Truckload Authority - Fall 2014

meet the highway angels | top rookie award | tca scholarship winners
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
fall 2014
National News maker
Dr. Ben Carson
Prescription for America
18
Money Talks • It’s Not Me, It’s You • Safari Summer
Proven strategies to
Chairman Dunn‘s
06 retain more drivers
“wild” summer 34
Money’s power in
American politics 30

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Fall Edition | TCA 2014
Special Contribution
Naming the Next
TCA President
On June 26, 2014, Truckload Carriers Association President Chris Burruss resigned from
our organization, citing personal reasons.
We cannot thank him enough for his work on our behalf. Can you imagine leading an organization
of TCA’s size and stature for an entire decade, especially long-distance? (Chris commuted
back and forth from Missouri to TCA’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, about once a week.)
Perhaps one of his greatest feats was steering us through the turbulence of the recession, when
we, like most other trade and professional associations, experienced rapid revenue drops as the
economy tanked. Somehow, he kept us moving in the right direction, and we have bounced back
admirably.
I have no doubt that, whatever his next endeavor, Chris is going to land solidly on two feet. All
of us wish him and his family the best as he makes the transition.
As for TCA, where do we stand? We’re actually in very good shape for a 76-year-old organization.
We enjoy a strong and loyal membership base, are financially sound, have a strategic
plan that is our roadmap, and are more “transparent” than ever before. We offer many outstanding
programs, such as benchmarking, which is on the verge of launching three new groups. And we
have finally figured out how to maintain a healthy continuity between chairmen to ensure that the
association’s offerings continue to build year upon year.
As I write this, our Search Task Force — consisting of six officers, two past chairmen and one
member truckload carrier — has been wading through 100-plus applications, a daunting task at
best.
I’m pleased to say we’ve finally narrowed the short list to just four people.
Shepard Dunn
Chairman
Truckload Carriers Association
shepard.dunn@bestwayexpress.com
The decision is going to come down to a well-rounded person who can wear a lot of hats.
Someone who can relate to the up-and-coming young people within our industry and entice them
into participating. An individual who can anticipate potential government regulations before they
officially come to light and ensure that the membership is educated and prepared for them. Ultimately,
this will be a leader who sees how the world is changing and is willing to embrace new
programs and technologies so that we can change, too.
I’m excited and looking forward to being able to introduce the next president of TCA. Whoever
you are, you’ll be taking the helm of a great group. We have the best, most committed staff out
there. I believe with the right individual, we can take programs and services for truckload carriers
to a level that this industry has never seen.
TCA is right on the cusp of doing great things in a lot of different areas. Stay tuned to find out
the name of the person who will take us there!
Shepard Dunn
Chairman’s choices
Prescription for America
Potential GOP presidential hopeful Dr. Ben
Carson prescribes his cures for America.
Page 18
Tech Takeover
Technology already dominates our lives.
It’s no different in the trucking business.
Page 24
Socializing for Success
The social media revolution can improve
your business. We’ll show you how.
Page 28
TCA 2014 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority

The
Road
Map
ROUTING & NaVIGaTION
PROVIDED BY
Special contribution
3 | Naming the Next TCA President by Shepard Dunn
legiSlative look-in
6 | Money Talks
10 | Coming to America
12 | From Where We Sit
14 | Ferro’s Farewell
Fall 2014
18 | national newS maker sponsored by The Trucker news organizaTion
Prescription for America with Dr. Ben Carson
tracking the trendS sponsored by skybiTz
24 | Tech Takeover, Part II
28 | Socializing for Success
30 | It’s Not Me, It’s You
part iii in a SerieS of iv
a chat with the chairman sponsored by McLeod sofTware
34 | Safari Summer with Shepard Dunn
member mailroom
39 | Significance of Wreaths Across America Gala
555 E. Braddock Road, Alexandria, VA 22314
www.Truckload.org
chairman of the board
Shepard Dunn
President & CEO, Bestway Express
executive vice preSident
William Giroux
wgiroux@truckload.org
director of education
Ron Goode
rgoode@truckload.org
firSt vice chair
Keith Tuttle
President
Motor Carrier Service Inc.
