Opinion: TCA Puts Drivers at Top of Its Agenda

In mid-March, the Truckload Carriers Association took a historic step and adopted a five-year strategic plan. TCA decided to revise its strategic plan because American Trucking Associations’ overall goal, spelled out in the Wren Commission’s report, is to make ATA “first in class” in solving common political problems, with truckload issues receiving a high priority.

The goal of the new TCA plan is to make TCA “first in class” in solving common management problems, and thus making TCA’s mission complementary to ATA’s.

TCA’s new focus will serve its members by addressing the industry’s problems through proactive management panels as well as training and education programs.

The TCA plan has identified the following common truckload management problems: unreasonable delays at shippers’ and receivers’ docks, extraordinarily high driver turnover, inadequate parking spaces and inadequate truckload data. Very few of these problems have political solutions. In fact, government involvement and political solutions would probably only make them worse. Truckload management practices and unprecedented growth created them, and we will have to solve them ourselves.

To solve these problems, and the difficulties they cause for our drivers, TCA will establish the following management panels:

The Education and Training Panel will support the Professional Truck Driver Institute’s efforts to improve entry-level driver training.

The Driver Development Panel and Small Carrier Panel will consider how to attract new drivers and keep them in the industry once they are trained.

The new Truckload Academy will provide interesting and innovative long-term professional development opportunities for our drivers.

The Shipper and Receiver Panel will consider how we keep our drivers driving and not lumping or waiting to load and unload. Preliminary results of two studies by Martin Labbe and Associates showed that dry van drivers spend 33 hours a week waiting compared with 44 hours for refrigerated drivers.

The Truckstop Panel will consider how we can improve driver lifestyles and find adequate parking spaces for fatigued drivers.

The Benchmarking Committee will determine how we measure progress.

In addition, TCA’s Refrigerated Division will have driver satisfaction as its only agenda item during the annual meeting in July. I will also ask TCA’s Independent Contractor Division to consider only driver issues when it meets in September.

But we don’t want the discussions in any of these groups to be just another round of crying sessions. We are establishing management panels because we want to:

Quit crying and start solving.

Identify projects we can work on together as an industry.

Share our successes and our failures about what works and what doesn’t.

None of us needs to be reminded that without drivers, our industry (carriers and suppliers) stops and our country stops. We have some wonderful programs like Trucker Buddy, Highway Angels, 18-Wheels of Hope, America’s Road Team, National Truck Driving Championships and National Truck Driver Appreciation Week that honor our drivers and tell them how much we appreciate them. All these programs help drivers feel good about themselves and let their communities know that they are good and caring neighbors. They help to put a face behind the windshield.

But if we really want to show our drivers how much we respect and appreciate them, we need to fix these problems once and for all. We need to latch onto their frustrations, roll up our shirtsleeves, call on our industry partners, our customers and their associations and work together for the same goal of improving the driver’s quality of life. The end result will be a better, more productive, more effective transportation system.

In short, TCA’s new strategic plan has put drivers at the top of our agenda; 1999 will be the “Year of the Driver.” It’s about time we put the driver back into the driver’s seat doing what he or she does best — driving.