ATA Leaders Agree on Need for Unity to Address Key Issues
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the Feb. 4 print edition of Transport Topics.
WASHINGTON — With an eye on the congressional debate next year over reauthorizing transportation legislation, leaders of American Trucking Associations agreed on the need for the industry to come together on key issues and established a task force to work on safety issues.
ATA President Bill Graves said the meeting had delved into many important policy issues, such as federal highway policy and global warming.
Graves said Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, spoke and “did a fabulous job outlining some of his ideas about the next highway bill reauthorization and the importance of surface transportation in this country.”
Graves said ATA’s political action committee had a “tremendously successful event,” which was important because, “with the very divided Congress and the challenging election year of 2008, there’s a great need for us to be financially capable to be engaged politically.”
He also said ATA’s leaders discussed the federation’s environmental sustainability effort and would “communicate to a much broader audience the commitment that the trucking industry has to the environment.”
“I feel like we’re leaving here pretty united on a lot of issues,” said ATA Chairman Ray Kuntz, chief executive officer of Watkins and Shepard Trucking Inc. “And in spite of the continued dragging economy, carriers are optimistic.”
Kuntz said ATA was making a major push on safety, looking to emphasize what the industry was doing to reduce truck crashes.
“We as carriers do a lot of things technologywise [with] rollover stability, lane-departure collision avoidance, speed limiting, and we’re doing all this to make our trucks safer on the highways,” he told Transport Topics. “We don’t do a good job of ‘PR-ing’ all the good things we do in safety.”
To that end, Kuntz said the association set up a “safety task force,” modeled on last year’s climate change effort, to devise a long-term strategy for promoting ATA’s safety efforts.
“We’re going to bring together safety professionals from several carriers and manufacturers and they’re going to come into a room and try to get their arms around everything we’ve done, everything that’s out there, and come up with a long-term plan — what ATA would like to see implemented in the future to bring down fatalities,” he said. “It will be exactly the same as we did with sustainability, and that has the possibility to go to the legislatures and promote what we’re doing, instead of fighting something that’s part of our livelihood.”
The safety task force was conceived during the recent battles over driver work rules when “it kind of became evident . . .” that some advocacy groups had focused on things “that won’t have a lot of effect on safety.”
“We believe that the future of bringing down highway fatalities and injuries is going to come from technology, not from court battles,” Kuntz said.
ATA leaders also heard a panel of four former association chairmen, each highlighting a challenge facing the industry: Fred Burns of Burns Motor Freight Inc. on insurance, David McCorkle of McCorkle Truck Lines Inc. on hours of service, Patrick Quinn of U.S. Xpress on infrastructure and Steve Williams of Maverick USA on the role of technology and progressive thinking in trucking (see story, p. 39).
Williams, talking about the role of technology, said the industry “too often fought to resist change,” when it should be embracing new technologies and new thinking.
Change was also Oberstar’s theme. The House transportation panel chairman told ATA the country was “in a very exciting, challenging, demanding era of transportation” he said was “transformational” and on a par with the creation of the interstate highway system in the 1950s (click here for related story).
While Oberstar criticized Transportation Secretary Mary Peters for her positions on the fuel tax and privatization, he also be-moaned the fact that infrastructure was not receiving more attention in the general public. He called it the “backbone of the nation’s economy.”
Oberstar also lamented the lack of discussions of infrastructure and transportation in the presidential campaign.
“I sure the hell wish that our presidential candidates would use the word ‘transportation’ once in a while, instead of just using transportation,” the Minnesota Democrat said, eliciting laughter and applause from the crowd.
ATA also bestowed the S. Earl Dove Highway Award, the association’s highest honor, on Bob Halladay, former state trucking association and ATA executive.
“This honor I have been given today is the greatest I have ever received,” Halladay said. He also wrote a history of ATA that was recently updated.
“We were very pleased to recognize Bob Halladay for his longtime service to ATA with the Dove award,” Graves said.
ATA members also met with current and former Bush administration officials during the meeting. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez addressed the federation’s executive committee and former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow spoke to ATA’s board of directors.
