituents are important voices. So I really speak on behalf of all the members of ATA. And I think I can do that. And, of course, my ability to be accessible and to be in town here, and able to attend more of those kinds of events is probably going to be the difference between what’s happened in the past.”
Unlike many past ATA chairmen, Thomas does not own or run a trucking company. Immediate past ATA Chairman Duane Long is chairman of Raleigh, North Carolina-based logistics company Longistics. Philip Byrd Sr., who preceded Long as ATA chairman, is CEO of Bulldog Hiway Express in North Charleston, South Carolina.
But even so, Long, Byrd and many of the members who make up ATA’s federation, as well as ATA’s senior staff, have expressed supreme confidence in Thomas’ qualifications.
“Pat is going to be a great chairman,” Long said. “His career and experience have prepared him to be exceptional in this role.”
Dave Osiecki, chief of national advocacy at ATA, told TT he believes Thomas can further ATA’s initiatives.
“We’ve done a really good job, I believe, in the past several years working with the federation. He can take that to the next level,” Osiecki said.
At UPS, Thomas oversees state legislative, regulatory and political activities nationwide. He directs a team of state and local public-affairs managers throughout different corners of the country while overseeing Big Brown’s congressional awareness program — a grass-roots effort designed to establish rapport with members of Congress in their districts.
As ATA’s 71st chairman, Thomas is determined to inform lawmakers about the trucking industry’s contributions to our economy and society, be it in the labor force, freight distribution or construction.
“There are groups of folks that aren’t going to be with us, no matter what we do. But I think the vast majority, particularly on the many issues we just spoke of, are willing to listen. And if you have a case that makes sense and is logical, they can be persuaded,” he said.
Thomas explained the industry’s dynamics are such that most of ATA’s agenda is focused on decisions made on Capitol Hill.
ATA is pressing lawmakers to allow drivers between ages 18 and 20 to operate trucks across state lines, to let employers rely on hair testing for drug screenings and reform the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.
The trucking federation also wants lawmakers to address their concerns on truckers’ HOS rules. Congress this year suspended FMCSA’s requirement that drivers take off two consecutive periods of 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. during a 34-hour restart, but the suspension will be lifted when the agency provides Congress with a study on the rule. In the meantime, truckers still are required to account for a 30-minute break during their shifts and adhere to pre-July 2013 hours-of-service regulations.
Thomas also plans to be a strong voice sounding the alarm about the dwindling funds for the country’s transportation system. In the coming months, he expects there will be more interest from people on highway funding, and he’s fairly optimistic that, even if Congress doesn’t pass a long-term highway bill this year, a majority of the American public will continue to clamor for a multiyear transportation measure.
Congressional funding authority of federal highway programs expires Oct. 29.
“People are seeing the effects of the delay [in highway funding] and the kicking of the can and all the short-term fixes that we all see. . . . As we go through every cycle of fall and winter and spring around all parts of the country, we see the potholes, we see the deterioration of the highway system,” Thomas said.
“There isn’t anything written that says you can’t do a highway bill in an election year. It’s difficult, it makes people make tough choices and all those sorts of things. You know, that’s part of being an elected official in this country,” he said.
Thomas said he also will monitor Congress’ efforts on legislation that would authorize the use of twin 33-foot trailers nationwide. A provision in fiscal 2016 transportation funding bills would greenlight the trailers.
“Their safety record is unblemished. So the argument that they’re less safe doesn’t have any factual basis to it. . . . It’s really a win-win deal,” Thomas said.
Ed Patru, a spokesman for the Coalition for Efficient and Responsible Trucking, of which UPS is a member, noted recently: “When it comes to the track record of twin 33s, the facts speak for themselves.”
Thomas knows he’ll be doing a lot of walking through the halls of Congress during his chairmanship. He wears a fitness-monitoring device on his wrist, which tracks the number of steps he takes each day. During his chairmanship, he is aiming to clock-in the most steps he has ever recorded on the device.
After visiting Worldport, where he easily recorded thousands of steps, he added several hundred more by visiting a nearby UPS regional hub a few hours later. While there, Thomas met with more than two dozen delivery drivers who had gathered around a loading dock. Distinguished in a tan sports coat, gray slacks, a white shirt and black leather shoes, Thomas was as aware of the stifling June humidity as the drivers were.
He was there because he was asked to give the morning’s pep talk to the crew. He told the drivers about his job in Washington, D.C., his career at UPS and his upcoming role as chairman of ATA. He also preached safety.
“It’s hot in Washington, but it’s even hotter here,” he said. “Please make sure that you have plenty to drink and hydrate today, and stay safe out there.”
Thomas got his start at UPS as a seasonal delivery driver in Rock Springs, Wyoming. But as he grew up in Wyoming, trucks weren’t at the forefront for Thomas. He had his sights set on aviation instead. By the time he reached high school, he was working at an airport and would go on to fly smaller planes.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in aviation management in 1982 from Southern Illinois University. His commercial aviation aspirations faded during the airline industry’s downturn in the 1980s. Shortly thereafter, he pursued a career at UPS. For more than a decade, he’s been based in the Washington area, where his ATA commitments expanded.
Thomas’ father, Craig, began his congressional career in 1989 after winning a special election to replace Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.) in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1994, he was elected to the U.S. Senate to succeed the retiring Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.) and was re-elected in 2000 and in 2006. He died in 2007; he had been diagnosed with leukemia.
Thomas said he admired his father’s political pedigree and learned key communication skills from him. His father would tell him to consider an issue from all angles, then to hold the issue up against a personal philosophy.
Through his father, he also got a close-up view of Congress’ legislative process.
“In Washington, when the issue becomes important and they put their minds to it, they can do things in pretty short order,” Thomas said.
He is constantly looking for ways to improve a lecture, or his advocacy skills, or simply his everyday chores.
“We say it’s a journey, not a destination, to educate public policymakers about our business and the challenges and the hurdles that we face every day moving forward,” Thomas said. “So you have to have some sort of a plan in place at all times, to have a continual education process under way, because you have new staffers, new members of Congress, you have new members of the legislature. To have a vibrant and strong and growing trucking business is really essential to the economy and to the country as a whole.”
