Perspective

As chairman of the American Truck Dealers, the challenge for all of us — truck manufacturers, trucking companies and dealers — is to build relationships with members of Congress and federal regulators so that we have a voice in shaping the environment in which our businesses operate.

The Food and Drug Administration’s new rules on sanitary transportation of human and animal food products have many third-party logistics providers concerned about liability. With the rules defining brokers as shippers, many 3PLs may soon become responsible for requirements tied to equipment, training and record keeping — all things they haven’t been accountable for in the past.

While it is true that even the best dedicated-carrier fleets have been late at one time or another, most quality fleets deliver high-quality performance over time. The quality of the service is generally not the key reason that severs ties between buyers and sellers. For this text, we’ll just focus on three drivers for change.

In the trucking industry, we’re fond of calling ourselves the lifeblood of the American economy — delivering the goods that our stores, hospitals and restaurants need to maintain our quality of life.

Expectations this year are for the U.S. economy to grow moderately, fuel prices to stay at historic lows and truck capacity to remain tight for a healthy rate environment. However, growing faster than the competition will require more than opportunities.

If you had an extra $2 million to spend on your fleet, what would you do with it? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that most fleet owners would earmark the cash for capital expenditures or personnel development.

While the above titled retention activity at first makes as much sense as trying to melt the sun, its logic is based on the following facts:

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration finally released the long-awaited electronic logging device mandate’s final rule in December. The rule states that motor carriers without a current solution in place now have until December 2017 to implement ELDs for any vehicle or combination of vehicles with an actual weight and/or Gross Vehicle Weight Rating of 10,001 pounds or more. The rule is meant to improve compliance with hours-of-service safety rules.

In 1994, Congress wrote a bill authorizing the Federal Aviation Administration. In addition to keeping our skies safe, that bill laid down an important principle for our industry: that the federal government — not individual states — should write rules for interstate trucking.

The people who constitute the trucking industry are among the best examples of the American work ethic — they come to work every day focused on being a driver for the North American economy. Meeting them has been one of the great joys I’ve experienced while traveling across the United States.