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Truckload Authority - Summer/Fall 2015

Super Bowl winning coach and co-host of Monday Night Football Jon Gruden tells it like it is. Plus, the debate over twin 33's is heating up.

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health fairs | ingauge launch | meet our new member development specialist<br />

O F F I C I A L P U B L I C A T I O N o f t h e T r u c k l o a d C a r r i e r s A s s o c i a t i o n<br />

SUMMER/FALL <strong>2015</strong><br />

Mister<br />

Monday<br />

Nightwith<br />

Coach Jon Gruden<br />

In this issue:<br />

CSA, Take 2<br />

Will the second act be better than the first?<br />

You Can’t Park Here<br />

Lack of parking continues to vex drivers<br />

Building more Value<br />

with Chairman Keith Tuttle


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SUMMER/FALL | TCA <strong>2015</strong><br />

President’s Purview<br />

The More Things Change,<br />

The More They Stay the Same<br />

The week I wrote this column was an eventful one on Capitol Hill. The House passed a<br />

temporary $8 billion patch to the Highway Trust Fund to ensure its solvency until December, and<br />

there was plenty of discussion about twin 33-foot trailers, the hair testing bill and a proposal to<br />

potentially reform the FMCSA.<br />

Change is inevitable in Washington and there will no doubt be a new set of issues to talk about<br />

in our next magazine.<br />

However, there has been one constant at the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association for well over two<br />

decades — Bill Giroux — who serves as our executive vice president. Bill is TCA’s most tenured<br />

employee, and this October will mark his 25th year at our association.<br />

I researched job longevity to see how unique it is for a person to stay with one organization<br />

for that long. I wasn’t shocked to learn the number is in the single digits, placing Bill in rarified<br />

air. To add some historical perspective, the month that Bill started with TCA saw the fall of the<br />

Berlin Wall, Evander Holyfield knock out Buster Douglas for the heavyweight boxing title, Britain<br />

and France complete the “Chunnel” under the English Channel, the Cincinnati Reds sweep the<br />

Oakland A’s in the World Series, and eventual Best Picture winner “Dances with Wolves” hold its<br />

premiere in Washington.<br />

A lot has changed in the nation’s capital since then, and in the trucking industry, but Bill has<br />

developed deep relationships with sponsors, hotel partners, speakers bureaus and production companies<br />

to make our various conferences appear seamless. Increased competition and technology<br />

dictate that attendees are looking for event experiences, and Bill’s job just got as tougher as he<br />

learned that he would be losing one of his valuable team members. Mackenzie Tolliver, our events<br />

coordinator, will be leaving TCA to pursue an MBA beginning with the fall semester.<br />

Mackenzie had become a recognizable face to many for more than five years. One of Mackenzie’s<br />

primary jobs was handling registration for all of our conferences, so she arguably had more<br />

contact with TCA members than anyone on our staff. Mackenzie will certainly be missed, but we<br />

wish her well and look forward to hearing about the great things she will do in the future.<br />

You can read more about how Bill will deal with these challenges by reading this issue’s Inside<br />

Out column, which was designed to give <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> readers a behind-the-scenes look at<br />

the people leading TCA.<br />

As Bill has demonstrated many times in his quarter-century of service, it is important to listen<br />

to the members we represent — so please continue to provide us with feedback for future issues<br />

of <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong>.<br />

Brad Bentley<br />

President<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association<br />

bbentley@truckload.org<br />

Brad Bentley<br />

PRESIDENT’S PICKS<br />

Laborious<br />

Keeping up with current labor laws can be<br />

challenging. We’ll help you stay on top of them.<br />

Page 14<br />

Inside Out Featuring Bill Giroux<br />

Get to know TCA Executive<br />

Vice President Bill Giroux.<br />

Page 38<br />

Look What We Are Up To This <strong>Fall</strong><br />

TCA is busy this <strong>Fall</strong>. Get up to<br />

date on the excitement.<br />

Page 42<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong>


<strong>Summer</strong>|<strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2015</strong><br />

555 E. Braddock Road, Alexandria, VA 22314<br />

<br />

www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org<br />

T h e r o a d m a p<br />

President’s Purview<br />

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same<br />

by Brad Bentley | 3<br />

LegisLative Look-in<br />

CSA, Take 2 | 6<br />

Capitol Recap | 10<br />

Laborious | 14<br />

nationaL news maker sponsored by The Trucker news org.<br />

Mister Monday Night with Coach Jon Gruden | 18<br />

tracking the trends sponsored by skybiTz<br />

Game Changer, Part IV - Identifying the Right Balance | 25<br />

You Can’t Park Here | 28<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong> Trendlines broughT To you by dAT | 31<br />

a chat with the chairman sponsored by McLeod sofTwAre<br />

Building More Value with Keith Tuttle | 32<br />

member maiLroom<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong> Academy | 37<br />

taLking tca<br />

Inside Out with Bill Giroux | 38<br />

Small Talk | 42<br />

Mark Your Calendar | 46<br />

REACHING TRUCKING’S<br />

TOP EXECUTIVES<br />

chairman of the board<br />

Keith Tuttle<br />

Founder & President, Motor Carrier Service, LLC.<br />

President<br />

Brad Bentley<br />

bbentley@truckload.org<br />

vice President – deveLoPment<br />

Debbie Sparks<br />

dsparks@truckload.org<br />

director of education<br />

Ron Goode<br />

rgoode@truckload.org<br />

second vice chair<br />

Daniel Doran<br />

President<br />

Ace Doran Hauling & Rigging<br />

secretary<br />

Aaron Tennant<br />

CEO & President<br />

Tennant Truck Lines, Inc.<br />

executive vice President<br />

William (Bill) Giroux<br />

wgiroux@truckload.org<br />

director, safety & PoLicy<br />

Dave Heller<br />

dheller@truckload.org<br />

first vice chair<br />

Russell Stubbs<br />

CEO & President, FFE Holdings Corp.<br />

treasurer<br />

Rob Penner<br />

Executive Vice President & COO<br />

Bison Transport<br />

immediate Past chair<br />

Shepard Dunn<br />

CEO & President<br />

Bestway Express, Inc.<br />

The viewpoints and opinions of those quoted in articles in this<br />

publication are not necessarily those of TCA.<br />

PubLisher + generaL mgr.<br />

Micah Jackson<br />

publisher@thetrucker.com<br />

administrator<br />

Leah M. Birdsong<br />

leahb@thetrucker.com<br />

Production + art director<br />

Rob Nelson<br />

robn@thetrucker.com<br />

Production + art assistant<br />

Zac Counts<br />

zac.counts@targetmediapartners.com<br />

In exclusive partnership with:<br />

1123 S. University Ave., Ste 320, Little Rock, AR 72204<br />

<br />

www.TheTrucker.com<br />

vice President<br />

Ed Leader<br />

edl@thetrucker.com<br />

editor<br />

Lyndon Finney<br />

editor@thetrucker.com<br />

associate editor<br />

Dorothy Cox<br />

dlcox@thetrucker.com<br />

sPeciaL corresPondent<br />

Cliff Abbott<br />

cliffa@thetrucker.com<br />

AdverTising And MArkeTing depArTMenT<br />

saLes director + creative director<br />

Raelee Toye Jackson<br />

raeleet@thetrucker.com<br />

TRUCKLOAD AUTHORIT Y IS<br />

UNSURPASSED.<br />

-ROBERT LOW, FOUNDER & CEO, PRIME INC.<br />

nationaL marketing consuLtant<br />

Kurtis Denton<br />

kurtisd@thetrucker.com<br />

nationaL marketing consuLtant<br />

Kelly Brooke Drier<br />

kellydr@thetrucker.com<br />

© <strong>2015</strong> Trucker Publications Inc., all rights reserved. Reproduction without written permission<br />

prohibited. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All advertisements<br />

and editorial materials are accepted and published by <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> and its exclusive partner,<br />

Trucker Publications, on the representation that the advertiser, its advertising company and/<br />

or the supplier of editorial materials are authorized to publish the entire contents and subject<br />

matter thereof. The publisher reserves the right to accept or reject any art from client. Such entities<br />

and/or their agents will defend, indemnify and hold <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong>, <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers<br />

Association, Target Media Partners, and its subsidiaries included, by not limited to, Trucker<br />

Publications Inc., harmless from and against any loss, expense, or other liability resulting from<br />

any claims or suits for libel, violations of privacy, plagiarism, copyright or trademark infringement<br />

and any other claims or suits that may rise out of publication of such advertisements and/or<br />

editorial materials. Press releases are expressly covered within the definition of editorial materials.<br />

T R U C K I N G’S<br />

M O S T E N T E R TA I N I N G<br />

E X E C U T I V E P U B L I C AT I O N<br />

Cover Photo courtesy of ESPN Images<br />

Additional magazine<br />

photography courtesy of:<br />

Associated Press: p. 22<br />

Bill Giroux: p. 40, 41<br />

ESPN Images: p. 18, 20, 24<br />

FotoSearch: p. 6, 8, 14, 26, 26, 37<br />

Love is Greater: p. 32, 33, 34, 36<br />

TCA: p. 39, 42, 43, 44, 45<br />

The Trucker News Org.: p. 14, 29<br />

4<br />

<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong><br />

<strong>Truckload</strong><br />

auThoriTy<br />

<strong>Authority</strong><br />

|<br />

| www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org<br />

www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org Tca<br />

TCA<br />

<strong>2015</strong><br />

<strong>2015</strong>


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SUMMER/<strong>Fall</strong> | TCA <strong>2015</strong><br />

Legislative Look-In<br />

If the trucking industry<br />

and the media who cover it<br />

have learned anything about<br />

the Federal Motor Carrier<br />

Safety Administration, it would<br />

be the agency’s coy nature<br />

on those occasions when it<br />

decides to slip a “Dear John”<br />

letter under the door and run.<br />

Case in point No. 1.<br />

Two days before Christmas 2010, the FMCSA released the longawaited<br />

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on an Hours of Service rule<br />

that set off a firestorm of protests that rages on almost five years<br />

later with no resolution in sight.<br />

By the time the agency issued a news release about the NPRM<br />

at around 10:20 a.m. Eastern time, most trucking stakeholders<br />

were already headed to the ski slopes, to the golf course in warmer<br />

climes, to grandma’s house or wherever.<br />

Trying to find a motor carrier executive for a comment was like<br />

trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.<br />

Case in point No. 2.<br />

The trucking media has become accustomed to receiving news<br />

releases that need more FMCSA explanation late, late in the<br />

afternoon, and often on Fridays, when agency officials are already<br />

headed to the Metro or parking garage.<br />

Now comes case in point No. 3.<br />

On June 29, the agency issued a Federal Register notice on<br />

a proposal for future enhancements to the Safety Measurement<br />

System (SMS), the daddy of Compliance, Safety, Accountability<br />

(CSA) and the granddaddy of Behavioral Analysis and Safety<br />

Improvement Categories (BASICs).<br />

Almost simultaneously, the agency posted on its website a<br />

nearly one-year-old report issued by an independent review team<br />

appointed by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to review the<br />

FMCSA’s oversight of the motor carrier industry.<br />

The year-old report is not an indictment of FMCSA’s practices. It<br />

criticizes, but does not condemn.<br />

It praises the FMCSA’s desire to improve safety, but acknowledges<br />

the agency doesn’t have the resources necessary to be as effective<br />

as it wants to be.<br />

The gist of the report: Stop<br />

worrying about making sure field<br />

investigators comply with predetermined<br />

procedures set forth<br />

in the field operations training<br />

manual and figure out a better<br />

way to align enforcement with<br />

risk. While the FMCSA is taking<br />

measures to improve the quality of<br />

its investigations, those investigations<br />

do not consistently result in cited violations that<br />

target the highest risk behaviors.<br />

Most sources believe the agency sat on the report while it<br />

did at least some of what the report recommended, and once it<br />

was ready to announce its proposal for future enhancements, the<br />

FMCSA said, “Look at what we’ve done: We’ve changed some of<br />

the SMS intervention thresholds to better predict crash risk, looked<br />

at how we could make more efficient use of field enforcement<br />

resources, determined ways to make on-site compliance reviews<br />

more effective and come up with measures to incent carrier-based,<br />

non-regulatory safety initiatives.”<br />

Asked why the report had been withheld, Duane DeBruyne, a<br />

spokesman for FMCSA said, “A number of the recommendations<br />

were initiated before or during the work of the Independent Review<br />

Team. For transparency and to provide as full and complete a<br />

picture as possible, further continual improvement steps initiated<br />

or implemented in the preceding time have been included.”<br />

All fine and good, said <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association Director<br />

of Safety and Policy Dave Heller, but the fact of the matter is that<br />

the Independent Review Team’s report and the FMCSA’s response<br />

are nothing new.<br />

“It’s basically a regurgitation of things we’ve been talking about<br />

for years,” Heller said.<br />

Among the report’s nuggets:<br />

• Additional expectations placed on FMCSA investigators to<br />

perform better investigations or cite more appropriate violations<br />

will likely generate negative results unless the underlying dynamics<br />

are addressed.<br />

• While the FMCSA has a system for prioritizing its field<br />

resources for use against a group of high-risk carriers, it does not<br />

have a system that actively manages that risk once it has<br />

been identified.<br />

• The CSA program has ignited a<br />

debate across the industry<br />

regarding the<br />

appropriate<br />

use<br />

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of safety data. If this debate is not refocused, it will stall the<br />

adoption of safety practices that are needed by the industry and<br />

expected by the public.<br />

• FMCSA has sought, and been granted, additional enforcement<br />

authorities. However, the agency needs to further improve its<br />

enforcement policies and procedures to take better advantage of<br />

these authorities.<br />

• In an effort to achieve consistency across the field, FMCSA<br />

relies heavily on prescriptive rules and procedures to control<br />

behavior instead of a balanced approach that permits greater use<br />

of field-level discretion and uses a quality assurance approach to<br />

examine, after-the-fact, judgments made and actions taken.<br />

• There is much that FMCSA needs to do. They want to do it.<br />

They need to be allowed the freedom and time to do it.<br />

SMS and CSA have been very good for the industry in one<br />

respect, Heller said.<br />

“The members of our<br />

association will tell you<br />

almost single-handedly<br />

that CSA in theory is a good<br />

thing. It’s putting safety<br />

on the tongues and in the<br />

mouths of every carrier<br />

and department within<br />

the carrier’s operating<br />

entity; it puts safety at<br />

the forefront,” he said.<br />

“Carriers are practicing<br />

what they preach in terms<br />

of safety more than ever<br />

before. It’s always been<br />

at the forefront, but now<br />

everybody is talking about<br />

it. Which is good because<br />

it’s pretty much changed<br />

the safety culture in the<br />

entire trucking industry.”<br />

But, Heller quickly<br />

added, “That being said, it<br />

does have to be done right.<br />

Effectively not having a program in place that accurately reflects<br />

carriers and how they operate is wrong. Carriers don’t have a<br />

problem being judged, they just want to be judged correctly.”<br />

Which brings us once again to the last word of the CSA triune:<br />

accountability.<br />

First and foremost, being judged correctly means taking<br />

accidents for which carriers are not responsible off CSA.<br />

“Every carrier has stories of accidents that are being held<br />

against them whether it’s a drunk driver that hits a parked vehicle<br />

that results in a fatality or whatever,” he said. “It’s held against<br />

the carrier because it is DOT reportable. It’s not a right way of<br />

doing business and carriers are being judged on this.”<br />

The FMCSA believes the changes to SMS that it is proposing<br />

will do what the report asks: better align enforcement and risk.<br />

To that end, the agency is proposing to maintain thresholds<br />

on BASICs that it has determined have the highest crash risk<br />

— Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, HOS Compliance. And it<br />

proposes to lower the threshold on Vehicle Maintenance and raise<br />

the threshold on those that have lower risk factors — Controlled<br />

Substances/Alcohol, Hazmat Compliance and Driver Fitness.<br />

Lowering the Vehicle Maintenance threshold will identify a<br />

new set of motor carriers to receive warning letters so that those<br />

carriers may address compliance issues before crashes occur.<br />

Of course, all this is contingent on the carrier having a BASIC<br />

score.<br />

After all, 90.6 percent of the nation’s some 500,000 motor<br />

carriers operate six or fewer trucks and 97.3 percent of carriers<br />

operate fleets of 20 or fewer trucks.<br />

So it suffices to say that a vast number of that 90.6 percent<br />

have not been subjected to any type of inspection and based<br />

The CSA program has ignited a debate across<br />

the industry regarding the appropriate<br />

use of safety data. If this debate is not<br />

refocused, it will stall the adoption of<br />

safety practices that are needed by the<br />

industry and expected by the public.<br />

on the FMCSA’s current inspection patterns, are flying under the<br />

radar.<br />

It should be noted that TCA’s carrier members represent the<br />

“safe” carriers on the nation’s highways, Heller said.<br />

“They epitomize the ‘low risk’ carriers because they are doing<br />

everything to improve their safety bottom line, which is reducing<br />

their accident frequency, educating their staff and driving force<br />

and continually taking part in best practices that are offered<br />

industrywide,” he said. “Perhaps the agency needs to place<br />

the focus on these carriers and emphasize what we do right, so<br />

that our ‘high risk’ (many of that 90.6 percent) carriers that are<br />

operating on our roadways will follow the path that TCA members<br />

have forged.”<br />

Heller admitted that FMCSA is in the unenviable position of<br />

trying to enforce a rule among 500,000 carriers and “they just<br />

don’t have the manpower.” He cited the fact that TCA members<br />

just want to be treated<br />

fairly. “While they were<br />

going down the road<br />

saying ‘we have to do<br />

more with less’ it’s almost<br />

an impossible task at<br />

this point. They haven’t<br />

reached out and touched<br />

every carrier because quite<br />

frankly not every carrier is<br />

being inspected. The larger<br />

ones (including many TCA<br />

member carriers) obviously<br />

are the low hanging fruit.<br />

You see them everywhere.<br />

What about the smaller<br />

carriers that are either<br />

(a) not getting selected<br />

just by virtue of their<br />

operation or (b) there are<br />

some bad apples which<br />

may be dodging the weigh<br />

stations?”<br />

And where the agency<br />

does have field resources, they are not necessarily placed where<br />

there is the greatest proportion of risk, one truck executive<br />

said.<br />

For instance, he noted, the agency admitted that in the case<br />

of Florida, there were some compliance cases that went months<br />

upon months before the FMCSA had the resources to investigate<br />

them.<br />

While acknowledging that the FMCSA wants to improve the<br />

SMS process, at least until the agency gets it right, BASIC scores<br />

should not be public, Heller concluded.<br />

“They should pull every BASIC score from public view,” he<br />

said. “There should be an internal working group because it is<br />

internal data they are representing, data they use to determine<br />

a compliance review, if you will. And they shouldn’t put it back in<br />

public form until they are able to get it right.”<br />

Trucking has been telling them what is wrong with CSA for years,<br />

Heller noted. “Bring the industry in. Give them (industry leaders)<br />

a seat at the table and make the industry partially accountable for<br />

what CSA can morph into. Like I said, our carrier members don’t<br />

have a problem being judged. They just want to make sure they are<br />

being judged the right way. And what is the right way? Leave that<br />

up to the guys who do the driving and practice safety 365 days a<br />

year. Let those guys dictate it. Let those guys tell them ‘hey, … above<br />

anything else, and I think ELDs have taught us this … this industry<br />

wants a level playing field.’ What’s good for them, they want to be<br />

good for their neighbor, and everybody wants to be treated fairly and<br />

treated the same.”<br />

Only time will tell if the SMS and CSA changes FMCSA is proposing<br />

will become a reality and whether equal treatment will become a<br />

reality.<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


CapItol recap<br />

A review of important news coming out of our nation’s capital.<br />

By Lyndon Finney and Dorothy Cox<br />

HIGHWAY<br />

bILL<br />

We’d hoped to be able to fill you in on the<br />

details of a shiny new, smooth-riding, six-year<br />

transportation bill in this issue of <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong>,<br />

