Information Distribition Becomes NAFC Focus

A freshly reorganized National Accounting and Finance Council will spend the coming year trying to fulfill two information tasks — one internal to American Trucking Associations and the other external for the direct benefit of members.

The council’s members are usually the finance officers of trucking companies. Chairman Kenneth Sheibley wants the members and the council’s staff to provide financial expertise related to governmental issues for in-house use on advocacy matters.

	NAFC
	Richard Curtis

In the outbound lane from ATA, Sheibley and executive director Richard Curtis want NAFC to provide members with timely information on accounting, insurance, taxation, information technology and other financial topics. The chief financial officer for Keen Transport in New Kingstown, Pa., Sheibley said the re-structured publications could be made available in print, in a compact disc format or over the Internet.

To help with these publications, Curtis touted the hiring of Keri Craig as the council’s technical director, to help replace Robert Pitcher, now an attorney in private practice in Washington, D.C. Curtis cited The Controller as an example of what NAFC wants to do.

“It’s a monthly eight-page newsletter. It used to have a lot of pictures of people shaking hands and grinning, but now it’s been rejuvenated,” Curtis said.

Curtis said he is reaching out to large accounting firms and other vendors that supply the council with information so he can fill the newsletter with items that trucking’s finance professionals would find interesting and useful.

This has also been a goal of the council’s immediate former chairman, Charles Coggins of AAA Cooper Transportation. Reached at his office in Dothan, Ala., Coggins said he wants NAFC to be useful for small- and medium-sized trucking companies.

“That’s who most of the members are, and they don’t have big staffs to generate this sort of information. They need manuals, research and financial literature,” he said.

As for legislative and regulatory issues, Curtis said that in 2001 he would like to take aim at the Single State Registration System — the device used to register interstate insurance authority. Its original purpose has been rendered obsolete in certain instances through deregulation and the demise of the Interstate Commerce Commission (10-23, p. 3).

While NAFC will not be lobbying on the issue directly, Curtis said the council will work on the matter internally by providing financial analysis on the subject to ATA’s advocates on Capitol Hill. Curtis called the registration system a nuisance, and said he would like to seek an amicable solution to replace it.

While these are the issues on which Sheibley and Curtis said they want to spend most of their time, Sheibley said the council must also complete the final few tasks of its internal reorganization.

Sheibley and Coggins both said NAFC spent most of the last 12 months fighting for its existence as ATA was reorganizing itself in line with the precepts developed by the Wren Committee.

Curtis, who was appointed to his job in June, acknowledged, “There’s been lots of [staff] turnover over the last 18 months.” And both Coggins and Sheibley said that for a time, the council had no paid staff at all.

Further, they found the council governance top heavy. Curtis said the old board of directors and executive committee had 50 to 60 members and was “cumbersome.”

According to a recently approved structure, the advisory board is down to 19 positions, and the executive committee has but six slots, three of which are filled by Sheibley, Curtis and Coggins.

The council now has six standing committees — Taxation, Credit and Collections, Financial Relations, Accounting Principals, Risk Management and Information Technology. The chairman of those standing committees are also on the advisory board.

Sheibley said he wants these changes firmly cemented in the council’s by-laws. He also wants to boost its membership.

“I think about 20% of ATA members are represented on NAFC,” Sheibley said, adding that he considers that unacceptable because association membership automatically comes with a free council seat.

He said he wants to see more companies send representatives to the council and participate in its proceedings and use its services.

A final matter touched upon by Curtis was his previous place of business, the former Information Technology and Logistics Council. ATA has tried to assimilate the council into NAFC, hence the standing committee on information technology.

However, many members of the former ATA group have resisted the change. Curtis, who used to be the executive director of ITLC, said he does not know what will happen with his former compatriots, but hopes they will land within NAFC.

“ATA has not given up on this yet,” Curtis said. “The issue is not resolved, but we are still committed to providing our members with information technology support.”