Editorial: Welcome Back, Tank Truck Carriers

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

he National Tank Truck Carriers group has voted to return to the fold of American Trucking Associations, a most welcome event.

NTTC’s board of directors, at the group’s annual meeting in New Orleans last week, formally acted on a membership vote taken in February that approved rejoining the ATA federation.

NTTC has 170 members who operate more than 50,000 trucks.

The tank truckers become the latest of the original carrier conferences to reaffiliate with ATA, following a reorganization of the association that led several groups to strike out on their own in 2000. The Truckload Carriers Association and the National Automobile Transporters Association have already rejoined the ATA federation.

“This is a good thing for all of us. The trucking industry has to have one voice,” said Jack F. Schwerman, the new chairman of NTTC. “No one liked leaving ATA to begin with,” he said.

ATA President Bill Graves, who attended the NTTC meeting, cited the new hours-of-service rules as the kind of progress trucking can make if it sticks together.

The federal government in 1999 proposed an hours rule “that would have been devastating to this industry,” Graves said. “The new rule is 95% better. ATA, NTTC, our other affiliated groups and non-affiliated groups made that happen.”

The new rule, which reduces the maximum drivers’ work day by an hour, but increases allowable driving time by an hour, has generally received positive reviews within the trucking industry, and it hasn’t sparked sharp opposition from groups that have been pressing for tighter regulation of the industry.

ATA led the charge against the original hours proposal, and was eventually joined by virtually every segment of trucking. This prompted Congress to order a re-evaluation of the proposal, which resulted in the more palatable final rule we have now.

Long-time NTTC President Clifford J. Harvison said the decision to rejoin ATA “allows us to present a united front again as one trucking industry without any asterisks. The benefit to NTTC is that it allows us to be recognized as an affiliate and part of the ATA family.”

ATA’s Graves said in his speech at NTTC, “There’s an ‘s’ at the end of American Trucking Associations. Associations is plural because we are a federation of associations.”

Welcome back, tank truck operators.

This story appeared in the May 26 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.