but that’ll have to wait until the next issue, or<br />

the next, or the next, or …<br />

Well, who knows how many issues that will be.<br />

Instead we must report what’s been reported<br />

in the media over 30 times this century — another<br />

extension to provide infrastructure funding past<br />

the July 31 deadline set forth in the most recent<br />

extension.<br />

This time Congress says it needs three months<br />

to finish that long-term bill, and unlike several previous<br />

times before when an extension has been<br />

voted, the Senate actually did put pen and paper to<br />

a six-year plan, but could only find money enough<br />

for three years of funding.<br />

That action set up discussions with the House<br />

this fall on what the future course of transportation<br />

policy should be and how to pay for the programs<br />

through an underfunded Highway Trust Fund.<br />

Lawmakers say the three-month patch — the<br />

34th such extension since 2009 — will be the last,<br />

but we’ve heard that refrain before, over and over<br />

again.<br />

The extension provides $8 billion to shore up<br />

the trust fund through mid-December. The fund’s<br />

balance was forecast to drop below a $4 billion<br />

cushion necessary to prevent disruptions in payments<br />

to states in early August.<br />

President Barack Obama signed the extension<br />

into law with this caveat: the U.S. government, he<br />

said, can’t keep funding highway and transit projects<br />

“by the seat of our pants.”<br />

Obama said that while it’s good news projects<br />

will continue to be funded, Congress needs to stop<br />

leaving business until the last minute. He says<br />

that’s not how countries like China or Germany<br />

operate, both of which rank higher than the U.S. in<br />

terms of the quality of the infrastructure, according<br />

to Internet sources.<br />

The $350 billion long-term bill, approved by<br />

vote of 65 to 34 in the Senate, would make changes<br />

to highway, transit, railroad and auto safety programs.<br />

However, its sponsors were only able to find<br />

enough money to pay for the first three years of the<br />

six-year bill. That’s not as long as many lawmakers<br />

and the White House wanted, nor as much money,<br />

but it was enough to win the support of many state<br />

and local officials, transportation-related industries,<br />

and labor unions who have been imploring Congress<br />

for years to pass a bill that will provide states<br />

the certainty that they can count on federal aid as<br />

they plan major construction projects.<br />

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-<br />

Ky., tried to persuade the House to delay a planned<br />

recess just before the July 31 deadline in order to<br />

take up the Senate’s long-term bill, but GOP leaders<br />

there opted for the short-term patch in order to<br />

give themselves time to craft a long-term bill that<br />

reflects their priorities.<br />

The long-term transportation bill shores up<br />

the federal Highway Trust Fund for three years by<br />

using about $45 billion in revenue increases and<br />

making spending cuts elsewhere in the federal<br />

budget. The largest source of funds is $16 billion<br />

that would be saved by reducing the dividend rate<br />

the government pays to large banks.<br />

The Senate bill also contains language that<br />

would hide from public view all CSA scores and<br />

would permit CDL holders under 21 to run some<br />

interstate routes.<br />

Meanwhile, other trucking-related issues are<br />

contained in active legislation on Capitol Hill.<br />

The FY2016 Transportation, Housing and<br />

Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bills<br />

in the House and Senate both contain legislation<br />

authorizing 33-foot twin trailers on U.S. highways<br />

(see detailed article this section).<br />

The full House has passed its bill; the Senate<br />

bill as approved by the Senate Appropriations<br />

Committee awaits action by the full chamber.<br />

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., vigorously opposed<br />

the 33-foot trailer rider when it was added<br />

to the Senate bill by a 16-14 vote, and she and<br />

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., sought to derail that<br />

proposal by adding to the six-year bill language<br />

that would require the Department of Transportation<br />

to complete a comprehensive safety study and<br />

go through a formal rulemaking process with public<br />

notice and comment period before longer trucks<br />

are permitted on highways.<br />

The amendment was not included in the final<br />

bill.<br />

Both appropriations bills also contain language<br />

that would require the Office of the Inspector<br />

General of the Department of Transportation and<br />

the Secretary of Transportation to determine if<br />

the well-documented 34-hour restart study met<br />

the statutory requirements set forth by Congress,<br />

and determine if commercial motor vehicle drivers<br />

who operated under the restart provisions in effect<br />

between July 1, 2013, and the day before the date<br />

of enactment of the new provision demonstrated<br />

statistically significant improvement in all outcomes<br />

related to safety, operator fatigue, driver health<br />

and longevity, and work schedules, in comparison<br />

to commercial motor vehicle drivers who operated<br />

under the restart provisions in effect on June 30,<br />

2013.<br />

RESTART study<br />

If silence is golden, the Federal Motor Carrier<br />

Safety Administration might be rich enough to pay<br />

off the national debt, at least when it comes to<br />

being transparent about the 34-hour restart study<br />

that might or might not seal the fate of the 34-hour<br />

restart rule that became effective July 1, 2013. You<br />

may remember that one was suspended on the<br />

order of Congress, which ordered the agency to<br />

conduct a field study to see whether the suspended<br />

rule had improved safety and failed to curtail<br />

productivity.<br />

Since the study began earlier this year, other<br />

than still pleading for drivers to participate two<br />

months after recruiting began, the FMCSA has<br />

been silent except for a brief statement that said<br />

basically, the study was going as planned. “The<br />

restart study is continuing as designed, spokesman<br />

Duane DeBruyne said. “Participating drivers<br />

are providing data that will be carefully analyzed by<br />

the study team and peer-reviewed by an independent<br />

panel of experts. The project’s final report is<br />

scheduled for completion by the end of the year.”<br />

More on the peer review phase later, but the<br />

current study is the second undertaken by the<br />

FMCSA since the now-suspended rule went into<br />

effect in 2013.<br />

Congress told the FMCSA to, not later than<br />

March 31, 2013, complete a field study on the efficacy<br />

of the new provision and mandated a field<br />

study to expand on the results of a laboratorybased<br />

study on commercial driver fatigue. It was<br />

10 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


that lab study that formed much of the basis of<br />

FMCSA’s reasoning for the new, more-restrictive<br />

restart provision, and it was a study much maligned<br />

by the trucking industry for being conducted<br />

in a laboratory rather than in the real world of<br />

congested highways, a parking shortage and often<br />

uncooperative shippers and receivers.<br />

In fact, so loud was trucking’s outcry, less than<br />

three months after the final rule was announced,<br />

Congress included a provision in MAP-21 requiring<br />

the agency to complete the field study. FMCSA<br />

missed the completion deadline by about 10<br />

months.<br />

The provision contained a phrase that said the<br />

data collected should be representative of the drivers<br />

and motor carriers regulated by HOS, including<br />

those affected by the maximum driving time<br />

requirements.<br />

To no one’s surprise, when the field study was<br />

released in January 2014, FMCSA said the realworld,<br />

third-party study provided further scientific<br />

evidence that the restart provision in the 2013 rule<br />

was more effective at combating fatigue than the<br />

prior version.<br />

A report on the study conducted by the Washington<br />

State University Sleep and Performance<br />

Research Center and Philadelphia-based Pulsar<br />

Informatics, said scientists measured sleep, reaction<br />

time, sleepiness and driving performance in<br />

the study. They found that drivers who begin their<br />

work week with just one nighttime period of rest, as<br />

compared to the two nights in the updated 34-hour<br />

restart break:<br />

• Exhibited more lapses of attention, especially<br />

at night;<br />

• Reported greater sleepiness, especially toward<br />

the end of their duty periods; and<br />

• Showed increased lane deviation in the morning,<br />

afternoon and at night.<br />

“This new study confirms the science we used<br />

to make the HOS rule more effective at preventing<br />

crashes that involve sleepy or drowsy truck<br />

drivers,” said then FMCSA Administrator Anne S.<br />

Ferro. “For the small percentage of truckers that<br />

average up to 70 hours of work a week, two nights<br />

of rest is better for their safety and the safety of<br />

everyone on the road.”<br />

Foul, cried trucking. “You call this a representative<br />

study when it followed 44 local drivers, 26 regional<br />

drivers, and only 36 over-the-road drivers?”<br />

Most likely, trucking pundits said, none of the 44<br />

local drivers and a majority of the regional drivers<br />

never had occasion to even use the restart.<br />

All year long, the battle between trucking and<br />

FMCSA over the more restrictive restart provision<br />

continued, with trucking pleading for a revision and<br />

Ferro and the agency standing firm.<br />

So trucking turned to Congress, which through<br />

the aforementioned appropriations bill, suspended<br />

the rule and ordered the new study.<br />

Immediately the industry took steps to make<br />

sure this study was more representative of the drivers<br />

who utilized the restart.<br />

In a letter to leadership of the House Appropriations<br />

Committee in May, more than 100 transportation-related<br />

organizations, including the <strong>Truckload</strong><br />

Carriers Association, asked as the committee<br />

wrote the FY2016 Transportation and Housing and<br />

Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations bill<br />

that it take steps to ensure the new field study was<br />

more representative of the industry than the study<br />

released in January 2014.<br />

In a letter to Transportation Secretary Anthony<br />

Foxx, Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., did the same.<br />

On the surface, it appears FMCSA is doing just<br />

that.<br />

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which<br />

is conducting the $4 million study, said it was looking<br />

for 250 drivers who use the restart rule.<br />

Those drivers will be paid $2,000.<br />

Congress apparently listened to trucking stakeholders<br />

and Hanna as the FY2016 THUD bill contains<br />

an amendment that requires the Office of the<br />

Inspector General of the DOT and the Secretary<br />

of Transportation to determine if the study met the<br />

statutory requirements set forth by Congress. It<br />

also asked them to determine if commercial motor<br />

vehicle drivers who operated under the restart provisions<br />

in effect between July 1, 2013, and the day<br />

before the date of enactment of the new provision,<br />

demonstrated statistically significant improvement<br />

in all outcomes related to safety, operator fatigue,<br />

driver health and longevity, and work schedules,<br />

compared with commercial motor vehicle drivers<br />

who operated under the restart provisions in effect<br />

on June 30, 2013.<br />

In other words, FMCSA, we are not just going<br />

to take your word for it. That will only further delay<br />

any conversation and the silence will continue.<br />

There’s a good chance the next sound we hear<br />

out of the agency about the restart study is the<br />

door closing as the current administration leaves<br />

Washington.<br />

It’s an issue that with some exceptions has<br />

pretty much divided the trucking community — 15<br />

truckload carriers on one side, less-than-truckload<br />

on the other — while it has solid opposition from<br />

safety advocates and the White House.<br />

The public debate about the use of longer<br />

tandem trailers visibly surfaced in February 2014<br />

when FedEx Ground President and CEO Henry<br />

Maier told the House Transportation and Infrastructure<br />

Committee that increasing the national standard<br />

for twin trailers to 33 feet would allow carriers<br />

to absorb up to 18 percent of future freight growth<br />

without any change in gross vehicle weight or additional<br />

miles traveled on roadways.<br />

Maier said the projected benefits of allowing<br />

33-foot twins were based on data supplied not only<br />

by FedEx, but also ABF System, Con-way Freight,<br />

Estes Express, Old Dominion Freight Line, UPS<br />

and YRC Worldwide.<br />

It took almost 18 months, but supporters of the<br />

longer trailer finally convinced the House to include<br />

in the FY2016 Department of Transportation and<br />

Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill language<br />

allowing up to 33-foot tandem trailers.<br />

The issue has now moved to the other end of<br />

the Capitol where the Senate Appropriations Committee<br />

by a 16-14 vote included the provision in the<br />

Senate’s version of THUD.<br />

That vote came in spite of the plea of 15 truckload<br />

carriers who on June 10 sent a letter to the<br />

committee saying allowing the use of twin 33-foot<br />

trailers would have a negative impact on highway<br />

safety, accelerate wear and tear on the nation’s<br />

highway system, and make it very difficult for small<br />

trucking companies to compete.<br />

A spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration,<br />

however, says the issue of wear and tear of<br />

highways is moot.<br />

The FHWA believes the impact of 33-foot trailers<br />

would be no worse than 28-foot trailers.<br />

The letter was signed by executives from Celadon<br />

Trucking, Central Transport, Covenant Transport,<br />

Crete Carrier, Dupré Logistics, Gordon Trucking,<br />

Heartland Express, J.B. Hunt Transport, KLLM<br />

Transport, Knight Transportation, PITT OHIO, May<br />

Trucking, Swift Transportation, PAM Transport and<br />

USA Truck.<br />

Other carriers and associations, including TCA,<br />

are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward twin 33s.<br />

Logically, the strongest support comes from<br />

less-than-truckload carriers, including one that has<br />

a strong truckload division.<br />

“Con-way is 100 percent supportive of this and<br />

we consider ourselves one of the leaders in the<br />

effort to get this change made,” said Randy Mullett,<br />

vice president, government relations and public<br />

affairs at Con-way Inc., which operates LTL cartwin<br />

33s<br />

As if the debate over the 34-hour restart study,<br />

the pending issuance of the final rule on electronic<br />

logging, the driver shortage, driver pay, entry-level<br />

driver training and speed limiters (to name only a<br />

few) isn’t enough, along comes the idea of allowing<br />

twin 33-foot trailers on the nation’s highways.<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 11


ier Con-way Freight and Con-way <strong>Truckload</strong>. “We<br />

are doing a great job with our advocacy efforts in<br />

Washington. We’re partnered with virtually every<br />

other LTL and package goods carrier in the country<br />

as part of our coalition — UPS and FedEx and Old<br />

Dominion Freight Line, Yellow, ABF Freight, Estes<br />

and SAIA. It’s a ‘Who’s Who’ of carriers in that LTL<br />

and package space.”<br />

Strong opposition comes from the safety community.<br />

Joan Claybrook, co-chair of the safety advocacy<br />

group, staked out the group’s position in testimony<br />

last year before the Senate Subcommittee on<br />

Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure,<br />

Safety and Security.<br />

“I would like to state our firm opposition to<br />

any proposals which would dramatically overturn<br />

existing national freight policy by forcing states to<br />

allow 33-foot trailers resulting in longer and more<br />

dangerous double or tandem rigs exceeding 85<br />

feet in length, or three trailers exceeding 115 feet<br />

in length,” she said.<br />

Longer trucks are inherently more dangerous to<br />

passenger cars, said Claybrook, who headed the<br />

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration during<br />

the Carter administration.<br />

“The sheer size of these longer trailers — which<br />

adds at least 10 feet to the length of current double<br />

or tandem rigs — has far reaching and significant<br />

implications for the safe use of highways, bridges<br />

and ramps.”<br />

But perhaps the strongest opposition comes<br />

from the man who has the final say, at least while<br />

his administration is in power — President Barack<br />

Obama, who says he will veto the bill if it comes to<br />

him in its present form.<br />

“The administration strongly opposes the passage<br />

of H.R. 2577,” the White House said. “The bill<br />

freezes or cuts critical investment in transportation<br />

that creates jobs, helps to grow the economy, and<br />

improves America’s roads, bridges, transit infrastructure<br />

and aviation systems, benefiting towns<br />

and cities across the United States, as well as<br />

investments in ending homelessness, strengthening<br />

communities and providing rental housing assistance<br />

for poor and vulnerable families.”<br />

Among the lengthy list of administration objections<br />

to the bill were sections on highway and motor<br />

carrier safety.<br />

Specifically, the White House was referring to<br />

sections of the bill that would allow longer combination<br />

trucks (up to twin 33s) and would prohibit<br />

the administration from using federal dollars to<br />

enforce the 34-hour restart rule that was implemented<br />

July 1, 2013, but suspended by Congress<br />

late last year.<br />

Stay tuned.<br />

financing<br />

infrastructure<br />

If you press them, the 2016 presidential candidates<br />

might agree — with some prodding — that<br />

yes, trucking is important to the nation’s economy,<br />

even paramount.<br />

But if you want to hear their strategy for funding<br />

a fix for the country’s crumbling, congested infrastructure,<br />

good luck. The silence is deafening.<br />

If, on the other hand, you want suggestions on<br />

a fix from Congress, truck drivers, other trucking<br />

stakeholders, the Obama administration in addition<br />

to various and sundry other groups, there’s a<br />

deafening roar. And it would be a contentious roar<br />

at that — with everyone disagreeing over the best<br />

solution.<br />

Finally, a short-term “patch” was agreed upon in<br />

Congress, with both houses hoping this fall to work<br />

out a longer-term solution.<br />

Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation<br />

in its recent report “Beyond Traffic,” said that, “If we<br />

don’t change, in 2045 the transportation system<br />

that powered our rise as a nation will instead slow<br />

us down.”<br />

Researchers say it’s already doing just that, and<br />

anyone who has been stuck in traffic with a load of<br />

cargo or a load of kids, knows it’s only too true.<br />

It’s estimated that the average American<br />

spends 38 hours a year stuck in traffic, according<br />

to the Harvard Business Review, which was quoting<br />

research amassed by the Harvard School of<br />

Public Health. That amounts to 5.5 billion hours in<br />

lost U.S. productivity annually and reported pollution<br />

costs of an estimated $15 billion a year.<br />

Of course, the big stumbling block is funding,<br />

something few pundits and politicians can agree on<br />

as evidenced above.<br />

Trucking has said a fuel tax increase is the fairest<br />

way to go, while critics say that still won’t bring<br />

in enough money to shore up the Highway Trust<br />

Fund and keep it shored up.<br />

Most Washington politicians are afraid to mention<br />

the word “tax” for fear their constituents will not<br />

re-elect them (and probably for good reason), and<br />

although not for want of trying, trucking interests<br />

have been unable to budge Congress off its current<br />

“no tax” stance.<br />

Locally, it’s different story.<br />

Major cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta, for<br />

example, have achieved funding hefty infrastructure<br />

changes, L.A. through a sales tax voters<br />

passed in 2008 and Atlanta through an $834 million<br />

interstate toll-lane project.<br />

Professional truck drivers consistently list Atlanta<br />

as one of worst congestion metropolitan areas<br />

regardless of the time of day.<br />

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that<br />

the initial phase in Cobb and Cherokee counties<br />

is on schedule for completion by summer 2018.<br />

The Northwest Corridor design includes 30 miles<br />

of new express roadways along Interstates 75 and<br />

575, with 39 bridges. One bridge is 10 stories tall.<br />

Reversible lanes will allow traffic to flow into the<br />

metro core during the morning and out to the suburbs<br />

during the evening commute.<br />

L.A.’s project is to the tune of $14 billion and will<br />

finance new freeway lanes and a mammoth public<br />

works project.<br />

No doubt talk of tolls sets many truckers’ teeth<br />

on edge. But the infrastructure is getting built.<br />

A new Reason Foundation study says truckers<br />

should embrace the use of tolling to finance<br />

the reconstruction and modernization of interstate<br />

highways and describes how all-electronic tolling<br />

“can solve the industry’s previous privacy and logistical<br />

concerns about toll roads,” and proposes a<br />

set of rules “to ensure that the tolls paid by truckers<br />

and motorists are used only to rebuild and widen<br />

the newly tolled interstate corridors.”<br />

The report outlines federal and state legislation<br />

that the Foundation says could eliminate the trucking<br />

industry’s previous objections to tolling. Truckers,<br />

it stated, would be “guaranteed” that:<br />

• Toll rates for the reconstructed interstates<br />

would be set to cover only the capital and operating<br />

costs of the tolled infrastructure;<br />

• Tolling of existing interstate routes would<br />

not begin until that section of highway had<br />

already been reconstructed and re-opened to<br />

traffic;<br />

• Tolls would replace current state gas taxes on<br />

interstates, to avoid double taxation;<br />

• And toll revenues would only be spent on<br />

rebuilding, widening, and maintaining the tolled<br />

highways.<br />

“The trucking industry has the most at stake in<br />

ensuring a solid future for the Interstate highway<br />

system,” said Robert Poole, director of transportation<br />

policy at the Reason Foundation. “But truckers<br />

have been wary of toll roads because they<br />

fear, rightly so, that any new interstate tolling will<br />

turn those highways into cash cows for states,<br />

with that money being diverted to other projects,<br />

not to the highways used by trucks. However, with<br />

full use of today’s electronic tolling technology,<br />

plus strong legal highway user protections, tollfinanced<br />

interstate modernization would be an<br />

attractive value proposition for truckers and other<br />

highway users.”<br />

TCA Director of Safety and Policy Dave Heller<br />

begs to differ.<br />

12 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


J. J. KELLER’S ELD INSIGHTS<br />

“Long thought of as the antithesis of a fuel tax, tolling is one of the truest<br />

forms of actual road usage fees,” Heller said, “and can exist in forms that represent<br />

