Rebecca Brewster reflects on ATRI career before retirement

Rebecca Brewster’s career has grown alongside ATRI, the nonprofit research arm of American Trucking Associations. (American Trucking Associations)

For more than three decades, Rebecca Brewster’s research work has helped bring clarity to the trucking industry’s most pressing concerns and has informed policy decisions on everything from traffic bottlenecks to driver hours of service.

Brewster, the longtime president and chief operating officer of the American Transportation Research Institute, officially steps down in February.

In an interview with Transport Topics, she reflected on the unexpected turns that brought her into trucking and the research she hopes will help guide its future.

Brewster’s career has grown alongside ATRI, the nonprofit research arm of American Trucking Associations. She joined in 1993, when it was known as ATA Foundation, before its 2001 rebranding to clarify its research mission.

State and local governments have used its data to guide decisions on reducing traffic congestion, while federal agencies and Congress have considered its findings when crafting regulations and legislation.

For Brewster, two areas stand out: truck bottlenecks and hours-of-service rules. She believes ATRI’s annual bottleneck rankings have helped push states to tackle congestion. The Jane Byrne Interchange near downtown Chicago, formerly known as the Circle Interchange, topped the list for three consecutive years. After a lengthy overhaul of that freeway interchange, ATRI recorded a nearly 25% improvement in truck speeds, she said.

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Page Siplon will succeed Brewster when she retires in February. (Karen Foote/American Trucking Associations)

“The outcome was very positive not only for the trucking industry but every motorist who has to drive through there,” Brewster said.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours-of-service rules offered another, more complicated research subject. The rules underwent major changes in the early 2000s for the first time in decades, followed by further revisions that kept ATRI’s researchers busy.

“We demonstrated through empirical research that there were challenges with some of those changes, and that got the attention of Congress and it got attention from FMCSA and ultimately led to changes that were positive for the trucking industry in those rules,” she said.

Brewster, who graduated from Wofford College with a degree in English, didn’t set out to build a career in trucking research.

Her introduction to the transportation industry came through a job search. After college, struggling to find work during an economic downturn, Brewster landed a job with Moen’s private fleet through a temporary employment service. She audited team driver logs for the bathroom fixture manufacturer before becoming director of public and governmental affairs at the Cary Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina. A few years later, while visiting a friend in Atlanta, she spotted a newspaper ad: ATA Foundation was seeking a public policy analyst.

“At 29 years old, I thought, ‘Wow, I must be the only person in the world who had this combination of experience in the trucking industry and government affairs,’ ” she said. “So I applied and I got the job.”

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Brewster, shown in 2025, says, "When I started in the industry long ago, I don’t think I could have ever projected that we would be where we are.”  (John Sommers II for Transport Topics)

After several years at the organization, she was promoted to president.

“It was this career path that I didn’t intend, from a trucking fleet to a chamber of commerce to where I am today, and I have loved every minute of it,” Brewster said.

Among the projects she has most enjoyed is ATRI’s widely referenced analysis of the trucking industry’s top issues. That annual report delves into numerous industry topics, with pressing issues such as truck parking, lawsuit abuse and economic conditions often appearing prominently on the list.

Brewster said the report began as a one-time effort to take the industry’s pulse but grew into an annual release, drawing responses from commercial drivers, motor carriers, law enforcement and others, and giving readers a way to follow how the industry’s concerns change over time.

“We have seen it cited in so many places around the industry and it’s just so gratifying to me that something that started as a one-time, ‘Let’s see what’s going on in the industry,’ has really blossomed into one of the industry’s most anticipated annual releases,” she said.

ATRI has also examined the experiences of women in trucking, who account for 4.1% of truck drivers. Brewster said its research found women drivers were, on average, safer than their male counterparts, a reason to recruit more of them. The work also documented challenges women face entering and staying in the profession.

For Brewster, identifying those barriers was only part of the task. The study includes an action plan for fleets, commercial driver license schools and female drivers, with recommendations aimed at recruiting and, especially, retaining women.

“As our crash predictor shows, that’s going to improve everyone’s overall safety,” she said.

When asked whether she had any advice for Page Siplon, who will succeed her as ATRI’s leader, Brewster said she would “tell him to really focus on nurturing that team we have here because they are second to none.”

Siplon said that under his leadership, ATRI will look to “futureproof the industry,” including through research on the use of artificial intelligence in trucking, autonomous trucks and fuel cost management.

Brewster’s own career offers a measure of how much trucking has changed. The paper logs she once audited have given way to electronic logging, while forward-facing and driver-facing cameras and tools to manage operational costs have become part of the industry’s technology landscape.

“[They have] all been positive changes, and when I started in the industry long ago, I don’t think I could have ever projected that we would be where we are,” she said.

Retirement won’t necessarily mean less time on the road. After years of traveling for research work, Brewster wants to revisit some familiar destinations, this time without a work assignment.

“Everyone says to me, ‘You’ve spent so much time on the road in your career that I guess you want to stay at home,’ ” she said. “Well the fact of the matter is that I’ve been to so many hotels and restaurants over the course of my career, but I’d love to go back there without a name badge and carrying a PowerPoint presentation — as a tourist. My husband and I are looking forward to that.”