Long Prepares to Wrap Up Year as ATA Chairman

PHILADELPHIA — Duane Long, soon to be departing as ATA chairman, said he is ready for a break after a whirlwind year but that he also would like to spend more time lobbying for trucking on Capitol Hill.

Long said meeting with people in trucking across the nation was the best part of the job but that Washington, D.C., is the place where work needs to be done.

“There’s unfinished business in Congress,” Long said in an Oct. 17 interview here, referring mainly to the need for a multiyear surface transportation plan.

Long said he will meet with Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, during ATA’s Management Conference & Exhibition.

He said he is a supporter of Shuster, but that he is “less than optimistic” that Congress will produce a real surface transportation act any time soon.

Long said he will keep working for the future of the industry as ATA executive committee chairman for a year, but he also has been thinking about the past.

He helped get a book on John Akers reprinted. Akers was a founder of the first trucking company for which Long worked.

Long, chairman of Longistics in Raleigh, North Carolina, said he wants to help Pat Thomas, the next ATA chairman, just as Philip Byrd Sr., Long’s predecessor, helped him.