High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV) or overall tolls for a roadway. Yet the<br />

administration fees remain extremely high as dollars are often lost in paying<br />

salaries and benefits to toll workers and other administrative employees, even on<br />

electronic pass systems.<br />

“Double taxation represents another hurdle as cars and trucks will end up<br />

paying both a fuel tax and a toll for traveling on the same roadways to say<br />

nothing of the diversion that often accompanies toll roads. Truck and automobile<br />

traffic will often circumvent the tolls by traveling on roads that were not<br />

developed to handle that kind of traffic, thus creating a need to put more dollars<br />

into the secondary roads as well.”<br />

The Obama administration has its own answer: the president’s six-year<br />

GROW AMERICA Act proposal, while critics say its funding mechanism isn’t<br />

sufficient.<br />

The Act offers a one-time, 14 percent “transition tax” on foreign corporate<br />

earnings, but will any of those earnings be brought back to the U.S. under the<br />

circumstances? Not only that, but “one time” means this mechanism won’t continue<br />

to generate highway funds.<br />

Moreover, it’s estimated that less than two thirds, or $317 billion worth of<br />

funding, is earmarked for “highway system and road safety.” Many fear that as<br />

in the past, funds earmarked for transportation will be siphoned off to pet political<br />

projects.<br />

As former governor of Arkansas, a state that has been known for notoriously<br />

bad roads, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> in<br />

the <strong>Fall</strong> 2013 issue that he knows truckers are the safest drivers on the road<br />

and carry the goods American can’t do without. Most people, he said, don’t<br />

understand that and need to say, “thank God for those truckers.”<br />

And although he didn’t speak to trucking and truckers specifically, or to<br />

roads, presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson noted in his interview with <strong>Truckload</strong><br />

<strong>Authority</strong> in the fall of 2014 that those interested in the welfare of the<br />

country need to ask the question, “Why in the economic freedom index has the<br />

United States dropped from No. 1 to No. 12?”<br />

Recently-announced candidate Donald Trump goes further by pointing a<br />

finger at the many U.S. businesses allowed to build their plants overseas, not<br />

only taking jobs but selling their products back to the country tax free.<br />

His answer would be to induce businesses to come back to the U.S. by<br />

charging a 35 percent tax on every part, product and vehicle that comes back<br />

across the border.<br />

Trump bluntly says he would rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, maintaining<br />

that the U.S. in its financial dealings is helping rebuild China. “We’re rebuilding<br />

China … They have bridges that make the George Washington Bridge look like<br />

small potatoes.”<br />

In announcing his candidacy Trump said one of his tenets would be to “rebuild<br />

the country’s infrastructure,” adding rather immodestly that “nobody can<br />

do that like me. … I look at the roads being built all over the country and I say I<br />

can build those things for one-third” the cost.<br />

Meanwhile, the infrastructure continues to crumble, as those in trucking<br />

well know.<br />

It has often been quoted that when the pain gets bad enough, people will<br />

support change, but Rosabeth Kanter, writing in the Harvard Business Review,<br />

said in reference to the infrastructure issue that “I’m not sure that’s enough.<br />

Change requires a vision of the future sufficiently compelling that people will<br />

overcome inertia and support investment. Change requires an awareness of<br />

common fate, that everyone shares a piece of the suffering but can benefit<br />

from contributing to improvements.”<br />

Or as a recent political observer stated: “Everybody wants better roads but<br />

nobody wants to pay for it.”<br />

ELDs and the Early Adopters<br />

Fleets exist for one reason, and that’s to transport goods via the highway.<br />

However, tasks like collecting and organizing paper logs, auditing them, and<br />

preventing investigations can be difficult for many fleets if they don’t have the<br />

expertise on staff.<br />

To help meet those constant challenges, private fleets in particular have<br />

become early adopters of onboard technology, including electronic logging<br />

devices (ELDs), and have experienced a variety of benefits, such as:<br />

Compliance<br />

Most ELD systems can guide employees to make sound operational<br />

decisions in situations in which compliance must be considered. Without<br />

having to reference the rules and regulations, an employee can easily<br />

determine which drivers have hours available to meet the present need.<br />

Automatic Auditing<br />

Driver logs are automatically audited when they are received by some<br />

ELD systems. This allows fleets to go without log auditors, which is a specialized<br />

compliance-based position. Back-office reports identify violations<br />

for fleet management, who can then take corrective action with drivers in a<br />

timely manner.<br />

Driver Performance<br />

Most ELD systems track driving behaviors as well as the driver’s Hours of<br />

Service. A few examples are tracking speed and hard braking incidents. Using<br />

an ELD system provides fleets with the information necessary to ensure that<br />

the fleet operates safely, in compliance and in a way that presents a positive<br />

image of the company.<br />

Investigation Prevention<br />

An ELD system can also reduce the odds of being investigated. According to a<br />

study done by the FMCSA, carriers that switched to electronic logging systems<br />

saw a drop of roughly 50 percent in both non-driving Hours-of-Service<br />

violations and driving-related Hours-of-Service violations.<br />

The reason for this improvement is that violations such as “form and manner”<br />

and “log not current” all but disappear when a carrier switches to ELDs.<br />

And, since most reputable ELD systems provide a warning when a driver is<br />

approaching a limit, the most common violations also drop significantly.<br />

Conclusion<br />

When you consider that private fleets — which were the early adopters of ELD<br />

technology — have safety performance results three times better than the<br />

trucking industry at large according to the FMCSA, it’s easy to see how the<br />

early adoption of ELDS can pay off for all fleets.<br />

To learn more about the J. J. Keller® Encompass® E-Log<br />

system, see the ad in this publication or visit JJKellerELogs.com.<br />

with E-Logs<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 13


Laborious<br />

By Lyndon Finney<br />

You’re sitting in your office one afternoon and one of your associates rushes in waving a<br />

smartphone in their hand.<br />

“Look what so-and-so said about their salary, about you and about what a terrible company<br />

this is,” the associate says.<br />

You read the Facebook post and indeed, it is very negative toward you and your company.<br />

Below the post, three other employees have clicked the “like” button.<br />

You hand the phone back to your associate and say: “Fire them all.”<br />

But wait just a second …<br />

Your company’s orientation process lasts for three days.<br />

You’re bringing in 100 candidates this month.<br />

Most of the 100 filled out an application online, your recruiter reviews the application,<br />

determines if the candidate is qualified and invites the applicant to orientation. The applicant<br />

shows up, fills out a bundle of paperwork, takes the required medical and drug tests, receives<br />

a company handbook, and over three days spends 24 hours in the classroom, and finally you<br />

hire the applicant.<br />

But other than the money for the bus ticket to your location, you didn’t pay the applicant<br />

a dime for orientation.<br />

But wait just a second …<br />

One of your employees, a freight dispatcher, is permitted to work from home based on<br />

good performance.<br />

But performance issues later occur and the employee is directed to no longer work from<br />

home.<br />

When you issued that order, the employee disclosed an anxiety issue and requested accommodation<br />

of working from home.<br />

You said no, and one month later fire the employee for “not following policy.”<br />

But wait just a second …<br />

“Someone said to me I scared the hell out of them in my presentation yesterday,” Eddie<br />

Wayland, the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Associations’ general counsel and a partner in the Nashville,<br />

Tennessee, law firm King & Bellow, said as he opened his second presentation on “Hot Legal<br />

Topics You Can’t Afford to Ignore” at the <strong>2015</strong> TCA annual convention in Kissimmee, Florida,<br />

earlier this year. “That’s not what I intended to do. Harry Truman once said, ‘I don’t give them<br />

hell, I simply tell them the facts and they think it’s hell.’”<br />

Hell or not, the fact of the matter is that in these days, motor carriers had best be keen<br />

about legal issues, especially those involving human resources, or there will be hell to pay.<br />

Some of that comes from the National Labor Relations Board.<br />

“The NLRB is doing 20 percent of the work they used to do with respect to unions and they<br />

have received a 98 percent budget increase,” Wayland said, noting that unionization hit its<br />

14 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


On a Sidenote ...<br />

Salary and overtime proposal<br />

If you have salaried employees making less than<br />

$50,400 annually, and most motor carriers will fall<br />

into that category, take note.<br />

The Department of Labor on July 5 issued a Notice<br />

of Proposed Rulemaking that would more than double<br />

the threshold at which a salaried or non-hourly<br />

worker is ineligible for overtime pay from the current<br />

$23,660 a year to $50,440.<br />

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and White House<br />

Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz called<br />

the plan a long-overdue update to the Fair Labor<br />

Standards Act that will improve quality of life and<br />

economic security for middle-class managers.<br />

“Today’s system all too frequently allows employers<br />

to violate one of the basic pillars of the Fair Labor<br />

Standards Act, to reward hard work with a fair wage<br />

and to ensure that people who work extra get paid<br />

extra,” Perez said.<br />

Not only would the rulemaking raise the current<br />

minimum, it also would automatically update the salary<br />

level to prevent the level from becoming outdated<br />

with the often lengthy passage of time between<br />

rulemakings.<br />

And, the DOL says it is considering whether revisions<br />

to the duties tests are necessary in order to<br />

ensure that these tests fully reflect the purpose of<br />

the exemption.<br />

In other words, the proposal would make it more<br />

difficult for a company to classify an employee as<br />

salaried exempt.<br />

“Salaried employees have to perform exempt duties,”<br />

says Eddie Wayland, the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association’s<br />

general counsel. “You might say someone<br />

is a manager or an assistant manager — or in the<br />

case of trucking a fleet manager, a dispatcher, a customer<br />

service representative or a myriad other jobs<br />

— and that they supervise people so they are exempt,<br />

but they don’t have any authority to supervise<br />

anybody. They can’t hire, they can’t fire; they can’t<br />

discipline anybody. Basically they are the hall monitor<br />

and are paid a little bit more money.”<br />

If the final rulemaking doesn’t change, carriers<br />

would likely be faced with raising a lot of salaries or<br />

paying overtime to many more employees than they<br />

are now required to do.<br />

DOL said the proposed rule has been reviewed by<br />

the Office of Management and Budget but still is subject<br />

to the 60-day comment period.<br />

The measure would take effect in 2016.<br />

The DOL is accepting comments on the proposed<br />

rulemaking through September 4.<br />

Anyone may submit comments, identified by Regulatory<br />

Information Number (RIN) 1235–AA11, by<br />

either of the following methods:<br />

Electronic Comments: Submit comments through<br />

the Federal eRulemaking Portal http:// www.regulations.gov.<br />

Follow the instructions for submitting<br />

comments.<br />

Mail: Address written submissions to Mary Ziegler,<br />

Director of the Division of Regulations, Legislation,<br />

and Interpretation, Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department<br />

of Labor, Room S–3502, 200 Constitution<br />

Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20210.<br />

All submissions must include the agency name<br />

and RIN, identified above, for this rulemaking.<br />

Comments received will become a matter of public<br />

record and will be posted without change to http://<br />

www.regulations.gov, including any personal information<br />

provided.<br />

peak in the early 1980s, but over the past<br />

30 years, union membership has decreased<br />

every year.<br />

Most of the NLRB’s current budget is<br />

spent on its outreach program to educate<br />

employees and employers about the National<br />

Labor Relations Act.<br />

It might be that employees have learned<br />

more than employers.<br />

With the aforementioned Facebook<br />

post, the employee who posted it and the<br />

employees who “liked” it were protected<br />

because what they did was classified as<br />

protected concerted activity, which covers<br />

employees engaging in activities related to<br />

wages, hours and working conditions.<br />

Under the NLRA employers cannot take<br />

action that intimidates or coerces employees<br />

or interferes with their right to engage<br />

in protected concerted activity, Wayland<br />

said.<br />

“Concerted activity is a somewhat nebulous<br />

term and is usually construed in favor<br />

of the employee,” Wayland said. “If it’s<br />

clearly just an individual gripe of one employee<br />

that doesn’t go to other employees,<br />

then that’s not concerted activity.”<br />

“So what that means is for companies<br />

who are trying to slow down what people<br />

say about the company on the Internet or<br />

otherwise, if employees are talking about<br />

their wages, their working conditions or<br />

their supervisors and there is more than<br />

one employee involved or it’s on behalf<br />

of the employees generally, then that’s<br />

concerted activity,” he said. “If you have<br />

a policy that says you can’t say anything<br />

bad about the company and you can’t say<br />

anything about your business or communicate<br />

with your customers or say something<br />

bad about your supervisor without going<br />

through management first, that’s interfering<br />

with the employee’s ability to communicate.”<br />

Companies cannot tell employees they<br />

can’t speak badly of the company in any<br />

form or fashion.<br />

“That is a prima facie violation right<br />

there,” Wayland said. “The NLRB is coming<br />

in asking to look at the company’s handbook<br />

or policies and if they have those policies<br />

in there, then they say you’ve violated<br />

the law. If you’ve terminated somebody or<br />

taken action against somebody who is part<br />

of the concerted activity, then it’s just piling<br />

on. You’ve violated the law in two places.”<br />

And, of course, the NLRB says your decision<br />

to terminate the chatty employees is<br />

illegal and they must be allowed to return<br />

to work.<br />

“All of this just blows your mind,” he<br />

said, recalling how he heard about an NLRB<br />

attorney who once gave a speech entitled<br />

“How to Cuss Your Boss and Get Away With<br />

It.”<br />

The orientation issue comes down to<br />

when the driver becomes an “employee”<br />

under wage and hour laws, Wayland said.<br />

Then he laid out this example playing the<br />

role of the driver himself.<br />

“I’m a driver and they send me a bus<br />

ticket. I’ve passed the initial screening and<br />

the carrier wants me to come to orientation<br />

to see if I qualify and if they can hire me.<br />

So then the recruiter who’s been recruiting<br />

me sends me an e-mail that says welcome<br />

aboard, we’re glad to have you on our<br />

team,” Wayland said.<br />

If you’ve ever applied for a job, that’s<br />

not the first thing that the company tells<br />

you, Wayland reminded his listeners.<br />

“They say thank you for your application,<br />

we appreciate you and will consider<br />

your application. They don’t say welcome<br />

aboard,” Wayland continued.<br />

But the driver shows up at the motor<br />

carrier and “what’s the first thing that I do?<br />

You may have me fill out an application,<br />

you have me fill out my company-specific<br />

paperwork (including Social Security number),<br />

my W-4 form, my W-9 form, other<br />

payroll-related documents, and maybe<br />

even my I-9 documents because you have<br />

to have that authorization to work, so you<br />

fill all that out. Well, guess what? If you ask<br />

me to fill out my I-9 documents before you<br />

hire me, that violates the law. So am I an<br />

employee when I fill them out or not? You<br />

say I’m not an employee. Well, you’ve violated<br />

the immigration law.”<br />

Somewhere during orientation comes<br />

the physical, the drug test and the road test<br />

and at some point the driver is told he’s<br />

employed.<br />

“The problem with that is whether or<br />

when did I cross that line between being an<br />

applicant or an employee, and that’s where<br />

the industry is getting stung,” Wayland said.<br />

“If the driver applicant participates in orientation,<br />

and is not an employee yet, they<br />

don’t usually get paid. I know of trucking<br />

companies that do not specifically tell drivers<br />

when they’re offering them a job. They<br />

just put them on the payroll one day.”<br />

Wayland’s presentation turned to a fastpaced<br />

theoretical conversation between<br />

himself and the employer.<br />

“Why do you just put them on the payroll<br />

arbitrarily one day? ‘Someone said it’s<br />

easy, so we make them all an employee the<br />

third day.’ Why didn’t you do it the second<br />

day? ‘Never thought of it.’ Why did you<br />

have them fill out all the paperwork and<br />

talk about payroll the first day? Why are<br />

you showing them the sexual harassment<br />

training video before you’ve even offered<br />

them a job? What documentation do you<br />

have to show they are not an employee<br />

when they show up? After all, the carrier<br />

sent the driver a one-way bus ticket, an e-<br />

mail saying welcome aboard and told the<br />

driver to bring enough clothes to be on the<br />

road for two weeks.”<br />

“The driver says, ‘I went through this<br />

and thought I was hired. They’d already<br />

screened me. The recruiter told me whoknows-what<br />

to get me to come,’” said Wayland<br />

as he was relating the example.<br />

To make matters worse, the carrier likely<br />

has no documentation saying how many<br />

hours per day the driver was in orientation<br />

or documentation as to when employment<br />

was formerly offered and accepted, Wayland<br />

said.<br />

“Now if you’re a juror sitting in a federal<br />

courtroom are you going to say that the<br />

employee deserves to be paid for that? ‘No<br />

they were not,’ responds the company, ‘they<br />

weren’t hired yet …’ I think we all know what<br />

the answer is likely to be,” he said.<br />

So the driver goes to work for the carrier<br />

for three weeks, quits and sues the<br />

16 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


CAT <strong>Truckload</strong><strong>Authority</strong> 060215_Layout 1 6/3/15 4:07 PM Page 1<br />

carrier for not paying him for orientation and for failing to pay him minimum<br />

wage for all hours worked, and a smart lawyer turns it into a class<br />

action suit involving all similarly situated employees.<br />

Depending on the statute of limitations for such cases, a carrier that<br />

brings in 100 recruits a month could easily find themselves forking over<br />

three-quarters of a million dollars or more to settle.<br />

As for the fired dispatcher, the court determined that he was disabled<br />

and that he was fired for an impermissible reason after disclosing his disability<br />

and requesting accommodation.<br />

“It was an ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] violation,” Wayland<br />

said. “The carrier didn’t go through the interactive accommodation process<br />

and they didn’t consider all these various factors so now it’s going to<br />

go to a jury to decide if they fired him because of this anxiety disorder.<br />

They failed to seek to accommodate that.”<br />

To protect persons with disabilities, including non-physical disabilities,<br />

the law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation to a<br />

qualified employee or job applicant with a disability unless doing so would<br />

cause undue hardship.<br />

“A reasonable accommodation is a change in the work environment or<br />

a change in the way things are customarily done that enables an individual<br />

with a disability to enjoy equal employment opportunities,” Wayland said.<br />

Undue hardship means significant difficulty or expense for the employer,<br />

but the burden is on the company to convince a court that reasonable<br />

accommodations would be a hardship to an employer.<br />

What’s more, the ADA says that reasonable accommodations that<br />

modify the work environment or adjust how and when a job is performed<br />

include making existing facilities accessible, job restructuring, part-time<br />

or modified work schedules, acquiring or modifying equipment, changing<br />

tests, training materials or policies, providing qualified readers or interpreters,<br />

and reassignment to a vacant position.<br />

Companies may also decline to allow for reasonable accommodation<br />

when it involves a situation involving a direct threat, which is defined as<br />

the significant risk of substantial harm to the health and safety of the<br />

individuals that cannot be eliminated or reduced by reasonable accommodation.<br />

