Updated:
10/16/2009 10:05:00 AM
Opinion: The Long Road Ahead
By Tommy Hodges
Chairman
American Trucking Associations
This Opinion piece appears in the Oct. 12 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
The trucking industry has always been a part of my life. My dad was a longhaul driver as far back as I can remember, and some of my earliest memories are of my mom taking my dad to go load his truck so he could make his runs.
Naturally, I gravitated toward the industry. I began working on the docks at Tennessee Carolina Transportation in 1965. A year later, I learned how to drive a tractor-trailer and drove city routes in Nashville for TCT during the day and pursued a degree at the University of Tennessee at Nashville in the evening. Uncle Sam summoned me in 1968, and I spent a year in Vietnam as a military police officer before returning to TCT as a dock supervisor and dispatcher.
I went to work for Spector Freight Systems in 1976 as a salesman and started working my way up in the transportation industry — from sales manager to terminal manager to vice president of sales and then president and owner.
Over the past several years, I’ve had the pleasure to serve as American Trucking Associations’ Small Carriers Committee chairman, chairman of the ATA Sustainability Task Force and ATA first vice chairman. It’s with a great degree of humility and great sense of honor that I now accept the chairmanship of ATA.
As I take on this new role, I look forward to visiting the state associations and talking to as many groups as possible, while we all continue to operate in uncertain times and await economic recovery and reauthorization of the high-way bill.
For a couple years now, it seems like we’ve heard nothing but bad news, given the run-up in diesel prices last year and the state of our economy. But that’s going to change, and I’m optimistic that the worst is behind us. Economists are predicting tremendous tonnage growth over the next 12 years. There’s going to be plenty of freight out there, and it’s important that we prepare now to make sure that we’re well-situated to handle the increase as it comes.
To meet this demand, it’s critical that our nation makes a serious commitment to highway infrastructure in the upcoming reauthorization bill and addresses the desperate need for repair and expansion, beginning with the worst freight bottlenecks. Addressing the deficiencies of our highway infrastructure directly affects our ability to provide our essential services to this country.
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