Second vice chair
Russell Stubbs
President & CEO
FFE Transportation Services Inc.
vice preSident – development
Debbie Sparks
dsparks@truckload.org
director, Safety & policy
Dave Heller
dheller@truckload.org
treaSurer
Rob Penner
Executive Vice President & COO
Bison Transport
Secretary
Daniel Doran
President
Ace Doran Hauling & Rigging
immediate paSt chair
Tom B. Kretsinger Jr.
President & CEO, American Central Transport
The viewpoints and opinions of those quoted in articles in this
publication are not necessarily those of TCA.
In exclusive partnership with America’s Trucking Newspaper:
1123 S. University Ave., Ste 320, Little Rock, AR 72204
www.TheTrucker.com
talking tca
40 | Highway Angel
42 | Top Rookie
44 | TCA Scholarship Recipients 2014
45 | Officer’s Retreat in Napa
46 | Mark Your Calendar
vice preSident
Ed Leader
edl@thetrucker.com
editor
Lyndon Finney
editor@thetrucker.com
aSSociate editor
Dorothy Cox
dlcox@thetrucker.com
contributing writer
Aprille Hanson
aprilleh@thetrucker.com
Special correSpondent
Cliff Abbott
cliffa@thetrucker.com
publiSher + general mgr.
Micah Jackson
publisher@thetrucker.com
creative director
Raelee Toye Jackson
raeleet@thetrucker.com
production + art director
Rob Nelson
robn@thetrucker.com
production + art aSSiStant
Christie Arnold
christiea@thetrucker.com
adminiStrator
Leah M. Birdsong
leahb@thetrucker.com
advertiSing and marketing department
Raelee Toye Jackson, Sales Director
raeleet@thetrucker.com
national marketing conSultant
Kelly Brooke Drier
kellydr@thetrucker.com
© 2014 Trucker Publications Inc., all rights reserved. Reproduction without written permission
prohibited. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All advertisements
and editorial materials are accepted and published by Truckload Authority and its exclusive partner,
Trucker Publications, on the representation that the advertiser, its advertising company and/
or the supplier of editorial materials are authorized to publish the entire contents and subject
matter thereof. The publisher reserves the right to accept or reject any art from client. Such entities
and/or their agents will defend, indemnify and hold Truckload Authority, Truckload Carriers
Association, Target Media Partners, and its subsidiaries included, by not limited to, Trucker
Publications Inc., harmless from and against any loss, expense, or other liability resulting from
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Cover Photo Courtesy of Deborah Feingold
Additional magazine
photography courtesy of:
AP Images: p. 14, 20, 22
Bartholomew Photography: p. 3
Deborah Feingold: p. 3, 18, 23, 43
FMCSA: p. 14
FotoSearch: p. 3, 6, 7, 8, 10-11, 12, 19,
24-25, 28, 30-31, 34-35, 46
OOIDA: p. 14
Ryan Forrest: p. 30
Shepard Dunn: p. 36
TCA: p. 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45
The Trucker News Organization:
p. 30-31, 42, 43
4 Truckload Authority auThoriTy | www.Truckload.org
www.Truckload.org Tca TCA 2014 2014

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Fall Edition | TCA 2014
Legislative Look-In
Money Talks
By Lyndon Finney
“If I were a rich man … The most important men in town would come to
fawn on me!” — Tevye in the Broadway hit musical, “Fiddler on the
Roof.”
“You have to realize, when you start contributing to these guys, they give
you access to meet them and talk about your issues.” — New York-based
precious metals magnate Andrew Sabin, talking about personal visits
from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Gov. Rick Scott,
whose campaigns had benefitted from Sabin’s generosity.
So there you have it from a poor Jewish dairy farmer in Russia who knew
how money could influence people and a New York precious metals magnate
who’s using his cash to do just that.
It’s all part of what has become a grand scheme in political campaign
financing these days — keep Joe Citizen at arm’s length while opening the
floodgates for organizations, unions, big business, corporations and yes
— the Andrew Sabins of this country — to pour in seemingly unlimited
amounts of cash … and influence.
You can thank the U.S. Supreme Court for that, the result of two conservative-led
rulings which in 2010 gave organizations and unions the right
to directly support candidates through media advertising and then earlier
this year loosened the purse strings of corporations, unions and individuals
— at least those who could afford it — by greatly increasing the amount of
allowable donations.
The ruling this year proved to be such a sore spot for campaign finance
reform advocates that within days of the ruling a Political Action Committee
or PAC was formed to help elect lawmakers who believe massive campaign
financing reform is a necessity.