Again, the burden is on the employer to establish this direct<br />

threat basis.<br />

Wayland cited such a case.<br />

An employee wrote a note to the supervisor saying, “I’m scared and<br />

angry. I don’t know why but I wanna kill someone/anyone.”<br />

The employee was driven by police to a hospital where he was diagnosed<br />

with depression and told to seek further treatment.<br />

The employee’s supervisor was out on medical leave and couldn’t be<br />

contacted and the employee spent three weeks trying to contact the employer<br />

to give notice of disability and the resulting need for medical treatment.<br />

The employee was then terminated for misconduct by the employer<br />

who said the employee had a proclivity toward violence and threats.<br />

But the court ruled it was plausible that the employee was discharged<br />

because of his disability and that the employer had failed to engage in a<br />

flexible, interactive process with the employee to determine whether a<br />

reasonable accommodation was available or warranted.<br />

Wayland said the interactive process to consider a reasonable accommodation<br />

means analyzing the job and essential functions, consulting<br />

with the employee to determine job-related limitations, working with<br />

the employee to identify potential accommodations and assess them, and<br />

considering the preference of the employee and choosing an appropriate<br />

reasonable accommodation that is most appropriate for the employee and<br />

employer, if available.<br />

The bottom line is this, Wayland said: Hell or not, trucking companies<br />

are under assault about wage and hour, ADA and labor board issues, and<br />

there’s a lot more that because of space, this article couldn’t cover.<br />

“During my presentation at TCA, I gave a pop quiz,” he said in a recent<br />

interview. “I asked them to name two defenses to a wage and hour, ADA<br />

or NLRA legal challenge. “Guess what? ‘We have always done it that way’<br />

is not a defense and neither is ‘everybody else does it that way.’”<br />

Trucking companies need to take heed, bone up on labor laws, consult<br />

a good labor attorney and adequately prepare themselves for this assault,<br />

Wayland cautioned.<br />

That way, they’ll be more likely to find themselves in a much cooler<br />

climate.<br />

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W i t h J o n G r u d e n


Brought to you by<br />

Every Monday night in the fall brings with<br />

it that question. Millions around the country<br />

and the world answer with a resounding “yes!”<br />

“Monday Night Football” is one of the longestrunning<br />

prime time broadcasts in American history.<br />

It began September 21, 1970, with play-byplay<br />

commentator Keith Jackson and sidekicks<br />

“Dandy” Don Meredith and the legendary Howard<br />

Cosell in what would become “must see” TV.<br />

A long and distinguished list of accomplished<br />

former athletes, coaches, journalists and comedians<br />

have graced the “Monday Night Football”<br />

booth, but not since the original broadcast team<br />

has there been one that brings the passion and<br />

intensity to the call like today’s ESPN crew.<br />

Mike Tirico is a dynamic play-by-play announcer<br />

who is highly respected and accomplished<br />

as a broadcaster.<br />

But the star of Monday night is Super Bowlwinning<br />

coach Jon Gruden.<br />

“I can’t wait for Monday night. It’s the last<br />

game of the week, it’s the first game of week,<br />

it’s the biggest game of the week, if you ask me.<br />

There’s just a natural buzz up there, a natural<br />

energy that I look forward to,” Gruden said in an<br />

exclusive interview with The Trucker News Organization<br />

and <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong>. “The guys<br />

I work for — Jay Rothman and Chip Dean, the<br />

producer and director of ‘Monday Night Football’<br />

— have really helped me. Mike Tirico is unbelievable<br />

to work with. He’s the quarterback. If<br />

you just listen and you trust your preparation,<br />

you have a chance because ‘Monday Night Football’<br />

is an exciting experience, it’s an incredible<br />

environment,” Gruden said.<br />

What’s their formula for success?<br />

“We have a huge working force on ‘Monday<br />

Night Football.’ We have so many cameras, so<br />

much expertise,” Gruden said. “We try to not<br />

worry about who the two teams are or the nature<br />

or impact of the game. Let’s just cover this<br />

game. There are a lot of kids playing, men that<br />

are playing, coaches that are coaching who have<br />

a great opportunity to show their stuff in prime<br />

time. We try to get to know the city we are in as<br />

well. We collaborate with each other, we count<br />

on each other and if we do that, we have a<br />

chance to conquer the night,” he explained.<br />

Gruden certainly has a qualified perspective<br />

on the game having accomplished so much in<br />

his National Football League coaching career,<br />

including a victory over the Oakland Raiders in<br />

Super Bowl XXXVII while coaching the Tampa<br />

Bay Buccaneers.<br />

Like many great leaders, he stresses the importance<br />

of keeping a positive mental approach<br />

and he brings that to his broadcasting philosophy.<br />

“I know how hard it is to call plays and get<br />

first downs and win games as a coach and I<br />

know how hard it is to play this game,” he said.<br />

“There is a lot of mental and physical pressure<br />

that goes with it, and I try to be not over-the-top<br />

positive, but I do try to accentuate the positives.<br />

You can look at every play as a negative. Every<br />

By Micah Jackson and Lyndon Finney<br />

two-yard loss is a terrible play call, it’s a terribly-blocked<br />

play, it’s a bad run. Or you could say<br />

that Vince Wilfork just made one helluva play!<br />

My, oh my, did you see that linebacker scrape<br />

and fill that hole, did you see that strong safety<br />

support the run? So you try to go through every<br />

broadcast and recognize as many players and<br />

coaches as you can because it’s their night and<br />

we just try to accentuate that.”<br />

Perhaps Gruden is best known for his trademark<br />

stare and the incredible amount of passion<br />

and intensity he brings to whatever he is doing.<br />

Fueling his intensity is his appreciation for just<br />

how difficult it is to achieve and sustain success<br />

in any endeavor. “It’s hard to become successful<br />

at anything and I think it’s harder to stay successful,”<br />

Gruden said. He attributes much of his<br />

success to the willingness to prepare. “I can’t<br />

put a price tag on preparation. It starts with<br />

supplying the effort. You have to get up early,<br />

you have to stay late, you have to work to find<br />

the answers. It’s not only doing the preparation,<br />

but it’s presenting your preparation as you install<br />

the game plan. You have to do the preparation<br />

and then you have to go blow their socks off<br />

when you get the chance to present your game<br />

plan and present yourself at show time.”<br />

Intent on always making sure his players are<br />

focused in the moment, he recalled a memorable<br />

instance from his coaching career before<br />

a must-win game where he took a bit of liberty<br />

with the English language to make sure his<br />

troops were paying full attention.<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 19


ought to you by The trucker news organization<br />

get your daily industry news at thetrucker.com<br />

“We (the Oakland Raiders) were on the road<br />

about to play the Kansas City Chiefs. I gave this<br />

great speech and I had put a lot of thought into<br />

it. We had to have the game, man! So I started<br />

talking about the four E’s — enthusiasm, effort,<br />

execution and intensity. Several players started<br />

laughing right before the big game and stalwart<br />

defensive tackle Grady Jackson says, ‘Coach,<br />

everyone knows enthusiasm doesn’t start with<br />

an E!’ But I think he got my point. We’re not going<br />

anywhere if we don’t conquer those four E’s<br />

because they are equally important.”<br />

One of Gruden’s signature “Monday Night<br />

Football” segments is what he calls his “Gruden’s<br />

Grinders” of the game in which he recognizes<br />

the player(s) who most exemplified grit and determination<br />

in the game that night.<br />

Some might be surprised to learn that, to<br />

Gruden, there are millions of “Gruden’s Grinders”<br />

who rarely get the public recognition they<br />

deserve.<br />

He’s referring to the professional men and<br />

women who navigate commercial trucks along<br />

our highways each day.<br />

“My wife’s dad was a truck driver back in his<br />

day,” Gruden recalled. “He’s no longer with us,<br />

unfortunately, but he drove for the Bush factory<br />

(now best known for its baked beans) up in<br />

Chestnut Hill, Tennessee, so I know a lot about<br />

the hard work, 24/7, pushing and grinding. And<br />

I love truckers because they finish. They have to<br />

get from Point A to Point B in bad weather; it’s<br />

hot, they have breakdowns on the highway. It’s<br />

lonely. There’s a lot of soul searching I’m sure<br />

on those roads at night, but you have to admit<br />

they finish the job and if they didn’t, none of us<br />

would be very happy campers. Thank God for<br />

all of them.”<br />

Jon David Gruden was born in the small Midwestern<br />

town of Sandusky, Ohio, on August 17,<br />

1963. His father was a football scout and coach<br />

during Gruden’s formative years. Jon took to the<br />

game quickly and developed a strong passion<br />

for it.<br />

“You go nowhere without a passion, without<br />

a spark. If you lose it, you better find it quickly<br />

or that’s the end of greatness.” He played quarterback<br />

through high school, eventually attending<br />

the University of Dayton to play football. He<br />

was a three-year letterman for the Flyers under<br />

Coach Mike Kelly, but he never won the starting<br />

quarterback job. However, he loved the game of<br />

football so much he felt coaching was his calling.<br />

So after graduating with a degree in communications,<br />

he became a graduate assistant in<br />

1985 at the University of Tennessee where he<br />

met and fell in love with a beautiful cheerleader<br />

named Cindy. They married in 1991.<br />

Gruden’s trademark intensity and determination<br />

were clearly evident as he began to climb<br />

the ranks of the coaching profession making<br />

numerous stops in the college game along the<br />

way.<br />

In 1992 when Gruden was only 28 years old,<br />

Mike Holmgren, head coach of the Green Bay<br />

Packers, came calling. He hired Gruden to be an<br />

offensive assistant coach. It was there Gruden<br />

had the opportunity to coach and work with the<br />

legendary Brett Favre, providing him invaluable<br />

experience.<br />

After three seasons in Green Bay, he accepted<br />

the offensive coordinator position with the Philadelphia<br />

Eagles. It wasn’t long before Gruden got<br />

the chance most coaches only dream about. Al<br />

Davis, Hall of Fame owner of the Oakland Raiders,<br />

selected Gruden to be the<br />

head coach of one of the most<br />

storied franchises in NFL history.<br />

At the time Gruden was<br />

the youngest head coach the<br />

league had ever employed.<br />

How had his career ascended<br />

so quickly? Simple, it was his<br />

approach toward people.<br />

“It all starts with relationships.<br />

You have to earn people’s<br />

trust and respect. Just because<br />

you are a head coach or a CEO<br />

doesn’t mean you are a leader.<br />

A title doesn’t make you a<br />

leader. You have to become a<br />

people business guy, you have<br />

to get to know your personnel<br />

and find out what makes them<br />

tick. Earn their trust, earn their<br />

respect. I think at the end of<br />

the day you have to empower<br />

your team. You have to train<br />

them. They have to feel your<br />

investment in them. You want<br />

them to be successful. They<br />

have to feel that. If you want<br />

them to train others you have<br />

to train them. We have to get<br />

as many like-minded people<br />

as we can in this building and<br />

if we can do that and keep a<br />

good positive attitude and try<br />

to improve our relationships, we have a chance<br />

to do something great.”<br />

In his third year rebuilding the Raider franchise<br />

he led the team to a 12-4 regular season<br />

record and a trip to the AFC Championship<br />

Game where they fell short against eventual<br />

Super Bowl champions Ray Lewis and the Baltimore<br />

Ravens. A 2001 divisional playoff game in<br />

Foxboro, Massachusetts, against the New England<br />

Patriots would infamously be Gruden’s last<br />

with Oakland.<br />

Football fans will forever remember this<br />

game as “the tuck rule game.” On a snow-covered<br />

field and with the Raiders leading 13-10<br />

late in the fourth quarter, Oakland cornerback<br />

Charles Woodson came on a corner blitz off the<br />

right edge to sack New England quarterback<br />

Tom Brady. The impact from the sack appeared<br />

to knock the ball loose, and it was recovered by<br />

Raider linebacker Greg Biekert.<br />

But wait! Hold everything, the officials said.<br />

In a controversial and mind-numbing turn of<br />

events, the officials pointed to an obscure “tuck<br />

rule,” saying that even though Brady had seemingly<br />

halted his passing motion and was attempting<br />

to “tuck”’ the ball back into his body,<br />

it was an incomplete pass and not a fumble under<br />

that rule. As a result, the original call was<br />

overturned and the ball was given back to the<br />

Patriots, who subsequently moved the ball into<br />

field goal range.<br />

It was an inconceivable turn of events. With<br />

under a minute remaining in regulation, Patriots’<br />

placekicker Adam Vinatieri kicked a 45-yard field<br />

goal to tie the game at 13, which sent the game<br />

into overtime. In the subsequent overtime, Vinatieri<br />

kicked a 23-yard field goal to win the<br />

20 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


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game for the Patriots. New England<br />

went on to win Super Bowl XXXVI.<br />

The rule was later banished from<br />

the league.<br />

Gruden recalled the game this<br />

way: “The tuck rule is no longer<br />

even a rule. How ridiculous that was.<br />

That cost me my Raider career. How<br />

would you like for that to be your<br />

last game as a Raider, going down<br />

like that on a rule that doesn’t even<br />

exist anymore?”<br />

However, things were about to<br />

get even more unpredictable. In a<br />

bizarre offseason following the Raider’s<br />

loss, Gruden and his contract<br />

were traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers<br />

for a bevy of high draft picks<br />

and millions in cash. Reportedly, Al<br />

Davis, not known for spending top<br />

market dollars on a coach, feared<br />

losing Gruden the following season<br />

because of his expiring contract.<br />

So Gruden found himself in Tampa<br />

Bay where he immediately retooled<br />

the offense by bringing in a<br />

number of veteran players. His time<br />

in Tampa saw him lead a resurgent<br />

offense and dominant defense culminating<br />

in a sweet Super Bowl victory<br />

over the team who had traded<br />

him away.<br />

He recalled one of his most memorable<br />

moments of that game.<br />

With a 10-0 lead and the ball, the<br />

Buccaneers found themselves in the<br />

red zone trying to put up another<br />

score before halftime. That’s when<br />

Gruden called what he considers to<br />

be his favorite play call of his entire<br />

coaching career. With no shortage of<br />

excitement, he described the play:<br />

“It was double wing right, nickel 41,<br />

kill 374 WASP, we were going to run<br />

a draw play (Nickel 41) against a<br />

soft box and if we got the blitz, Brad<br />

Johnson (Bucs QB) was supposed<br />

to kill it to 374 WASP. That’s what<br />

he did and we threw a flash stop to<br />

Keenan McCardell (Bucs WR) and we<br />

stung the Raiders, man! That play is<br />

laced in my mind forever.”<br />

A self-described “huge classic<br />

rock fan,” things only got better for<br />

Gruden at the completion of that Super<br />

Bowl. While basking in the thrill<br />

of the win he noticed something surreal<br />

happening out on the field. “My<br />

Life” performed by Bon Jovi, “was<br />

kind of my theme song the year we<br />

won the Super Bowl. And guess who<br />

was playing on the field after the<br />

game? Bon Jovi! So my wife’s over<br />

there because she likes Bon Jovi<br />

better than me, anyway, and guess<br />

what song he’s singing? He’s singing<br />

my song! I love that guy, man!”<br />

Who conducted the post-game interview<br />

with Gruden after his Tampa<br />

Bay Super Bowl victory? None other<br />

than Mike Tirico.<br />

The years following the Super<br />

Bowl triumph saw some difficult<br />

times in Tampa. Salary cap issues,<br />

loss of high draft picks traded to<br />

Oakland, ironically for Gruden, and<br />

a rash of injuries plagued the team<br />

throughout his tenure. Gruden and<br />

his team battled through some<br />

tough seasons. He remained strong<br />

and positive, however. “It starts with<br />

mental toughness. You just don’t acquire<br />

mental toughness. You have to<br />

train your mind and train yourself<br />

to anticipate things that go wrong<br />

at some point. There’s going to be<br />

a hold-out at training camp, there’s<br />

going to be a penalty, there are going<br />

to be injuries, there’s going to<br />

be a turnover. Something bad will<br />

happen! If you are going to become<br />

unglued and become a crybaby and<br />

a basket case every time something<br />

goes wrong, you can’t possibly put it<br />

back together and win and be great.<br />

So talk about that. What are we going<br />

to do when we’re down 10-0 in<br />

the first quarter? Let’s go practice<br />

like we’re down 10-0. Something<br />

bad happened. Let’s put ourselves<br />

in the mentality of coming from behind.<br />

We don’t quit. We can always<br />

come back and win. We never lose.<br />

We might run out of time, but we<br />

never lose, brother!”<br />

His Bucs surged again in 2005,<br />

finishing 11-5 and earning a playoff<br />

berth, but things went downhill<br />

again in 2006. Though the Grudenled<br />

Bucs would surprise many people<br />

in the next few years, they lacked<br />

enough difference-making NFL talent<br />

to compete at the highest level<br />

and he was eventually fired in 2009<br />

after a late season four-game losing<br />

skid ended a once promising chance<br />

for a trip to the postseason.<br />

What did he do after he was let<br />

go by the Bucs?<br />

Coach football of course, but this<br />

time he was coaching even closer to<br />

home. He volunteered as an assistant<br />

coach for his son’s football team<br />

at Carrollwood Day High School in<br />

Tampa. While coaching at the high<br />

school level, he began to notice<br />

something that troubled him and in<br />

true Gruden fashion he was determined<br />

to be a part of the solution.<br />

So he formed the Fired Football<br />

Coaches Association (FFCA) to address<br />

the problem. “I got fired and<br />

started working for my son’s high<br />

school football team several years<br />

ago and what I realized was that<br />

coaches don’t get paid, they don’t<br />

have any footballs, they don’t have<br />

enough money for pads, they can’t<br />

chalk the field, pay the referees or<br />

pay for travel. I couldn’t believe it.<br />

And as I went around the country<br />

broadcasting, I saw it all over the<br />

place. Youth sports, all of them, boys’<br />

sports, women’s sports, they’re all<br />

in trouble. We’ve decreased funding<br />

and unfortunately, there are some<br />

people who don’t believe that sports<br />

matter. Dick Sporting Goods, the<br />

FFCA, we’re just trying to raise as<br />

much awareness as we can and on<br />

‘Monday Night Football’ we pick five<br />

or six cities and pick coaches and<br />

22 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


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give them a check to try to help pay<br />

