Opinion: Paying the Bills

American Trucking Associations operates just like every other business in the industry: It provides services in return for payments it receives from its customers. Unlike its commercial brethren, ATA isn’t looking to record profits to return to its owners and stockholders. But it does seek to provide services — namely, advocating the policies and positions of the nation’s trucking industry — and to break even financially.

ATA has been through major changes in recent months, as its members have redefined the role they want the organization to play in the future. They have provided specific marching orders on how those goals are to be accomplished through the strategic plan that was adopted last August.

Now those same members are putting the finishing touches on the plan by helping enlist new members — and re-enlist old members — to join them in carrying trucking’s issues to Congress, the White House, the states and the nation’s regulatory agencies.

It is particularly fitting that a group of 100 members is spearheading the drive to sign up existing members who haven’t yet responded to their dues invoices under the new ATA rules, which ensure that all members are fairly assessed, based on a company’s revenue.

More than 75% of the association’s membership has already anted up to the new dues structure, and the committee of 100 is looking to increase that number. ATA Chairman John Wren and President Walter B. McCormick Jr. were on the road last week, appearing at meetings arranged by the committee with existing and prospective members.

The committee has been stressing the value of ATA to trucking, including its clout on Capitol Hill, the data it provides to members and its role in representing the industry’s point of view in front of federal and state agencies.

But there’s another part of their message. As Mike Starnes, chairman of M.S. Carriers, said during a session in Memphis, Tenn., “One percent of industry is paying the freight for all the rest of the industry” through their dues to ATA. “We’ve got reasonably sized companies running trucks and getting a free ride. If everyone would pay their dues, dues would drop for all of us.”

These members believe firmly in the value of ATA. Starnes summed it best when he said, “The payback is enormous.”