Many political pundits feel the 2014 ruling will further weaken the influence
of the average citizen on who makes the laws that govern them.
“If Citizens United [the 2010 decision] opened a door, [the 2014 decision],
we fear, will open a floodgate,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said in a
verbal dissent delivered from the bench. He added that the ruling “overturns
key precedent, creates serious loopholes in the law and undermines, perhaps
devastates, what remains of campaign finance reform.”
Lawrence Lessig, founder and board chairman of Mayday PAC, the independent
political action committee (“superPAC”) that aims to elect a Congress
committed to fundamental reform, echoes Breyer’s sentiments.
Lessig is also the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at
Harvard Law School, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at
Harvard University, and founder of Rootstrikers, a network of activists leading
the fight against government corruption.
“We believe that the way campaigns are funded today has made it impossible
for our government to take on any serious issue sensibly, whether
it’s on the left or the right, because politicians are obsessed with raising the
money they need to fund their campaigns from such a tiny, tiny fraction of
the American public,” he said from his office at Harvard. “We estimate that
no more than .05 percent of Americans are relevant funders of campaigns,
which means those who do are incredibly powerful in effectively directing
policy, and that means it’s easy for any reform, whether on the left or the
right, to be blocked by that tiny, tiny number.”
Lessig and others started the Mayday PAC to try to build a movement to
make it possible to change the way elections are funded by electing a Congress
committed to that reform by 2016.
Here’s how the 2014 court decision changes campaign financing:
For candidates
Before the ruling, a single donor could contribute up to $5,200 to every
House and Senate candidate up to a limit of $48,600. Now a single donor
can give $5,200 to every House and Senate candidate of one party in a 468-
race election cycle, totaling $2,433,600.
Party committee
Before, contributions to party committees were limited to a $74,600 total.
Now, a single donor can give $32,400 to each of the three federal party
committees each year and $10,000 to each of the party’s 50 state committees
for up to $1,194,400 in donations in a two-year election cycle.
Political action committees
Before, contributions to PACs were limited to a total of $74,600 in increments
of up to $5,000. There were 2,757 PACS in the 2012 election cycle.
Now, a single donor can give up to $5,000 to each PAC aligned with his or
her political interest. If a donor spent $5,000 on every PAC in the 2012 election
cycle, that would equal $13.7 million.
“There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate
in electing our political leaders,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote
in the court’s main opinion. “We have made it clear that Congress may not
regulate contributions simply to reduce the amount of money in politics, or
to restrict the political participation of some in order to enhance the relative
influence of others.”
Many, Lessig included, believe the change in campaign financing will
strengthen the ability of big business to impact elections, which in turn will
influence the decisions that are made on Capitol Hill.
“I think it [the method in which campaigns are funded because of the
ruling] is the most important problem our democracy faces because it blocks
the ability for us to deal with any other problem,” he said.
And that’s regardless of which party you favor.
“If you’re a Democrat and you care about climate change legislation,
healthcare reform and financial reform, it’s obvious why the way we currently
fund campaigns makes it impossible to get principle reform in any of
those areas,” he said in reference to the influence big contributors have on
both parties, a factor that has resulted in a contentious environment among
lawmakers. “If you’re a Republican and you want tax reform, we’ll never
reform the way we collect taxes so long as we fund campaigns the way we
do, and the reason for that is the complex system of taxes that we have now
is designed in part to make it easier for members of Congress to raise the
money they need to fund their campaigns.
“All of these special tax exceptions are just fund-raising opportunities and
Congressmen exploit those opportunities shamelessly as they go around
and fund-raise on the basis of the need to preserve special tax benefits that
these special groups are given. So you are not going to get tax reform, or
shrink the size of government, or get debt reform as long as we fund campaigns
the way we do now.”
Thomas Goldstein, publisher of SCOTUSblog.com, noted that every
time the current Supreme Court has confronted a campaign finance restriction,
it had struck down that restriction.
“It has been on a slow but steady march toward deregulation, toward
saying that restrictions on your spending money — say, in expenditures or in
contributions to candidates — is a free speech right,” he wrote on the blog.