the bills. Hopefully along the way<br />

someone will jump on board and<br />

we’ll get some momentum and if you<br />

have a chance, give Dick’s Sporting<br />

Goods a pop. Sportsmatter.com is<br />

the website.<br />

“Dick’s Sporting Goods is donating<br />

millions to youth sports and they<br />

are the ways and means for people<br />

to donate $5 to support young kids<br />

around the country. It’s a mission.”<br />

For many kids the importance of<br />

sports and the disciplines learned<br />

through winning and losing are critical<br />

to their personal growth and development.<br />

That is something which<br />

is very important to Gruden. “A lot of<br />

kids in depressed areas can’t afford<br />

to play anymore. They can’t play<br />

because they can’t afford to play.<br />

It’s not just them. It’s in all areas.<br />

Kids that don’t play sports anymore,<br />

where do they learn about how to<br />

be on a team? Where do they learn<br />

about work ethic and how to deal<br />

with adversity … all these things that<br />

sports gives you? Let’s be honest,<br />

too, some of the best teachers, the<br />

most memorable teachers that you<br />

have are coaches you had as a kid.<br />

Let’s not banish youth sports. Let’s<br />

celebrate them and give every kid<br />

the opportunity to play.”<br />

Though his post-NFL coaching career<br />

sees him on a local high school<br />

field in Tampa and in the “Monday<br />

Night Football” booth, his days still<br />

begin the same way. Every morning<br />

you will find Gruden up early and<br />

headed to his FFCA office to sit in<br />

a dark room for hours pouring over<br />

game tapes. That’s right. He’s obsessively<br />

studying NFL and college<br />

game tapes in hopes of developing a<br />

new defensive blitz scheme to attack<br />

the quarterback or a new offensive<br />

wrinkle that will consistently convert<br />

a third and five at a critical juncture<br />

in a game.<br />

ESPN recognized a golden opportunity<br />

to combine Gruden’s love<br />

of game tape study and his ability<br />

to coach up quarterbacks. So, they<br />

launched Gruden’s QB Camp in the<br />

spring of 2010 and it’s been a huge<br />

hit. The show is filmed after the<br />

completion of the college football<br />

season and before the NFL draft in<br />

the late spring. Gruden spends an<br />

entire day coaching one-on-one with<br />

the top NFL quarterback prospects<br />

in the country. Before they were<br />

NFL superstars, quarterbacks such<br />

as Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis<br />

Colts and Russell Wilson of the Seattle<br />

Seahawks appeared on the show<br />

along with many others over six seasons.<br />

His brand of raw honesty and<br />

sarcasm is television gold for football<br />

fans. There is plenty, though, that<br />

the audience never sees, he says.<br />

“That’s about a six-hour day. It’s a<br />

long meeting. It’s really a quarterback-coach<br />

meeting. That’s what it<br />

is. They take all the footage back to a<br />

screening room and turn it into a 24-<br />

to 25-minute show. But what we try<br />

to do is educate the player and get<br />

them ready for the next level. You<br />

probably miss a little profanity here<br />

and there, you might miss some sarcasm,<br />

you might miss the real core<br />

of the lesson plan because of the<br />

time restraint but hopefully the show<br />

does accomplish showing that this<br />

is the player, this is who he is, this<br />

is something he did at the college<br />

level, this is something he needs to<br />

work on, and this is him working out.<br />

At the end of 30 minutes, hopefully<br />

every fan knows something about<br />

that player.”<br />

One thing is for sure, he’s ready<br />

and raring to go for the start of this<br />

season, he said during the interview.<br />

“I cannot wait for the opening game,<br />

Philadelphia and Atlanta.” One game<br />

he says he will be most looking forward<br />

to calling this year is when the<br />

Washington Redskins, coached by his<br />

younger brother Jay, host the Dallas<br />

Cowboys on December 7. “How do<br />

you not look forward to the Cowboys<br />

and the Redskins when your brother<br />

is the head coach,” he said.<br />

By now you won’t be surprised<br />

to learn that Gruden doesn’t hedge<br />

when asked to make a Super Bowl<br />

prediction this year. “I say the Green<br />

Bay Packers win it by 13 points in<br />

a runaway. They are going to roll.<br />

They will win the Super Bowl. They<br />

are going to beat the Indianapolis<br />

Colts 37-24. I love Andrew Luck and<br />

Aaron Rodgers. I sit around here in<br />

a dark room and make training reels<br />

watching both of them. Wow, would<br />

I love to coach those cats.”<br />

He doesn’t share that same love<br />

of the growing fantasy football trend,<br />

saying that he thinks it detracts from<br />

the game. “I just think it’s taking<br />

away from the old-fashioned fan with<br />

their team loyalty. I think more fans<br />

are in love with their fantasy teams<br />

than their hometown teams now.”<br />

What might the future look like for<br />

Gruden? He’s perennially rumored in<br />

connection with coaching jobs both<br />

college and pro every offseason when<br />

the coaching carousel is in full swing.<br />

In December of last year, he signed<br />

an extension with ESPN and “Monday<br />

Night Football” that will keep him in<br />

the booth through the 2021 season,<br />

but he’s not closing the door on his<br />

coaching career just yet.<br />

“I’m fortunate to have a job right<br />

now. I like what I’m doing but who<br />

knows what the future brings? You<br />

just try to be ready when opportunity<br />

knocks and at the same time I’m<br />

trying to get better as a broadcaster<br />

and I know I have a lot of work to<br />

do.” He will turn only 52 years young<br />

in August, so don’t rule out the possibility<br />

of seeing Coach Jon Gruden<br />

stalking an NFL sideline with his selfdescribed<br />

“angry disposition” and<br />

eventually hoist another Lombardi Trophy in the years ahead. Until<br />

then, football fans around the world will be tuning in to ESPN each<br />

Monday night of the season to watch the biggest games of the week<br />

and being entertained, amused and enlightened by Gruden and his<br />

unique style.<br />

To football fans everywhere I say, let’s enjoy him in the booth for<br />

as long as we’ve got him. To Coach Gruden we all say, “thanks for the<br />

fun, Coach!”<br />

24 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


SUMMER/FALL | TCA <strong>2015</strong><br />

Sponsored by<br />

Tracking The Trends<br />

Game Changer<br />

PART 4: identifying the right balance<br />

By Cliff Abbott<br />

In the months since the first of four installments of<br />

the Game Changer series documenting on-board video<br />

systems was published in the Winter-Spring <strong>2015</strong> issue of<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> magazine, such systems have taken the<br />

industry by storm. One after another, carriers have signed<br />

up for the benefits of managed video systems.<br />

Swift Transportation was a notable example, announcing<br />

to its drivers in April that it was installing the Lytx Drive-<br />

Cam system in approximately 6,000 tractors. No public announcement<br />

was made, but the company received plenty<br />

of publicity anyway, much of it negative.<br />

The number of providers continues to expand, too, as<br />

technology providers jostle for position. PeopleNet is one<br />

of the most recent, announcing in December that it would<br />

be beta testing a video-based system it calls “Video Intelligence”<br />

during the first quarter of <strong>2015</strong>.<br />

In January, the company announced that the Video<br />

Intelligence product will be one of four business lines it<br />

pursues, while in May the acquisition of Cadec Global was<br />

announced.<br />

Cadec claims several firsts, including the first Federal<br />

Motor Carrier Safety Administration-certified E-log, and<br />

the first system to interface with engine control modules<br />

and GPS.<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 25


Sponsored by SKYBITz<br />

SKYBITz.com | 866.922.4708<br />

As predicted in that first segment, onboard video<br />

is indeed changing the game of driver management.<br />

Drivers who were once trusted to go for days without<br />

contact can now be supervised as closely as employees<br />

in the office or shop. Investigations that once depended<br />

on after-the-fact accident reports written by disinterested<br />

law enforcement personnel are now concluded<br />

faster, exonerating drivers who perform safely while<br />

helping retrain or remove those who don’t. Litigation<br />

that once dragged on for months or years is avoided entirely<br />

or resolved quickly. Training is targeted to drivers<br />

and issues that present the greatest risk.<br />

Ironically, dash cameras aren’t a recent invention.<br />

They’ve been around for years, basically mobile versions<br />

of tape-based security recording systems used to<br />

protect buildings. Turn them on, and they record continuously<br />

until turned off or the tape ends. Many police<br />

cruisers carried the bulky recorders on the dash to record<br />

encounters taking place in the space ahead.<br />

<strong>2015</strong>-08-09 03:37:87 TCA<br />

Still, there are always some who choose to leave<br />

a carrier or refuse to hire on to one with video<br />

systems pointed at the driver’s seat. It’s too soon to<br />

say what impact the systems will have on recruiting<br />

and retention efforts, but carriers who have installed<br />

the systems are willing to take the risk in the name<br />

of safety.<br />

06155:10-13 K<br />

Several advances in technology caused a forward<br />

leap in the system’s usefulness. The adoption of digital<br />

video reduced the size of storage media. Some dash<br />

cameras today take up less space than the “mini” VCR<br />

tape cartridges used in their predecessors. Video that<br />

once took a whole box of cassettes to store now fits on<br />

an SD (secure digital) card.<br />

Small, cheap accelerometers were another advance in<br />

technology. Like the transistor, these devices have evolved<br />

from complicated and clunky to the small, inexpensive<br />

components they are today. These devices detect and<br />

measure not only acceleration, as the name suggests, but<br />

sudden deceleration and side-to-side movement. Events<br />

such as hard braking or swerving are easily detected, and<br />

the information is used to trigger video recording.<br />

Nearly every system on the modern vehicle is electronic<br />

in the modern era, and video systems take advantage<br />

of that for both triggering events and reporting<br />

data. When video segments are made available to<br />

the carrier, they are often accompanied by information<br />

about the vehicle’s speed, operating parameters, location<br />

and other factors.<br />

The criteria for saving recorded video often come<br />

from the vehicle’s system, too. A predetermined event<br />

“triggers” the device to save the past 8-10 seconds of<br />

video along with the next 8-10 seconds. While the<br />

device is always “recording” when the vehicle is in<br />

motion, video isn’t typically saved unless an event<br />

triggers it to do so. The number of events that can be<br />

used as triggers can easily reach into the hundreds,<br />

depending on the vendor of the system and the customer’s<br />

needs.<br />

Like most, the Lytx DriveCam system can be fully<br />

integrated into the vehicle’s system, creating a “dashboard”<br />

the carrier can use to get a full picture of the<br />

circumstances surrounding an event. A typical display<br />

from the company shows the view in front of the truck<br />

along with one of the driver behind the wheel. Vehicle<br />

information is shown in another portion of the display.<br />

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute was commissioned<br />

by Lytx to apply the potential DriveCam Program<br />

benefits to the General Estimates System (GES)<br />

database for the years 2010 through 2012, filtering the<br />

data to consider only preventable crashes involving<br />

large trucks or buses that resulted in a fatality or injury.<br />

The study concluded that 801 lives could be saved<br />

annually if the Lytx program was used by all the vehicles<br />

involved. The results also showed that more than 36<br />

percent (totaling 39,066) of the injuries resulting from<br />

the accidents could be prevented, and collisions would<br />

have been reduced by 25,007.<br />

While the VTTI study<br />

specifically concerned<br />

the Lytx product, other<br />

vendors of managed<br />

video systems can claim<br />

similar results. Several<br />

vendors offer products<br />

with service similar to<br />

the DriveCam product.<br />

The SmartDrive system<br />

monitors more than 70<br />

“points of observation,”<br />

including such expected<br />

points as hard braking<br />

and lane departures and<br />

some harder-to-monitor<br />

points like failing to scan<br />

mirrors and yawning.<br />

Those observations are<br />

compared for frequency<br />

between drivers who have been involved in collisions<br />

and those that haven’t. The company uses a “classifier<br />

algorithm” that yields trained weights for individual<br />

observations that are predictive of collisions, according<br />

to the company. Customers can assign their own<br />

weights to each activity to custom-tailor the program<br />

to their unique needs.<br />

SafetyVision offers a similar product, but allows<br />

live “look-ins” of the driver by carrier representatives,<br />

independent of triggering events.<br />

While most managed video systems have at least<br />

some ability to tie in to other safety systems such as<br />

collision-mitigation or anti-sway systems, the Bendix<br />

SafetyDirect offering may do it better than anyone,<br />

since they also make many of those safety systems in<br />

use today. Don’t look for a video of the person driving,<br />

however, as the system has no rear-facing<br />

cameras.<br />

That’s also true of the PeopleNet Video<br />

Intelligence system, which should soon be<br />

available.<br />

The systems differ in the number of<br />

cameras used, the triggering events used,<br />

and in the way video is transmitted.<br />

Some use e-mails and text messages to<br />

alert carrier representatives to connect<br />

with a website where video is displayed.<br />

Others transmit video through the vehicle’s<br />

satellite communications unit, or<br />

through a cellular modem to the nearest<br />

cell phone tower. One, the SafetyVision<br />

offering, stores video until it can be wirelessly<br />

downloaded at a company terminal, unless a<br />

representative wants to look in live on the driver.<br />

Drivers are, for the most part, convinced of the<br />

benefits of video systems. Dash cameras that record<br />

video to internal memory or portable media such as<br />

SD or mini SD cards are popular sellers at truck stops.<br />

Many drivers have purchased them for protection in<br />

the event of a non-preventable collision. With those<br />

cameras, however, the owner also owns the recorded<br />

video and may not be willing to share it with the carrier,<br />

especially if it doesn’t portray the driver favorably.<br />

Drivers are also receptive to the managed video<br />

systems that carriers employ, with one exception. The<br />

rearward facing camera — the one that records the<br />

driver’s actions — has not been well received. Many<br />

drivers view the lens as an invasion of privacy. Carriers<br />

who install such systems, however, report that<br />

educating drivers goes a long way toward acceptance.<br />

Once drivers are convinced that video is used<br />

for training rather than simply a justification for termination<br />

by the carrier, attitudes change.<br />

Still, there are always some who choose to leave<br />

a carrier or refuse to hire on to one with video systems<br />

pointed at the driver’s seat. It’s too soon to say<br />

what impact the systems will have on recruiting and<br />

retention efforts, but carriers who have installed the<br />

systems are willing to take the risk in the name of<br />

safety.<br />

There are other risks associated with video systems,<br />

too. During the discovery phase of a lawsuit,<br />

the plaintiff’s attorney can request copies of any recorded<br />

video of the driver, including segments unrelated<br />

to the incident that resulted in litigation. Carriers<br />

can find themselves fighting evidence that they<br />

did not intend to provide. The flip side, however, is<br />

that settlements may be reached if the carrier knows<br />

it has a slim chance of winning.<br />

Other legal ramifications of managed video systems<br />

are still unclear. The industry is still awaiting<br />

the first public lawsuit claiming harassment due to<br />

a hostile work environment caused by a video camera<br />

pointed at a driver. Another scenario could use a<br />

video of the driver bouncing on the seat to support a<br />

worker’s compensation claim.<br />

Despite the perceived risks, however, many carriers<br />

still choose managed video systems for their<br />

equipment. Alongside satellite communications<br />

units, telemetrics systems, electronic logs and, possibly,<br />

driverless trucks, they seem to fit right in.<br />

26 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


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You Can’t Park Here<br />

By Dorothy Cox<br />

“I can’t impact infrastructure much,” Cargo Transporters’ Jerry Waddell said. “I can’t<br />

make the government open more parking spaces.” But, the safety director added, he can do<br />

everything in his power to make sure his drivers are routed with enough of a time cushion<br />

to get to their destinations safely and within their federally mandated hours.<br />

The problem is not just a lack of parking for commercial trucks, but a lack of “usable”<br />

parking spaces, noted TCA Director of Safety and Policy David Heller. There are parking lots<br />

in out-of-the-way places “where the trucks don’t go” and then there are the well-traveled<br />

truck lanes like the I-81 eastern corridor that has its southern terminus at I-40 in Dandridge,<br />

Tennessee.<br />

The parking spaces near the popular truck lanes get filled up quickly. The out-of-the-way<br />

spots, not so much, for obvious reasons.<br />

Finding safe parking in the right spot at the right time was a problem before the last<br />

iteration of Hours of Service with its two consecutive 1 a.m.-to-5 a.m. mandates; when that<br />

went into effect, it exacerbated the problem. Now that this controversial part of HOS has<br />

been temporarily rescinded, parking is still bad. Just not quite as bad, Heller pointed out.<br />

Both Waddell and Con-way <strong>Truckload</strong>’s Jeffrey Thurlow, who works with new and longterm<br />

drivers as a learning and development specialist, said carriers have more control over<br />

the problem than the federal government. “I’d rather not see the federal government get<br />

involved,” said Thurlow. “I’d rather see states deal with it on their own.”<br />

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“We’d rather deal with it internally,” agreed Waddell.<br />

“We can help each driver as he or she needs it … It may<br />

be one step at a time. We tell them that if there’s a parking<br />

or hours situation to share it early enough so that<br />

something can be done about it. We’re in this together.”<br />

Even if the state-by-state study on available parking<br />

that was mandated in the “Jason’s Law” part of MAP-21<br />

was finished and Congress miraculously had taken action<br />

on it, new parking would be miles and miles down<br />

the road, not to mention the problem of funding such an<br />

undertaking.<br />

The study was supposed to be completed in April<br />

2014, and Federal Highway Administration public affairs<br />

specialist Neil Gaffney told <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> that “the<br />

[MAP-21] study is being finalized and should be available<br />

in the coming months,” presumably before the first<br />

of the year.<br />

It’s just one of many, many highway studies going<br />

back before 2000, probably producing enough pages to<br />

wallpaper a medium-sized house given the government’s<br />

propensity for wordiness.<br />

In the meantime the continuing problem is one that is<br />

seriously hurting safety, CSA scores and driver pay, not<br />

to mention driver morale.<br />

Of course the most serious by-product is loss of life:<br />

Michael Boeglin, 30, was shot dead in his truck in Detroit<br />

in the early morning hours of June 26 last year. His truck<br />

was set on fire, presumably to cover up the crime. He<br />

was parked overnight some 200 yards away from the<br />

facility where he was supposed to drop off a load of steel<br />

later that morning.<br />

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TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 29


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It was just two years after the above-mentioned<br />