This story appears in the Feb. 4 print edition of Transport Topics.
WASHINGTON — With an eye on the congressional debate next year over reauthorizing transportation legislation, leaders of American Trucking Associations agreed on the need for the industry to come together on key issues and established a task force to work on safety issues.
ATA President Bill Graves said the meeting had delved into many important policy issues, such as federal highway policy and global warming.
Graves said Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, spoke and “did a fabulous job outlining some of his ideas about the next highway bill reauthorization and the importance of surface transportation in this country.”
Graves said ATA’s political action committee had a “tremendously successful event,” which was important because, “with the very divided Congress and the challenging election year of 2008, there’s a great need for us to be financially capable to be engaged politically.”
He also said ATA’s leaders discussed the federation’s environmental sustainability effort and would “communicate to a much broader audience the commitment that the trucking industry has to the environment.”
“I feel like we’re leaving here pretty united on a lot of issues,” said ATA Chairman Ray Kuntz, chief executive officer of Watkins and Shepard Trucking Inc. “And in spite of the continued dragging economy, carriers are optimistic.”
Kuntz said ATA was making a major push on safety, looking to emphasize what the industry was doing to reduce truck crashes.
“We as carriers do a lot of things technologywise [with] rollover stability, lane-departure collision avoidance, speed limiting, and we’re doing all this to make our trucks safer on the highways,” he told Transport Topics. “We don’t do a good job of ‘PR-ing’ all the good things we do in safety.”
To that end, Kuntz said the association set up a “safety task force,” modeled on last year’s climate change effort, to devise a long-term strategy for promoting ATA’s safety efforts.
“We’re going to bring together safety professionals from several carriers and manufacturers and they’re going to come into a room and try to get their arms around everything we’ve done, everything that’s out there, and come up with a long-term plan — what ATA would like to see implemented in the future to bring down fatalities,” he said. “It will be exactly the same as we did with sustainability, and that has the possibility to go to the legislatures and promote what we’re doing, instead of fighting something that’s part of our livelihood.”
The safety task force was conceived during the recent battles over driver work rules when “it kind of became evident . . .” that some advocacy groups had focused on things “that won’t have a lot of effect on safety.”
“We believe that the future of bringing down highway fatalities and injuries is going to come from technology, not from court battles,” Kuntz said.
ATA leaders also heard a panel of four former association chairmen, each highlighting a challenge facing the industry: Fred Burns of Burns Motor Freight Inc. on insurance, David McCorkle of McCorkle Truck Lines Inc. on hours of service, Patrick Quinn of U.S. Xpress on infrastructure and Steve Williams of Maverick USA on the role of technology and progressive thinking in trucking (see story, p. 39).
Williams, talking about the role of technology, said the industry “too often fought to resist change,” when it should be embracing new technologies and new thinking.
Change was also Oberstar’s theme. The House transportation panel chairman told ATA the country was “in a very exciting, challenging, demanding era of transportation” he said was “transformational” and on a par with the creation of the interstate highway system in the 1950s (click here for related story).
While Oberstar criticized Transportation Secretary Mary Peters for her positions on the fuel tax and privatization, he also be-moaned the fact that infrastructure was not receiving more attention in the general public. He called it the “backbone of the nation’s economy.”
Oberstar also lamented the lack of discussions of infrastructure and transportation in the presidential campaign.
“I sure the hell wish that our presidential candidates would use the word ‘transportation’ once in a while, instead of just using transportation,” the Minnesota Democrat said, eliciting laughter and applause from the crowd.
ATA also bestowed the S. Earl Dove Highway Award, the association’s highest honor, on Bob Halladay, former state trucking association and ATA executive.
“This honor I have been given today is the greatest I have ever received,” Halladay said. He also wrote a history of ATA that was recently updated.
“We were very pleased to recognize Bob Halladay for his longtime service to ATA with the Dove award,” Graves said.
ATA members also met with current and former Bush administration officials during the meeting. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez addressed the federation’s executive committee and former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow spoke to ATA’s board of directors.