In the eyes of many, the 2014 ruling chipped away at the central distinction
drawn in Buckley v. Valeo, the court’s seminal 1976 campaign finance
decision. Independent spending, the court said in Buckley, is political speech
protected by the First Amendment. But contributions may be capped, the
court said then, in the name of preventing corruption, adding in passing that
aggregate contribution limits were a “quite modest restraint upon protected
political activity” that “serves to prevent evasion” of the base limits.
Money’s influence on politics is certainly nothing new.
In an article published recently by World Prosperity, a Washington-based
organization whose mission is to “determine how to make social systems
such as education, healthcare, government and families work more effectively,”
two examples are cited.
In 1995, an independent study commissioned by Congress determined
that no more B-2 bombers should be built in 1995. At the cost of $493 million
per plane, the B-2 bombers were costly. Furthermore, the Pentagon had
declared that it did not want any more B-2 bombers. However, one year
later, members of Congress voted to allocate funding to build another B-2
bomber. Why did members of the Congress agree to this expenditure?
One possible reason according to World Prosperity: The PAC of Northrop
Grumman, the builder of B-2 bombers, donated $320,775 to members of
Congress in 1995. This amount was twice the sum given to Congress in
1993 and 1994. In fact, when another bill was proposed to eliminate funding
from the B-2 in June 1996, Northrop Grumman gave another $75,200 to
finance campaigns of members of Congress.
The Center for Responsive Politics is based in Washington. Its
mission as stated on its website, opensecrets.org, is to inform citizens
about how money in politics affects their lives and empowers voters
and activists by providing unbiased information, and to advocate for a
Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

“There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our
political leaders. We have made it clear that Congress may not regulate contributions simply to
reduce the amount of money in politics, or to restrict the political participation of some in
order to enhance the relative influence of others.”
— Chief Justice John G. Roberts.
transparent and responsive government.
According to the Center’s website, between
1989 and 2014, Northrop Grumman ranked
50th on the list of top all-time donors to political
campaigns, with contributions of $21,231,748.
Forty-two percent went to Democratic causes
and 57 percent to Republican causes (the
other 1 percent went to so-called third-party
candidacies).
Another example of campaign influence
cited by World Prosperity was the 1996 Telecommunications
Act touted by Congress as a
means to increase competition in the industry,
decrease prices and improve service for the
public. In reality, according to World Prosperity,
the new legislation essentially deregulated
the telecommunications industry, thus enabling
large corporations to merge with one
another and increase prices at the expense
of the public. Telecommunications corporations
contributed $3.5 million to members of
Congress in 1995. The two most enthusiastic
supporters of the new legislation, then-Senate
Commerce Committee Chairman Larry
Pressler, who received $103,165 from telecom
PACs, and House Telecommunications and
Finance Subcommittee Chairman Jack Field,
who received $97,500, were the two chief
beneficiaries of the corporation’s generosity.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics,
AT&T Inc., formed by the merger of numerous
telecommunications companies, was
the fourth-highest donor to political campaigns
between 1989 and 2014, with total donations
of $58,119,596. Of that, 41 percent went to
Democratic candidates, 58 percent to Republicans
and 1 percent to third-party groups.
A more recent example of a heavy donation
and subsequent legislation occurred in the
2008 presidential election.
An exclusive analysis created for the independent
journalism organization Raw Story
showed that President Barack Obama received
a staggering $20,175,303 from the healthcare
industry during the 2008 election cycle, nearly
three times the amount of his presidential rival
John McCain, who took in $7,758,289.
Research by the Center for Responsive Politics
showed that Obama received $19,462,986
from the health delivery sector, which includes
health professionals ($11.7 million), health
services/HMOs ($1.4 million), hospitals/nursing
homes ($3.3 million) and pharmaceuticals/health
products ($2.1 million). Miscellaneous
health donations from which Obama
received $860,411 are also factored in.
Health insurance industry contributions,
however, are not included
within the Center’s current health
sector totals. Rather, contributions
from the health insurance
industry are contained
within the site’s finance and
insurance sector. Seeking a
more complete total, the
Center culled health and
accident insurance donations from this sector
(for which Obama received $712,317), and
combined them with his existing health sector
total ($19,462,986) to arrive at his healthcare
industry total of $20,175,303.
Dave Levinthal, the Center’s communications
director, noted that Obama out-raised
McCain in nearly all business sectors that contributed
to the 2008 presidential candidates.
In that regard, the healthcare industry figure
is not in itself an anomaly.