Jason’s Law parking study had been requested. It was<br />

named for Jason Rivenburg, who was killed at an abandoned<br />

South Carolina gas station in 2009 for the $7 in<br />

his pocket.<br />

Another trucker, Truman Lee Smith, was shot more<br />

than three years ago during an apparent robbery while<br />

waiting to unload at a food warehouse in East St. Louis,<br />

Illinois. He had 21 cents in his pockets when found.<br />

Obviously the parking problem takes away truckers’<br />

lives. But it also takes money out of their pockets by<br />

cutting hours on the road, contributes to fatigue, causes<br />

them to be distracted and “gets their schedules out of<br />

balance,” said Waddell.<br />

What’s more, it costs companies on their CSA scores<br />

and is closely tied to HOS compliance or lack thereof, all<br />

of which can’t be good for retention.<br />

A Federal Highway Administration study from May of<br />

2012 randomly sampled 11 states and found there were<br />

a total of 70,754 HOS violations and 672 parking violations<br />

in 2011. Presumably because of the spread-out<br />

geography, Nebraska showed 73 percent of truck drivers<br />

parked illegally and out of hours while Idaho had 25<br />

percent. Other states showed 5 percent or 2 percent in<br />

that category or even less.<br />

The study noted, however, that “violation statistics<br />

may understate problems related to truck parking availability<br />

if enforcement officers are reluctant to cite truckers<br />

who are illegally parked and have reached their driving<br />

time limits under the HOS rules.<br />

“Enforcement officers are presented with a difficult<br />

Five possible outcomes riding on professional truck<br />

drivers not being able to find a safe, decent place to<br />

park when they need it and where they need it:<br />

1. Becoming another statistic and having<br />

another “Law” named after them.<br />

2. Having to park illegally, costing them<br />

and/or their carrier a fine.<br />

3. Running out of hours and ringing up a<br />

“ding” on their carrier’s CSA score plus<br />

a violation.<br />

4. Having to park too early in the<br />

afternoon and ruining their schedule<br />

along with a customer’s schedule.<br />

5. Exacerbating overall driver frustration<br />

leading to a wave of early retirements<br />

and diminishing driver entries.<br />

enforcement choice: force the driver to move the vehicle<br />

to a safer location when a driver has reached the<br />

HOS limit or leave the vehicle illegally parked.”<br />

In short, it’s a compliance issue, something Delia<br />

Moon-Meyer, senior vice president of the Iowa80 Group,<br />

couldn’t agree with more.<br />

She said the parking problem will never be solved<br />

until truck drivers are given more flexibility in their<br />

hours. She suggests that drivers should be allowed to<br />

stop between 7 and 9 a.m. and between 4 and 6 p.m.<br />

rush hours without it being counted against their onduty<br />

clock. “They could eat and relax; it might help with<br />

their nutrition. They could take a walk or run. The roads<br />

would be safer and they would be more alert.”<br />

As to the compliance and productivity issues, Waddell<br />

said, “We want drivers to be legal. One avenue is<br />

to plan to stop earlier than they would normally. … We<br />

just had a couple of drivers tell us if they’re not in by<br />

3 p.m. they’re not getting a parking space or it’s very<br />

difficult.”<br />

At Cargo Transporters since 1999, he has seen the<br />

volume of vehicles on the road increase — both 18-<br />

wheelers and four-wheelers and of course, everyone is<br />

in more of a hurry.<br />

Getting through certain high-congestion areas takes<br />

more skill and careful planning.<br />

If a driver is going to be traveling down the I-95 corridor<br />

in the East, there’s no parking from Baltimore to<br />

Richmond, Virginia. “There’s no decent place to park a<br />

truck,” Waddell said.<br />

“You’ll run out of hours if you get stuck in a traffic<br />

jam and there’s lots of road construction this time of<br />

year. You also get a lot of traffic congestion because of<br />

accidents up ahead.”<br />

No doubt about it, “a trucker has to be on his<br />

game.”<br />

His carrier’s operations staff handles getting its drivers<br />

from Point A to Point B and works with them on<br />

proper routing.<br />

And, he said, if a driver will call before getting in a<br />

jam, the staff can help them look ahead for possible<br />

congestion, wrecks and other schedule delays.<br />

By the same token, Waddell said his carrier is also<br />

working with its customers to offer drivers facility parking<br />

when needed. “We started that [process] when we<br />

got on E-logs and we’re making strides” in that area,<br />

he said.<br />

And while he may hear drivers complain they’ve been<br />

asked to leave a parking property, if “you dig a little<br />

deeper” you find they “weren’t parked legally to begin<br />

with,” he noted.<br />

He emphasized how important it is for carriers to<br />

make sure their drivers are courteous and polite at<br />

parking facilities and not blocking other drivers or areas<br />

where a customer’s staff may need to park.<br />

Who would have thought back in the sixties and seventies<br />

that parking a big rig would have come to this?<br />

Marilou Coins, who began driving a truck about 1963<br />

or 1964, said solving the parking problem then involved<br />

getting permission from a farmer to park beside his<br />

barn. “That was back before there were interstates”<br />

(construction was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway<br />

Act of 1956, and the original portion of the interstate<br />

system was completed 35 years later).<br />

Coins predicts parking will only get worse, and sees<br />

a day coming when more truck stops and rest areas will<br />

charge a fee for parking with a security guard patrolling<br />

the premises. Sometimes, “it’s park at your own risk,”<br />

she said.<br />

“There’s a lot to be said about what needs to be done<br />

and what isn’t done.”<br />

To which most trucking stakeholders would probably<br />

shout a healthy “Amen.”<br />

30 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


<strong>Truckload</strong> trends crucial to you and your business @ DAT.com In partnership with<br />

Gauging the Profit in Freight Brokering<br />

By Mike Markowitz, Vice President, DAT Solutions<br />

For the past couple of years, one of the fastest<br />

growing niches within truckload freight brokering<br />

has been carriers who open their own brokerages.<br />

These are typically set up as separate businesses<br />

from the trucking operation. They provide carriers<br />

with the option of satisfying the needs of<br />

shipper customers the trucking operation cannot<br />

or would prefer not to cover who would otherwise<br />

have to turn to other sources to get that freight<br />

covered. It is often assumed by carriers who deal<br />

with brokers that they have it easy, but that assumption<br />

is worth testing.<br />

Like any business, freight brokerages have<br />

expenses that management is aware of, but staff<br />

may not be privy to.<br />

Many successful brokerage owners believe their<br />

employees need to understand how their company<br />

makes money. Sales employees are typically<br />

aware of the company’s top-line revenue. But if<br />

they understand costs, too, they can make better<br />

decisions and are more motivated to support<br />

profitability. Company owners don’t usually reveal<br />

confidential financial information or burden employees<br />

with details only a CPA would understand.<br />

Instead, they create a “Profit per Load” worksheet,<br />

with a breakdown of all costs associated<br />

with moving a single load.<br />

Here’s an example, based on industry averages,<br />

using typical expenses and profit margins:<br />

Profit per Load<br />

Another way to convey the information is to<br />

create a pie chart for your employees:<br />

Breaking down your business in this manner is<br />

an eye opener for most employees (and even some<br />

owners). Brokers commonly focus on the $1,500<br />

paid by the shipper or the $225 margin that goes to the<br />

brokerage—or even the portion that is paid to them as a<br />

commission—but they rarely think about the slim profit of<br />

$34 that remains after all expenses are taken out.<br />

When employees grasp how small the profit is on each<br />

load, they’ll be more aware of the importance of controlling<br />

costs or increasing the top-line revenue by even a few<br />

dollars on each load. Alternatively, you might encourage<br />

them to increase top-line revenue by moving more loads<br />

per week.<br />

A Broker TMS can help<br />

Most carriers of a size that are considering opening a<br />

brokerage have a TMS they use for dispatch, operations,<br />

analytics, etc. But a freight brokerage has its own unique<br />

business needs. For example, as the owner or manager,<br />

you can set up policies and use tools in the TMS to enforce<br />

compliance by operations staff and independent agents.<br />

For example, you might require a minimum gross margin<br />

on truckload moves, or impose a credit limit that minimizes<br />

your exposure to slow-paying customers.<br />

Whether you’re running a freight brokerage that’s associated<br />

with a freight carrier, or are a freight carrier thinking<br />

about opening a freight brokerage, a few facts can go a<br />

long way to cleaning up faulty assumptions.<br />

About the author<br />

Mike Markowitz is a Vice President of Sales for DAT Solutions’<br />

Keypoint Broker TMS software. A former physicist, he believes<br />

every freight brokerage should see if the data in their TMS supports<br />

their hypotheses on profitable customers and employees.


SUMMER/FALL | TCA <strong>2015</strong><br />

A Chat With The Chairman<br />

Building More Value<br />

Foreword and interview by Micah Jackson<br />

Continuing to improve TCA’s value proposition to its membership is a pillar on which Chairman Keith Tuttle is building his<br />

one-year term. His laser-like focus on adding services and benefits while improving existing ones is clearly evident in our latest<br />

“Chat.” Plus, as the industry grapples over the 33-foot twin trailer issue, Chairman Tuttle provides clarity on how TCA is<br />

helping chart the course to a resolution.<br />

Mr. Chairman, as always it’s a pleasure to visit with<br />

you. Many industry leaders are discussing the debate<br />

over allowing 33-foot twin trailers to operate on our<br />

nation’s interstates. What is TCA’s position on the issue at<br />

this time?<br />

I can always count on your magazine to get the facts<br />

straight. Here is what has happened with the 33-foot trailer<br />

issue. At TCA’s Annual Convention in March, our Highway<br />

Policy Committee met and discussed twin 33s. A motion was<br />

made and a vote was taken to table further discussion until<br />

our next meeting, which is coming up in October in concurrence<br />

with our ATA MC&E meeting. I received so many calls<br />

from some of our larger carriers that I personally asked the<br />

Highway Policy Committee to reconvene with two phone conference<br />

calls — which was pretty much unprecedented — but<br />

we do care about the feelings of our members. That committee<br />

reconvened over the phone and that issue was again<br />

vetted, and a vote was taken to stay neutral over 33-foot<br />

trailers. That vote was then sent to the entire Executive Committee<br />

of the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association, on which many<br />

of those large carriers sit, and the vote was passed overwhelmingly<br />

in favor of supporting the Highway Policy Committee’s<br />

recommendation. We will discuss this issue again at<br />

the Highway Policy Committee meeting held in conjunction<br />

with ATA’s MC&E in October, and I know it’s contentious. We<br />

are not ignoring it. We operate by committee structure, and<br />

recommendations are made. That’s exactly what’s happened,<br />

and that’s exactly what continues to happen.<br />

As I’ve said so many times during my term, we need a<br />

wider variety of carriers involved in our committee process.<br />

I don’t know how to more accurately say that, but we need<br />

— and I absolutely encourage — more of our carriers to become<br />

involved in our committee process.<br />

With President Barack Obama’s promise to veto any<br />

legislation approving such a measure anyway, is this<br />

subject essentially moot as long as Obama is in office?<br />

That issue is much like everything else — there are so<br />

many crazy things that have come out of this White House. I<br />

know that a lot of people are spending incredible amounts of<br />

time and money on both sides of this issue. But I can’t predict<br />

what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is going<br />

to come up with tomorrow, much less what the president<br />

of the United States is going to do. I don’t mean to sound<br />

32 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


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flippant about this, but this is way above my<br />

pay level. Who knows? I’ve heard that from a<br />

number of people, but who knows what’s going<br />

to happen. I’ve heard that this 33-footer doesn’t<br />

stand a chance of passing and then another day<br />

I’ve heard it’s pretty much over the goal line.<br />

Let’s take a broader view for a moment.<br />

When disagreements arise in the trucking<br />

community over contentious policy<br />

matters like this one, what role should and<br />

does TCA need to play?<br />

Our role as the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association<br />

is absolutely to represent the interest<br />

of our membership. And each member is<br />

highly encouraged to become engaged in<br />

committees. And this 33-foot trailer issue<br />

has really brought this matter of getting<br />

engaged to the forefront. The small carrier<br />

has the same vote as the medium-sized<br />

carrier and has the same one vote as the<br />

large carrier, when it comes to our policy<br />

decisions. The policy committee makes<br />

recommendations to the Executive Committee,<br />

and that is how the system has<br />

always worked. That’s how the system will<br />

continue to work: one member, one vote.<br />

And the people on the committees that vet<br />

those issues want to hear from our members.<br />

Dave Heller, who is our director of<br />

safety and policy, wants to hear from our<br />

members on what they think about various<br />

issues. And I’ve directed Dave to be more<br />

pro-active with our members and get out<br />

ahead of some of these issues so maybe<br />

we can be more pro-active on these things<br />

instead of in this case, a little bit of a reactive<br />

mode.<br />

Mr. Chairman, there’s growing concern<br />

the Obama administration will continue<br />

to ramp up the unleashing of more<br />

regulations through the EPA and FMCSA,<br />

among other agencies, during the final<br />

months of his second term. What is your<br />

advice to all companies, but especially the<br />

smaller fleets, on how to stay profitable in<br />

this uncertain regulatory environment?<br />

My advice, and the theme that runs through<br />

our company (Motor Carrier Service) and dozens<br />

of successful smaller to medium-sized carriers,<br />

is they don’t go at this thing unprotected, as<br />

I call it. When I say unprotected I’m talking not<br />

only about becoming a member of their state<br />

association and TCA or ATA, but getting involved<br />

and using those resources. I can tell you that a<br />

new rule came out about re-engineering refrigerated<br />

trailers, and the industry knew months<br />

ahead because we at TCA, ATA and state associations<br />

were pro-active with the various government<br />

agencies and because we got the inside<br />

track. So that rule was actually delayed a couple<br />

of years to make sure that our reefer trailer suppliers<br />

had time to get tooled up and ready for<br />

this. In the vast majority of cases, I don’t think<br />

the government really wants to hurt us or propose<br />

things that are so arduous and overwhelming.<br />

But as I said earlier in the interview, we’ve<br />

got to be connected with those people who know<br />

what’s going on, from our state association guys<br />

to our policy guys like Dave Heller at TCA on<br />

through the ATA people. Use those guys, because<br />

that’s what they’re there for. They know<br />

what’s coming out of Washington far ahead of<br />

what others of us that are in the industry know,<br />

and they can prepare us for that. And they can<br />

make compromises with those people that are<br />

making the rules for us and in most cases make<br />

it reasonable for us instead of extremely burdensome.<br />

Moving on, recruiting qualified drivers<br />

is a major issue which doesn’t appear<br />

to be abating anytime soon. In our last<br />

chat you mentioned quality of life as a<br />

major factor for drivers when choosing<br />

a career in trucking. Parking, or lack<br />

thereof — good, safe, accessible parking<br />

options — continues to vex our industry<br />

and is a serious quality of life detriment for<br />

many drivers. What needs to be done to help<br />

solve this problem?<br />

The simple fix is to get guys home more and<br />

don’t leave them at the truck stops for two and<br />

three and four days. There is tremendous anxiety<br />

now in the industry about where to park<br />

trucks. We’ve gotten a little bit of relief with the<br />

Hours of Service but for guys to pull over and<br />

take that half-hour break through their duty<br />

cycle usually is not just a half hour and there<br />

are some areas of the country, especially the<br />

congested Northeast, where this is a huge problem.<br />

And we need to continue to tackle this with<br />

the truck stop operators, and with the states, as<br />

there are a number of states that have closed<br />

down rest areas. There are areas in northwest<br />

Ohio and southeast Michigan that are full from<br />

7 or 8 o’clock at night, and it is tough on drivers<br />

to try to pull over and find a safe place. It hasn’t<br />

happened in awhile, but some of our own drivers<br />

have been ticketed for parking in areas where<br />

they shouldn’t be. There continues to be a lot<br />

of places where there is a lack of good parking<br />

for drivers, but I think we’ve done a good<br />

job of garnering more respect from our shippers<br />

and receivers. Their attitude is turning a little<br />

bit. When I was in Washington, D.C. recently,<br />

even the FMCSA, they’re going to start recognizing<br />

some of our best and safest drivers on<br />

the walls of their office. That’s something that’s<br />

never been done before. I think we get a growing<br />

respect in a lot of areas for what we’re doing<br />

with our drivers, but we still have an uphill climb<br />

ahead of us.<br />

Let’s turn our attention to the TCA<br />

leadership meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi,<br />

and the upcoming officer’s retreat in<br />

Maine.<br />

Myself, the next two chairmen and our<br />

treasurer held a three-day retreat in Biloxi,<br />

Mississippi, reviewing our strategic plan<br />

and setting our course and talking about<br />

the business of managing the <strong>Truckload</strong><br />

Carriers Association, which is our directive<br />

as the senior leaders. There were supposed<br />

to be five of us, but unfortunately Shepard<br />

Dunn could not make the meeting because<br />

of health problems of a very good friend<br />

of his. In Biloxi, we talked about our strategic<br />

plan and making sure we’re set for<br />

the full slate of officers that meet in Bar<br />

Harbor in two weeks. And when it comes to<br />

Bar Harbor yes, we’re going to have a little<br />

bit of fun. I’ve had the privilege of serving<br />

on a number of boards, even boards away<br />

from trucking, and I can honestly say that<br />

I’ve never dealt with such a hardworking,<br />

integral group of volunteer officers, as well as<br />

staff at TCA that do a great job of increasing the<br />

relevance of this association to our membership.<br />

And I should point out that with all these leaders<br />

that their travel, hotel bills, and everything<br />

they do is all on their own dollar. TCA does not,<br />

and the membership does not, pay these guys<br />

for travel or the hours and hours of service that<br />

they provide to this association.<br />

On September 22 TCA will host its third<br />

annual Wreaths Across America Gala in<br />

Washington, D.C. For those who have not<br />

attended before, why should they prioritize<br />

attending?<br />

I have sat in on numerous phone calls with<br />

Wendy Hamilton with Pilot Flying J and Sherri<br />

Garner Brumbaugh of Garner Transportation<br />

Group, the co-chairmen of our image committee,<br />

along with Debbie Sparks, TCA vice president<br />

of development, and Marli Riggs, development<br />

coordinator, from our association, and they<br />

have put in countless hours of work into what<br />

is going to be a tremendous Gala. This is our<br />

third annual Gala, which will raise awareness of<br />

and support for placing remembrance wreaths<br />

on gravestones in Arlington National Cemetery<br />

and other national cemeteries. This event tells<br />

the story of the essential, vital role that truck-<br />

34 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


ing plays in Wreaths Across America’s efforts<br />

nationwide. And it’s amazing who we’re going to<br />

have for speakers that night, for example, Lloyd<br />

and Mary Byers, Gold Star Parents. Mary laid<br />

the one millionth wreath at Arlington National<br />

Cemetery several years ago when she served<br />

as president of the American Gold Star Mothers.<br />

Her husband is a pastor and will be saying our<br />

grace before the meal. And we’re going to have<br />

retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, a Medal of Honor<br />

recipient. Anybody who has seen “The Today<br />

Show” or “NBC Nightly News” knows he’s featured<br />

all the time as their military analyst. We’ll<br />

also have retired Staff Sgt. Travis Mills, who is<br />

one of only five quadruple amputees from the<br />

wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we’ve got the<br />

Patriot Brass Ensemble, so it’s just going to be<br />

just an amazing evening. I’m asking for our supplier<br />

group to step up and buy tables [and] I ask<br />

that you encourage your carriers that you do<br />

business with to come, buy tables and support<br />

what’s going to be an<br />

absolutely amazing evening.<br />

We’ll all be in tuxes<br />

and there will be a lot of<br />

military there. We’ll also<br />

have politicians there,<br />

and it’s just going to be<br />

a beautiful evening. This<br />

will be the second time<br />

I’ve been there and a<br />

group of us officers will<br />

be there and I just can’t<br />

tone down my excitement<br />

about what an incredible<br />

evening we’re<br />

going to have.<br />

For those who may<br />

not be able to attend,<br />

unfortunately, but<br />

who would like to<br />

help with logistics or<br />

donate wreaths for<br />

this year’s Wreaths<br />

Across America day,<br />

what is the best way to<br />

get involved?<br />

I’m really glad you<br />

asked me about that because<br />

we are looking for<br />

more carriers. You can<br />

talk to Debbie Sparks or go to www.truckloadofrespect.com.<br />

We continue to distribute more<br />

and more wreaths. Last year we were blessed to<br />

be able to cover every headstone at Arlington,<br />

but we’re just now really making a dent in the<br />

cemeteries all across America. Tens of thousands<br />

of military graves are not decorated because<br />

there aren’t enough wreaths purchased, but we<br />

do need help in transportation, so to those carriers<br />

that have not been involved, we would deeply<br />

appreciate your help, and to the hundreds of carriers<br />

who have helped in the past, I hope we can<br />

count on your help this year. It’s an awesome<br />

program. Our own company has been involved<br />

for five or six years and our drivers truly compete<br />

over who gets chosen to go to Maine and pick up<br />

wreaths and distribute them in the Midwest or go<br />

down to Arlington. And there’s another thing you<br />

can do: Donate something we can auction at our<br />

Gala. That’s a huge fundraiser for us and a great<br />

way to participate if you can’t attend. Of course<br />

we’d love to see you at the Gala, but donate<br />

trucks, have your drivers donate their services.<br />

Even owner-operators we’d love to have you donate<br />

this year so that we can get a bigger and<br />

better effort than last year and the years we’ve<br />

had before that.<br />

I know you are excited about launching a<br />

new online, benchmarking initiative called<br />

inGauge. Share with us the primary benefits<br />

to members this will provide.<br />

This is another initiative where we’re building<br />

more value in terms of education and in this<br />

case, bottom-line profitability, for our members.<br />

inGauge will be the only dedicated, online<br />

benchmarking service for the North American<br />

trucking industry. It allows motor carriers and<br />

their employees to anonymously compare their<br />

operational results on approximately 15 to 30<br />

performance metrics versus a chosen peer group<br />

and share best practice knowledge to enhance<br />

future results. The service will be available on a<br />

monthly subscription basis with no annual commitment.<br />

In other words, if you’re not getting<br />

value from this, don’t sign up for it the month<br />

afterward. I can tell you that our own company<br />

for years was involved in benchmarking and it<br />

provided tremendous bottom-line value to our<br />

company. TCA and a company called StakUp Inc.<br />

believe the combination of carefully screened<br />

data and the inGauge intuitive platform will allow<br />

motor carriers of all sizes to discover the<br />

power of benchmarking. We’re going to launch<br />

it September 1 to all carriers throughout North<br />

America. TCA’s Best Practice Group members<br />

will be provided complimentary access to the<br />

service for a limited time and ongoing discounts<br />

will be provided to all TCA members. To share<br />

a little bit about StakUp: It was co-founded by<br />

industry veterans Ray Haight, who’s a former<br />

TCA chairman, and Doug Davis, a former CEO<br />

and major shareholder of a company called Pollock<br />

Group of Companies, which has since been<br />

acquired by Ryder System Inc. We have been<br />

working on this for months and it’s been hard<br />

work by staff, hard work by inGauge, hard work<br />

by a number of our benchmarking companies<br />

that are already in the program right now, and<br />

we think this is just going to be a gangbuster<br />

product.<br />

What else can members be excited about as<br />

the weather begins to cool and we move<br />

into the fall?<br />

We’re doing a great job with webinars, and<br />

have several coming up. Later this month, we<br />

will conduct a webinar on accommodating employee<br />

religious practices in the trucking industry<br />

and we have another one on truck safety in<br />

the new age of technology.<br />

The recent Best Fleets to Drive For seminar<br />

in Chicago was a tremendous success and<br />

that city will play host<br />

to our Open Deck and<br />

Independent Contractor<br />

Division meetings in<br />

September. Of course,<br />

National Truck Driver<br />

Appreciation Week is<br />

September 13-19, and<br />

TCA will again be hosting<br />

health fairs at truck<br />

stops in several states.<br />

We will be offering blood<br />

pressure screening, glucose<br />

testing, flu shots,<br />

and activities such as<br />

cornhole and basketball.<br />

We will also have health<br />

care professionals on<br />

site to answer drivers’<br />

questions and help them<br />

lead longer, healthier<br />

lives. TCA will also conduct<br />

a health and wellness<br />

webinar that week.<br />

Finally, I want to<br />

point out how absolutely<br />

in tune our staff is with<br />

what’s going on in the<br />

industry. In the last issue<br />

of <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong>,<br />

we profiled Debbie<br />

Sparks and you can read about Bill Giroux in<br />

this magazine. The next issue of <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong><br />

