Editorial: Trucking's First Century

In this issue we celebrate trucking’s first century with a look back at the industry’s early days, including front pages of issues of Transport Topics that carried momentous news. And we review the highlights, and some “lowlights,” of events that affected trucking during 1999.

Next week, we’ll take a look forward at what the industry can expect during 2000, as seen through the eyes of the participants in Transport Topic’s Annual Management Outlook Forum.

It’s hard to believe that the 20th Century began without trucks and ended with trucks carrying the bulk of the nation’s commerce. In the intervening years, the industry was born, grew and matured, and continues to develop. Only in the century’s last year did the industry finally convince Congress to establish a federal agency to oversee motor carrier safety, on a par with similar agencies that work with the other modes of transport.

For all the things that have changed, it’s amazing how many things haven’t. Transport Topics traces its roots back to 1934, soon after two national trucking organizations — the Federated Truck Associations and the American Freight Institute — agreed to join forces as the American Trucking Associations. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Early TTs are full of stories about competition between trucks and railroads, of government regulation, of rising fuel costs, court reversals of weight-distance taxes and the creation of federal bureaus to oversee aspects of the motor carrier business.

Even the editorial cartoons have an eerie connection, as illustrated at the bottom of this page.

While we can easily show where we’ve been, where we’re going is, and has always been, much more difficult.

Rates are clearly headed upward, as costs have been for most of 1999. Driver recruitment and retention appear to be at the top of trucking’s agenda for the new year, which is not a major departure from last year.

Safety and environmental concerns are on most company executives’ minds, and the industry grapples with shipper demands that go beyond just-in-time and appear to be headed toward something like get-it-there-before-I-even-know-I-need-it-and-cheap.

Wherever the new challenges take the industry, and whatever the solutions trucking adopts, you can be sure that Transport Topics will be there to report it. Happy new century.

For the full story, see the Jan. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.