Editorial: TCA's Shift in Focus Is Good for Trucking

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The unanimous vote by the Truckload Carriers Association last week to focus on education and training, and let the American Trucking Associations handle its advocacy efforts is a major step in the drive to improve the effectiveness of both organizations.

By focusing on driver-related issues, TCA will surely enhance its role as the leader in the struggle to find enough qualified people to handle the growing freight volume shippers want to move by truck. These efforts will also include programs to help develop the next generation of lower- and middle-level managers to run the nation’s trucking companies.

And by merging its advocacy efforts into the programs ATA runs, TCA’s decision enhances the effectiveness of those efforts, reinforcing ATA’s role as the industry’s consolidated voice on Capitol Hill.

Under the plan, TCA will identify the political issues that its members believe are most important to the truckload sector, and ATA will take appropriate lobbying efforts to try and influence the outcome of federal actions.

The vote also represents a step toward a merger with ATA, as envisioned in the Wren Commission’s strategic plan, which calls for ATA to focus on legislative, regulatory, legal and public affairs issues.

As part of that plan, ATA has asked its 14 conferences and national affiliated organizations to establish closer ties with the main body by 2001.

TCA’s own strategic plan — approved at its annual meeting in Las Vegas — refocuses the truckload group in light of the changes that have occurred at ATA. By putting more emphasis on finding solutions to problems that affect all truckload carriers, and by helping find ways to attract more drivers and develop more managers, TCA will be doing the entire industry a great service.

TCA’s new chairman, Gary Baumhover of GroJean Transportation in Dubuque, Iowa, said at the meeting that he will make the conference’s full integration into ATA a top priority.

Such an outcome would make both organizations stronger, and would strengthen trucking’s voice in the halls of Congress and throughout the federal government.