will highlight Dave Heller, our policy and<br />

safety guru. He’s been here a long time and has<br />

tremendous knowledge for your readers that<br />

have any questions on FMCSA rules, Hours of<br />

Service, anything to do with safety. He’s at the<br />

office, he’s at weekly meetings concerning the<br />

FMCSA and he has a wealth of information he<br />

enjoys sharing with carriers all over the country.<br />

We’ve got a small but powerful staff at TCA and<br />

I am more impressed with them every month<br />

I’m honored to serve as chairman of this association.<br />

Thank you Mr. Chairman for another<br />

enjoyable and enlightening “Chat.”<br />

As always, it’s a pleasure working with the<br />

outstanding team at <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong>. Thank<br />

you for all you and your team are doing for TCA<br />

and the industry.<br />

36 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


Leadership<br />

Safety and<br />

Compliance<br />

SUMMER/<strong>Fall</strong> | TCA <strong>2015</strong><br />

Member Mailroom<br />

Recruitment and<br />

Retention<br />

Operations<br />

What type of training<br />

does the <strong>Truckload</strong><br />

Carriers Association<br />

offer to mid-level<br />

managers?<br />

Answer by Ron Goode<br />

Maintenance<br />

Sales & Marketing<br />

Through the <strong>Truckload</strong> Academy, TCA provides training and education for various job functions<br />

within a motor carrier—TCA even recently added a selection of driver training courses. The <strong>Truckload</strong><br />

Academy On-demand (TAO), TCA’s online learning portal, offers training in the areas of finance,<br />

health and wellness, human resources, leadership, legal, maintenance, operations, recruitment and<br />

retention, safety and compliance and sales and marketing. When you visit <strong>Truckload</strong>.org/TAO and<br />

search by learning track, you will find the training you need in the areas that are most important to<br />

you. Much of this training is free to TCA members and has already been placed in member accounts<br />

on the TAO.<br />

In the summer of 2016, through its <strong>Truckload</strong> Academy, TCA will premiere a new program designed<br />

specifically for mid-level managers. The program was developed because of the need to provide<br />

more training for this segment of a truckload carrier’s operations. It will be a two- to three-day<br />

event that will focus on workforce development. It will include separate learning tracks for various<br />

areas consistent with the program content which will be vetted through TCA’s committee process.<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong> carriers should stay tuned by visiting the events page at <strong>Truckload</strong>.org as more specifics<br />

will be announced in the future.<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 37


SUMMER/FALL | TCA <strong>2015</strong><br />

Talking TCA<br />

b i l l g i r o u x | e x e c u t i v e v i c e p r e s i d e n t<br />

B Y lY N D O N f I N N E Y a n d d o r o t h y c o x<br />

Go to the Internet and Google “life experiences” and it might<br />

surprise you to find there actually are an abundance of colleges<br />

and universities that offer a degree on the subject.<br />

But most of us don’t need a sheepskin to prove we’ve passed<br />

all the prerequisites.<br />

Count Bill Giroux, the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association’s executive vice<br />

president, among them.<br />

Talk to Giroux, who is celebrating his 25th anniversary at TCA, and<br />

you’ll quickly learn that he’s where he is today because of a life experience.<br />

“My career with the nonprofit association world started in high school,”<br />

he said in a recent interview. “At the age of 15 I did some part-time work<br />

after school with the National Association of Secondary School Principals<br />

(NASSP). While the association obviously represents principals, it is also<br />

the umbrella association for the National Honor Society and the National<br />

Association of Student Councils. And that was the office I worked in — the<br />

office of student activities. I did everything from stuffing envelopes to<br />

whatever needed doing, but I actually ended up accepting both a high<br />

school and college internship with NASSP for a total of seven years.”<br />

During his tenure with the association, Giroux developed content for<br />

the organization’s various conventions (sound familiar?), administered<br />

scholarship programs, and, among other things, prepared point-counterpoint<br />

workshops for teacher advisors and student council members.<br />

“That was my introduction to the nonprofit world and to some of the<br />

things that could be done for various advocate groups earlier on in my career.<br />

I really, really enjoyed that time,” Giroux said.<br />

He also enjoyed his time in college, and his independence as an 18-<br />

year-old.<br />

For the first two years, he attended Old Dominion University in Norfolk,<br />

Virginia.<br />

“I had applied to a variety of schools in the state of Virginia, which was<br />

part of the deal I had with my folks,” he recalled. “Unless I could get a<br />

scholarship, I needed to stay in state if they were going to help with my<br />

college. Frankly, at the age of 18 and ready to go to college, my goal was<br />

probably more about what’s the farthest point in the state I could get away<br />

to because I was ready to be an adult. So I went to Old Dominion, which<br />

was about three hours from Washington, enjoyed the freedom and did<br />

very well, ending up on the honor roll just about every semester.”<br />

With his internship with the secondary school association now enhanced,<br />

Giroux decided to transfer to George Mason University and pursue<br />

a degree in computer science — with a lofty goal in mind.<br />

“I wanted to be president of IBM,” he said. “It was a company known<br />

for its strong loyalty to its employees. But before I graduated, IBM fired<br />

their president laid off 4,000 people. I re-evaluated whether IBM was the<br />

right move.”<br />

He was also questioning whether he wanted to sit behind a computer<br />

all day, which is ironic, Giroux noted, since virtually everyone is tied to an<br />

electronic device today.<br />

Then came that life experience.<br />

With his degree in hand, Giroux took a job with a mortgage banking<br />

company at the height of mortgage refinancing in the mid 1980s. That was<br />

when interest rates fell from 20 percent to below 10 percent, which Giroux<br />

sees laughable now since rates are in the 4 percent range. But, back then<br />

this was a big deal.<br />

While the mortgage industry might seem farfetched from his degree,<br />

his decision was partially influenced by the fact that his father, a commercial<br />

pilot, was also a successful realtor, having been the third member of<br />

the firm founded by Wes Foster and Henry Long.<br />

Today, Foster & Long is a leading real estate company in the mid-Atlantic<br />

region with more than 200 real estate sales offices and 11,000 sales<br />

associates.<br />

His mother also became involved in real estate and grew to be a top<br />

producer.<br />

“Everyone was refinancing their houses,” he said. “I quickly moved up<br />

in that mortgage lending branch from loan officer to dealing with special<br />

exception cases.”<br />

Eventually he became acting branch manager.<br />

After about 2 ½ years in mortgage banking, the company for which Giroux<br />

worked merged with another company with offices in the same building<br />

with his company.<br />

It didn’t take him long to figure out there wouldn’t be a need for two<br />

offices.<br />

Then came the envelope, and the life experience that shaped his future.<br />

Every Monday, branch managers received an envelope from corporate<br />

with the usual information that would need to be disseminated to mortgage<br />

bankers.<br />

But on this particular Monday, the envelope contained termination letters,<br />

including Giroux’s.<br />

“It wasn’t supposed to go to me. It was supposed to go to a regional<br />

vice president and they accidentally sent it to me as the acting branch<br />

manager and so I got my first and only lay-off,” he said. “At the time the<br />

news media was reporting that everyone would experience a few layoffs<br />

in their lifetime and I thought, ‘Well I guess I got that first one out of the<br />

way early.’ So with that I re-evaluated where my career was going and I<br />

saw that what I really wanted was to get back to the nonprofit world. What<br />

I found I liked so much about the nonprofit world and what I didn’t like<br />

about the mortgage banking world, was that there were deep relationships<br />

in the nonprofit world. I wanted those personal relationships, and frankly<br />

in the mortgage banking world everything is driven by what’s the best rate<br />

so everyone was more of a number instead of that personal relationship.<br />

Certainly, not a lasting relationship because when someone decided to<br />

38 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 39


efinance their mortgage it’s not necessarily with you.”<br />

Giroux went to work for the Electronic Funds Transfer Association<br />

(EFTA), whose goal was to make everything paperless from a banking<br />

transaction standpoint.<br />

All the credit card companies, the ATM manufacturers and the banks<br />

belong to the association.<br />

Today, everyone sees the success of the organization since paper banking<br />

transactions are almost a thing of the past.<br />

“It was a very interesting business and I enjoyed it while I was there,<br />

but I realized very quickly that if EFTA was to succeed — and I knew they<br />

would — the association would work itself out of its mission. And that’s<br />

pretty much what has happened, now,” Giroux said. “The association still is<br />

alive, but it went from a staff of 20 to I think it’s a staff of three now.” So,<br />

then, to get ahead of the liklihood of a second lay-off, Giroux decided his<br />

career needed to go in a different direction.<br />

That led him to answer an ad seeking a director of meetings and education<br />

with the Interstate <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Conference (ITCC), now the<br />

<strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association.<br />

After a series of interviews, he was hired, but Giroux had no intention<br />

of becoming a long-termer.<br />

“I had no knowledge of the trucking industry. I was 27 and was thinking<br />

I was going to hone my skills, spend three to five years with the ITCC<br />

and move on,” he said. “What I quickly found in joining the ITCC was a<br />

great membership that was family-owned and generational with lifetime<br />

friendships. So while it wasn’t part of my master plan, it certainly has been<br />

a great run.”<br />

Giroux quickly added something Lana Batts, one of the five TCA presidents<br />

under whom he has served, once told him.<br />

“She said, ‘if you stay in this industry long enough diesel gets into<br />

your veins and you will come to want it’ and that’s exactly what’s happened.”<br />

That didn’t happen immediately, but over time it did.<br />

“It was more gradual,” he said. “It happened in that three- to five-year<br />

period that I mentioned before. Today, I really love this membership and<br />

I love the people that make trucking exciting. To leave [after three to five<br />

years] would be like leaving a family member. And I wasn’t prepared to do<br />

that after a certain period of time.”<br />

As would anyone with a 25-year tenure at an organization, Giroux has<br />

seen the evolution of trucking.<br />

“I started at TCA in 1990, and one of the first things I saw in Transport<br />

Topics was an article about 10 years after deregulation, who’s in the game<br />

and who’s not,” Giroux recalled. “It was looking at the top 100 trucking<br />

companies in 1980 compared with the top trucking companies in 1990,<br />

and about a third of those top 100 were gone. And the replacements on<br />

the list were almost exclusively truckload. So where before deregulation<br />

the truckload side of the industry had really been the mavericks, they definitely<br />

had taken a concrete position by 10 years later, after deregulation,<br />

and were the driving force, now. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m smarter than I<br />

thought I am. I picked the truckload group, which is the right course.’”<br />

It was exciting, Giroux said, to see the truckload segment rising as the<br />

Jerry Moyes, Dan Englands and Don Schneiders of the day transformed<br />

their truckload companies that are now in their third, fourth and fifth generations,<br />

into real powerhouse companies.<br />

“<strong>Truckload</strong>’s success came because these men and others like them had<br />

a better understanding of their costs and were better poised to price their<br />

product at a competitive price, unlike other segments,” he said.<br />

Of course with the ups come the downs, and Giroux has seen the industry<br />

through two recessions, the first in the early 2000s and the second<br />

later in the decade when crude oil prices resulted in diesel that surged to<br />

almost $5 a gallon.<br />

“The industry was really, really strong from about the last quarter of<br />

2003 until 2007. It was a great run. Things were back, everyone was happy<br />

and all was good. And then in 2008 we started to see the creep upward<br />

of crude oil that peaked in July 2008 when diesel prices reached $4.76,”<br />

Giroux said. “Diesel prices reached the point that they were hurting the<br />

industry and we were talking about an age-old question of whether there<br />

should be a mandated fuel surcharge.”<br />

The trucking industry felt the second recession of the decade sooner<br />

than most of America, Giroux said, but like before, trucking pulled through<br />

the downturn and today Giroux looks back on his tenure at TCA with pride.<br />

“One of the strengths of TCA is it’s an association that represents just<br />

one segment of trucking, unlike some others that represent a<br />

broad band of trucking,” he said. “And I believe the fact<br />

that we represent just the truckload industry makes<br />

Q & A With William Giroux<br />

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: June, 1963, in Savannah, Georgia.<br />

MY TRADEMARK EXPRESSION IS: “It’s the right thing to do!”<br />

MOST HUMBLING EXPERIENCE: Not being able to change the outcome of<br />

those I have lost.<br />

PEOPLE SAY I REMIND THEM OF: Must be their brother, because people tell<br />

me way too much information.<br />

I HAVE A PHOBIA: Overpromising and not delivering.<br />

MY GUILTY PLEASURE: Any spa treatment . . . massage is fave.<br />

THE PEOPLE I’D INVITE TO MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY: Ronald and<br />

Nancy Reagan, Johnny Carson, Julia Child, Samuel Clemens, Condoleezza Rice, Steve<br />

Wynn, Ellen DeGeneres and Pope Francis.<br />

SOMETHING HARDLY ANYONE KNOWS ABOUT ME: I’m more adventurous<br />

than I come across.<br />

MY HARDEST PROBLEM AS A PROFESSIONAL IS: Having empathy<br />

with a colleague’s difficult situation without taking it home with me.<br />

I WOULD NEVER WEAR: The same thing twice (if I could afford it)!<br />

A GOAL I HAVE YET TO ACHIEVE: Skydiving and Zip Lining . . .<br />

Bungee Jumping (), Paragliding (), Rappelling () Soaring (), Flying<br />

my own plane () . . . Done!<br />

THE LAST BOOK I READ: “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande.<br />

LAST MOVIE I SAW: “American Sniper.”<br />

MY FAVORITE SONG: “Diamonds” by Rihanna and “You Are My<br />

Friend” by Patti LaBelle.<br />

IF I’VE LEARNED ONE THING IN LIFE, IT WOULD BE: Ask!<br />

You will be surprised what is possible.<br />

MY PET PEEVE: Anyone lacking common sense.<br />

THE THING ABOUT MY OFFICE IS: It’s a little messier than I wish. But, I know where everything is.<br />

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Finesse.<br />

40 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


us a more focused association.”<br />

“Although models<br />

may vary, they’re basically<br />

the same as far as<br />

running a truckload operation.<br />

We are vastly<br />

different from an LTL<br />

or a specialized carrier<br />

organization. The truckload<br />

segment is strong,<br />

so as a group we can<br />

focus pretty quickly and<br />

agree that we need to<br />

go in a certain direction<br />

on any given situation.<br />

“There have been a<br />

few issues such as the<br />

mandated fuel surcharge<br />

that have been divisive,<br />

but when you looked at<br />

the various issues that<br />

come in front of trucking,<br />

TCA is pretty uniform<br />

in its approach and<br />

unified in which direction<br />

we want to go. That<br />

makes us strong as a<br />

segment of the industry<br />

to move legislation<br />

or other trucking issues<br />

when needed.”<br />

As for the future of<br />

the truckload segment,<br />

Giroux sees nothing but<br />

positives.<br />

“What I’ve experienced<br />

with the truckload<br />

industry is that it’s<br />

very dynamic and very flexible in moving its<br />

model to fit the times and I see that continuing.<br />

I believe one change in the model that will continue<br />

to occur is shortened lengths of haul,” he<br />

said. “The re-opening of the widened Panama<br />

Canal will allow most supertankers to utilize the<br />

Canal, which doesn’t exist today. Instead of<br />

offloading in California or Seattle, these ships<br />

will offload in Houston, Miami or Charleston.<br />

This will bring that freight closer on the East<br />

Coast and shorten those hauls, creating more<br />

flexible models in profitability and productivity<br />

to stay efficient.”<br />

Giroux said when he started at TCA, the average<br />

length of haul was about 1,200 miles and<br />

now it’s more like 400 miles.<br />

And what about one of the other big<br />

issues that’s changing the TL model,<br />

namely the driver shortage?<br />

“I wish I could say that our driver<br />

shortage that I first experienced<br />

in 1990 when I joined TCA had<br />

been solved, but it continues.<br />

And it will continue for some<br />

time,” he said. “Trucking may<br />

solve that problem through<br />

technology, but that’s going<br />

to bring a vital shift in our<br />

economy as a nation as we<br />

move toward autonomous<br />

vehicles such as driverless<br />

cars and trucks.”<br />

Giroux predicts that<br />

driverless cars — and yes,<br />

big rigs — are a reality of the<br />

future.<br />

“It’s coming,” he said. “If you have a child<br />

that’s 1 or 2 years old today, they are not going<br />

to need a driver’s license, which has always<br />

been considered a rite of passage. At 15 you get<br />

that learner’s permit and then at 16 it’s off to<br />

the DMV to get that license so you can be free<br />

on the open road.”<br />

And while he admits he doesn’t have a<br />

crystal ball, Giroux is quick to hazard a guess<br />

about the future of driver’s licenses or lack<br />

thereof.<br />

“You probably won’t own a car,” he said. “I<br />

don’t know who the owners of the cars are going<br />

to be but I have a feeling they’re going to be<br />

Ford and GM and such. They’ll own the vehicles<br />

and you’ll use an app or some device to hail it<br />

and it will come and pick you up at your location<br />

via GPS or some other unknown technology and<br />

will calculate what that fee is for you to be taken<br />

from point A to Point B and how long that will<br />

take using various crowd sourcing and highway<br />

congestion data. The technology will probably<br />

be accurate within a minute.”<br />

And as for trucks?<br />

“I see the truck will probably go down the<br />

highway without a driver too. I foresee the application<br />

of driverless cars, first, and I believe<br />

there will be a quick acceptance by the general<br />

public that they’re [driverless cars] safe and reliable<br />

and they work and it won’t be a very long<br />

jump to seeing [driverless] trucks going down<br />

the road because the general public will already<br />

have accepted driverless cars. So then trucks,<br />

yes, trucks . . . why wouldn’t they be driverless?”<br />

he said.<br />

What’s ahead for Bill Giroux?<br />

Bill at Lake Jasper National<br />

Park in Banff, Alberta,<br />

Canada during the 17th<br />

Annual Refrigerated<br />

Division Meeting in 2000.<br />

Pictured with Emmitt Smith,<br />

keynote speaker at the 2014<br />

TCA annual conference in<br />

Dallas.<br />

“I love this industry and I would love to serve<br />

the membership as long as they’re willing to<br />

have me. It’s just a great industry. I’ve been in<br />

this industry long enough to see the next generation<br />

take over, and I’ll leave you with the kind<br />

of memories I will always cherish.”<br />

It was 1998 and Dan England was TCA chairman.<br />

“It takes eight years to become chairman,<br />

and when it comes to your time as chairman,<br />

one of the perks you get is a really nice suite<br />

at the host hotel of TCA’s Annual Convention,”<br />

Giroux said. “I remember greeting Dan and<br />

Jan England at the entrance of the hotel along<br />

with their three children — Chad and Josh and<br />

TJ. And I walked them over to their suite with<br />

a grand piano and great views on the ocean. I<br />

remember TJ walking into that suite and being<br />

just amazed at how big and palatial it was and<br />

him saying what every dad wants to hear: ‘Dad,<br />

you’re the man,’ and how that made me feel that<br />

TCA was able to provide that connection between<br />

a dad and his son.<br />

“And then TJ ran over and played the piano<br />

and he just couldn’t get enough of it, the full excitement<br />

of this kid of what his dad was, at least<br />

at TCA, and the respect they had for his position<br />

as chairman of TCA.”<br />

Today, Chad is CEO of C.R. England, Josh is<br />

president and TJ has his law degree and is legal<br />

counsel.<br />

“For me, to see them as kids and now running<br />

the company, that’s what this is all about.”<br />

And one of the reasons Bill Giroux has been<br />

at TCA 25 years instead of five, and why he’s<br />

still going strong.<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 41


SMALL<br />

A QUICK LOOK AT<br />

IMPORTANT TCA NEWS<br />

A Quick Look<br />

at Important<br />

TCA News<br />

TALKHealth Fairs<br />

Find more upcoming TCA<br />

events on page 46<br />

Each health fair will feature health care professionals conducting blood-pressure screenings<br />

and glucose testing.<br />

For the fifth year, the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association<br />

will sponsor free driver health fairs at<br />

selected TravelCenters of America/Petro Stopping<br />

Centers nationwide.<br />

The events will be conducted as part of National<br />

Truck Driver Appreciation Week (NTDAW).<br />

The fairs are intended to guide professional<br />

truck drivers toward better health and fitness<br />

through fun, informative events and activities.<br />

Any professional truck driver holding a CDL is<br />

welcome to stop by one of the following TA/Petro<br />

locations between 3-6 p.m. on September 15:<br />

• TA, Eloy, Arizona<br />

• Petro, Ontario East, California<br />

• TA, Cartersville, Georgia<br />

• TA, Boise, Idaho<br />

• TA, Clayton, Indiana<br />

• Petro, Clearwater, Minnesota<br />

• TA, Pembroke, New York<br />

• TA, West Greenwich, Rhode Island, and<br />

• TA, New Braunfels, Texas<br />

Each fair, hosted primarily by state trucking<br />

associations, will feature health care professionals<br />

conducting blood-pressure screenings and<br />

glucose testing.<br />

For <strong>2015</strong>, TCA will offer at each location<br />

flu shots, and vision and hearing tests. Activity<br />

wheels and cornhole games will also be available.<br />

Other activities will vary by location, but could<br />

include activities such as basketball, dog washing<br />

stations, pet adoption, live bands, truck windshield<br />

washing stations, and more. Sleep apnea<br />

specialists, fitness coaches and local celebrities<br />

may also participate.<br />

For more information about TCA’s driver health<br />

fairs and activities, please visit truckload.org/<br />

Health or follow hashtag #TCAHealth15 on social<br />

media networks.<br />

42 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


<strong>2015</strong> Wreaths Across America Gala<br />

A total of 720,000 wreaths were distributed nationwide to honor the nation’s fallen veterans<br />

during Wreaths Across America Day in 2014. This year, it is anticipated that over 1 million<br />

wreaths will be placed on the graves of America’s veterans.<br />

Final plans are near completion for the third annual<br />

Wreaths Across America Gala that will be held<br />

the evening of September 22 at the Grand Hyatt<br />

Washington in Washington D.C.<br />

Guest speakers will include:<br />

• Gold Star Parents Lloyd and Mary Byers. Mary<br />

laid the 1 millionth wreath at Arlington National<br />

Cemetery several years ago when she served as<br />

president of American Gold Star Mothers. Rev. Byers<br />

is a minister and will deliver the invocation before<br />

the evening meal. Gold Star Parents are parents who<br />

have lost a son or daughter during service to their<br />

country.<br />

• Retired U.S. Army Col. Jack Jacobs, a Medal<br />

of Honor recipient for his actions during the Vietnam<br />

War who currently serves as a military analyst for<br />

NBC News and MSNBC, and<br />

• Retired Staff Sgt. Travis Mills, one of only five<br />

quadruple amputees from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<br />

Music will be provided by a band playing military<br />

music.<br />

Platinum sponsors for the Gala are Pilot Flying<br />

J and Freightliner Trucks North America; and Gold<br />

sponsors are Randall Reilly, TravelCenters of America/Petro<br />

Stopping Centers and MacroPoint. Silver<br />

sponsor is DriverFacts.<br />

The Gala has become a “can’t miss” event<br />

among <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association members,<br />

other trucking stakeholders and especially members<br />

of the military and their families.<br />

Last year, through the efforts of the Gala and<br />

other interests, WAA celebrated a truly heartfelt<br />

holiday milestone when for the first time it received<br />

enough money and manpower to cover each of the<br />

230,000 headstones of every veteran interred at Arlington<br />

National Cemetery with a fresh remembrance<br />

wreath, an accomplishment very fitting since it was<br />

the 150th anniversary of Arlington.<br />

At Arlington alone, nearly 50,000 volunteers were<br />

on hand to place the wreaths in celebration of last<br />

year’s Wreaths Across America Day on December 13,<br />

2014.<br />

Celebrating alongside WAA was the <strong>Truckload</strong><br />

Carriers Association (TCA), which coordinated logistics<br />

for the hundreds of trucking companies and professional<br />

truck drivers who made the effort possible<br />

behind the scenes. TCA not only covered the delivery<br />

of arrangements for the ANC, but also the delivery<br />

of an additional 490,000 wreaths to 1,034 veterans’<br />

cemeteries stretching from coast to coast.<br />

Including those placed at Arlington, a total of<br />

720,000 wreaths were distributed nationwide to<br />

honor the nation’s fallen veterans.<br />

This year, it is anticipated that over 1 million<br />

wreaths will be laid.<br />

Nearly 300 trucks, drivers and fuel were donated<br />

to accomplish this worthy gesture of respect.<br />

As with last year, TCA will be calling on its member<br />

carriers and drivers to volunteer their services to<br />

transport the wreaths to Arlington and other veterans’<br />

cemeteries.<br />

Carriers and drivers will once again be able to<br />

pre-select loads.<br />

TCA members are encouraged to make reservations<br />

now for the Gala.<br />

Tickets for the Gala are $275 each. Tables are<br />

$2,500 for a standard table or $3,500 for a premium<br />

table.<br />

For more information or to purchase tickets, call<br />

the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association at (703) 838-1950<br />

or go to truckload.org/events.<br />

The bond between<br />

the <strong>Truckload</strong><br />

Carriers Association<br />

and Wreaths Across<br />

America took another<br />

giant step forward<br />

with the announcement<br />

in July that Tobin<br />

Slaven, a member<br />

of the WAA team, will<br />

establish an office at<br />

TCA headquarters in<br />

Alexandria, Virginia,<br />

that he will utilize<br />

while he is in the DC<br />

area fundraising for<br />

WAA.<br />

Tobin Slaven<br />

TOBIN SLAVEN<br />

A resident of Bangor, Maine, Slaven manages the<br />

communications team at WAA. He has a long history<br />

with the organization and has the ability to see<br />

opportunities to cross promote/connect with other<br />

organizations in a way that benefits all involved.<br />

“I have met very few people who would argue<br />

with the WAA mission to remember, honor and teach,<br />

so my job is just to help find the best way for folks to<br />

get involved,” he said.<br />

TCA is the tip of the spear when it comes to the<br />

logistics side of WAA and its ability to fulfill its mission,<br />

Slaven said.<br />

“People don’t realize that we just flat out could<br />

not honor the veterans with wreaths without the<br />

trucking industry and the generous support of owners,<br />

carriers, drivers and the many support people<br />

who make it happen,” he said. “Not only is it a huge<br />

job because this year over a million wreaths will be<br />

delivered across the nation to over 1,000 locations,<br />

but it all happens in about a 10-day period.”<br />

It is appropriate that the WAA planning committee<br />

meets at TCA headquarters, Slaven said.<br />

“There is so much work and coordination that is<br />

done with the trucks going into Arlington,” he said.<br />

“My new role has me splitting time between Maine<br />

and Virginia with our satellite office (provided as an<br />

in-kind donation from TCA) that is enabling me to do<br />

more outreach in the Beltway. That is really important<br />

because a lot of folks know about the laying of<br />

the wreaths, but just assume the government does<br />

it.”<br />

It goes without saying that WAA will continue to<br />

grow, and even though the organization has set its<br />

sights on placing 1 million wreaths this year, it’s not<br />

the numbers that are important, Slaven said.<br />

“We try to steer the conversation away from<br />

numbers, and get back to the name on the headstone,<br />

knowing that there is a story behind every<br />

stone. It could be about an 18-year-old boy whose<br />

life was stopped short on the beaches of Normandy.<br />

It could be about a 35-year-old father who enlisted<br />

TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 43


after 9/11 and left a wife and two daughters behind,” he said. “Each one answered<br />

the call, and there is an empty seat at the family dinner table. So we<br />

think the least we can do is get together each year with a symbolic gesture of<br />

appreciation.”<br />

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Want to know how to improve your operating revenue? inGauge.<br />

Want to know how you can improve your fuel economy? inGauge.<br />

Want to know what you can do to improve driver retention? inGauge.<br />

A joint venture with StakUp Inc., inGauge is the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers<br />

Association’s newest tool to enhance the power of benchmarking.<br />

Combining StakUp’s flexible online platform and leveraging more than<br />

a decade’s worth of data from TCA’s successful Best Practices Groups,<br />

inGauge is already receiving a lot of attention in the industry. The service<br />

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America. TCA’s Best Practices Group members will be provided complimentary<br />

access to the service for a limited time and ongoing discounts<br />

will be provided to all TCA members.<br />

StakUp was co-founded in early 2014 by Chris Henry, who serves as<br />

its president; former TCA Chairman Ray Haight; and Doug Davis, former<br />

CEO and major shareholder of the Pollock Group of Companies, which was<br />

sold to Ryder System Inc. in 2007.<br />

“We started StakUp with a mission of bringing benchmarking to a<br />

larger audience in the trucking industry. The fragmentation of the industry<br />

has traditionally been a large obstacle to benchmarking gaining any traction,”<br />

Henry said. “Taking it one step further, we wanted to expose more<br />

people within each motor carrier to the benchmarking process, since<br />

benchmarking has typically been reserved for those at the executive<br />

level.”<br />

StakUp began by securing the participation of 19 carriers based on<br />

relationships that Haight, Henry and Davis had developed during their<br />

collective tenures in the trucking industry.<br />

As carriers join the program, they make a commitment to update their<br />

operational data on a monthly basis, thereby making the results more<br />

relevant for all users.<br />

“I know from personal experience, and talking to many business owners<br />

in trucking that they work very hard within their businesses and find<br />

it hard to find enough time to work on their businesses,” Haight said. “It<br />

is very easy to get caught up in the minutia of the day-to-day tasks required<br />

to keep a business functioning; there are many moving parts that<br />

all need attention. inGauge will enable carriers to drill down into each<br />

area of their business and see how they stack up against the competition.<br />

My guess is that most companies are eager to know where they stand<br />

and will be interested in using the service. As one owner I talked to related,<br />

‘You would almost have to use the service, wouldn’t you?’”<br />

inGauge will be valuable to motor carriers of all sizes, and perhaps<br />

especially to smaller carriers that have limited management resources.<br />

“I ran a small fleet many years ago that grew from three trucks to<br />

300 trucks over a 15-year period,” Haight said. “For many of those years<br />

I was the main operations person along with being the main salesperson.<br />

I was also the go-to person for all other major decisions concerning the<br />

business. This not only puts a lot of pressure on a leader’s time, it also<br />

leaves a big gap between being functional in your business with average<br />

results and being a high performing company with outstanding results in<br />

your sector.”<br />

While StakUp brings to the table the online platform, Henry said TCA<br />

brings to the table “that 13-year history of audited data from some of the<br />

best motor carriers in North America,” providing both entities the opportunity<br />

to grow.<br />

inGauge will allow carriers and their employees to anonymously<br />

compare their operational results on approximately 15-30 performance<br />

metrics versus a chosen peer group, and share best practice knowledge<br />

to enhance future results.<br />

“My own company has utilized TCA’s benchmarking program in the<br />

past, and now that I see the flexible and intuitive platform that StakUp<br />

has built, it’s clear to me that the merger of the two is going to take the<br />

trucking industry by storm,” said TCA Chairman Keith Tuttle. “There’s a<br />

tremendous value in knowing how you compare against other companies<br />

of similar size and resources. This will improve profits and efficiency,<br />

while reducing risk.”<br />

For TCA Immediate Past Chairman Shepard Dunn, inGauge is the culmination<br />

of a two-year passion.<br />

Almost 24 months ago when Tom Kretsinger was chairman of TCA,<br />

Dunn approached Kretsinger and asked the chairman if he could take on<br />

the challenge of making an already successful benchmarking program<br />

even more successful.<br />

44 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>


That initiative took TCA down various roads.<br />

“One of those roads was the process of how StakUp came to us,” Dunn<br />

said. “We believed there was a need for this type of information to be shared<br />

with other carriers out there. Because TCA has had a very successful benchmarking<br />

program for years, we wanted to find someone who could capitalize<br />

on that success for their benefit and TCA’s benefit. We’re thrilled about this<br />

joint venture and believe it will grow rapidly.”<br />

The ability of carriers to see aggregated anonymous data will make for a<br />

strong industry, Dunn said.<br />

“If you’re a carrier and you have a 95 OR and you’re happy with that,<br />

good for you. But if you can learn from others that are better buyers of fuel<br />

and equipment or better managers of labor, that is what is going to make<br />

you strive to say, ‘I can do better than 95. Maybe I can get to 93.’ Then<br />

you’ve just increased your bottom line by 2 percent and that’s huge. So any<br />

time as an industry we can make each other better that makes it better for<br />

everybody overall.”<br />

Dunn recalled a recent conversation he had with the chief executive of a<br />

private 7,000-truck carrier:<br />

“He once told me, ‘If I can teach you how to be a better trucker, that makes<br />

you more competitive with me, and when you are competitive with me that<br />

means it’s a better market out there.’<br />

“He’s exactly right and that’s ultimately all this is doing. It is raising the bar<br />

for everybody by helping them understand their businesses better.”<br />

TCA Hires Member Development Specialist<br />

The <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association has<br />

hired Dan Tidwell to serve as its Membership<br />

Development Specialist.<br />

He began work with the TCA August 8.<br />

Tidwell is the former senior vice president<br />

of Randall Reilly’s Construction Division.<br />

He is also a former publisher and regional<br />

sales manager for Equipment World<br />

magazine and a former director of the<br />

Overdrive Radio Network.<br />

Some of his achievements include<br />

launching several new publications and<br />

products within the construction industry,<br />

generating impressive sales revenues, and<br />

leading and motivating others.<br />

In his new role at TCA, Tidwell will focus<br />

on identifying and recruiting prospective<br />

members as well as finding ways to retain current members.<br />

DAN TIDWELL<br />

“While Dan is smooth and humble, he will also be aggressive,” said Michael<br />

Eggleton Jr., vice president of Raider Express Inc. and co-chairman of the Membership<br />

Committee. “He knows he can get the job done and be successful, but knows<br />

where he came from. We were looking for a salesman second, and the aforementioned<br />

qualities first and we feel we got both. Truckers want someone who relates<br />

to them on all levels, not a salesman who was just selling stocks on Wall Street.<br />

Dan fits right in and knows where we as an industry come from, too.”<br />

“Dan has a long history in our industry, giving him the benefit of understanding<br />

the fleet mindset,” said Al Anderson, national sales manager at the Bose<br />

Corporation and co-chairman of the Membership Committee. “In addition, he<br />

really ‘gets it’ when it comes to the benefits current and prospective members<br />

want and need to feel a part of TCA. His willingness to be flexible in the way we<br />

work together is a good indicator of how he will be able to respond to the unique<br />

challenges this job will pose.”<br />

Dan can be reached at (703) 838-1950 or by e-mail at dtidwell@truckload.<br />

org.<br />

www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 45


SPRING 2014<br />

Mark Your<br />

Calendar<br />

>> sEPtEmBER 10-11 - Open Deck Division Annual meeting -<br />

Renaissance O’Hare suites Hotel, Chicago. Find more information at<br />

truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.<br />

>> sEPtEmBER 22 - 3rd Annual Wreaths Across America gala - grand<br />

Hyatt Washington, Washington, D.C. Find more information at truckload.org<br />

or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.<br />

october <strong>2015</strong><br />

august <strong>2015</strong><br />

>> August 20 - 12-1:30 p.m. Et - Accommodating Employee Religious<br />

Practices in the trucking Industry WEBINAR. Register online at truckload.org.<br />

>> August 27 - 12-1:30 p.m. Et - truck safety in the New Age of<br />

technology WEBINAR. Register online at truckload.org.<br />

septeMber <strong>2015</strong><br />

>> sEPtEmBER 10 - Independent Contractor Division Annual meeting<br />

- Renaissance O’Hare suites Hotel, Chicago. Find more information at<br />

truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.<br />

>> OCtOBER 17-20 - tCA at AtA’s management Conference &<br />

Exhibition (mC&E) - Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Convention Center &<br />

Philadelphia marriott Downtown.<br />

DeceMber <strong>2015</strong><br />

>> DECEmBER 12 - Wreaths Across America Day - Arlington National<br />

Cemetery (and other national cemeteries across the nation). Become a<br />

part of Wreaths Across America by visiting WreathsAcrossAmerica.org.<br />

March 2016<br />

>> mARCH 6-9 - tCA Annual Convention - Wynn Resort, Las Vegas.<br />

Find more information at truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.<br />

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