But Levinthal underscored the significance
of the industry’s largess.
“What it also means when you look at it
just on its own merit is that Obama definitely
has a relationship with the health sector,”
Levinthal told Raw Story. “When you raise $20
million from one group, obviously they’ve curried
some favor with you and you have a lot
of people in that sector who support you. So
to say that just because he out-raised McCain
overall doesn’t mean anything in the context
of the health sector might not necessarily
be true.”
“People want to be able to curry
favor with those who are in power,”
he added. “And one way to do
that is by making donations to
candidates and officials who
are represented by the party
in power. Or who look like
they’re going to win.”

Of course, we all know that one of the first priorities of the Obama administration
was healthcare reform, now affectionately — or unaffectionately,
depending on your politics — known as Obamacare, which required more
Americans to buy insurance premiums from the insurance industry and who
would then use that insurance for more visits to the doctor, contributing
more money for medical practices.
If you want to see how much money is poured into Congressional politics
each cycle, the Center for Responsive Politics can tell you with the click of
a mouse.
With two months to go until the election, candidates for the 33 Senate
seats up for grabs have raised $411,571,328, with $208,250,766 going
to 133 Republican candidates and $201,762,678 going to 56 Democratic
candidates (the funds include those raised by candidates who lost in the
primaries).
Over in the House, the 744 Republican candidates have raised
$430,077,922 and 588 Democrats have raised $321,413,421 for a total of
$753,967,064.
Most pundits feel by the end of the campaign, with several hot races set
to decide the balance of power in the Senate, total contributions will top the
$699 billion raised for Senate races and $1.3 billion raised for House races
[$1.3 billion was raised for the 2012 presidential campaign].
A September article in the Washington Post pointed out the reality of virtually
unlimited giving by those who can afford it, which will further diminish
the influence of most Americans.
Sabin himself gave Republicans so much money in 2012 that he accidentally
went over the limit of how much individuals could donate to federal
candidates and party committees.
Since the Supreme Court did away with the limit, by his own admission,
Sabin has been a heavy contributor, handing out contributions to Congressional
candidates across the
country — in Colorado, Texas,
Iowa and even Alaska.
Top Republicans have taken
notice, Sabin pointed out: Texas
Sen. Ted Cruz, and Florida Gov.
Rick Scott have paid him personal
visits, he said.
“You have to realize, when
you start contributing to these
guys, they give you access to
meet them and talk about your issues,” Sabin, who has given away more
than $177,000, said. “They know that I’m a big supporter.”
Sabin may be a self-proclaimed “big supporter,” but his name doesn’t
even appear on the Top 100 list compiled by the Center for Responsive
Politics.
Topping the list is Thomas Steyer and his wife Kathryn, who have given
$20,453,034 to Democrats. Steyer is a San Francisco hedge fund manager,
philanthropist and environmentalist whose net worth in March was estimated
to be $1.6 billion.
Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has donated
$9,495,798, or 95 percent, to Democrats.
The largest contributor to Republicans has been New York City resident
Paul E. Singer, founder and CEO of hedge fund Elliott Management Corp.
and the Paul E. Singer Foundation, whose entire donation of $5,155,949 has
gone to GOP candidates.
In addition, 34 individuals (and spouses) have given $1 million or more.
Since the 2014 ruling, 310 political donors have already passed the
$123,200 maximum that had been in place, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics. In addition, these donors contributed $50.2 million to federal
candidates and political committees, including $11.6 million more than
would have been allowed before the court decision, the Center reported.
RealClearPolitics is a Chicago-based political news and polling data aggregator
formed in 2000 by former options trader John McIntyre and former
advertising agency account executive Tom Bevan who say their website,
realclearpolitics.com, was started to give readers “ideological diversity”
although the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America
and others describe the site as being right-wing. Forbes Media now has a 51
percent interest in the company.
Whatever its stance, Politico Executive Editor Jim VandeHei has called the
“We believe that the way campaigns are funded
today has made it impossible for our government to take
on any serious issue sensibly, whether it’s on the left or
the right, because politicians are obsessed with raising
the money they need to fund their campaigns from such
a tiny, tiny fraction of the American public.”
site “an essential stop for anyone interested in politics.”
As of Labor Day, RealClearPolitics says the GOP will win 46 seats, one
more than the Democrats.
There are nine toss-up races. Three of those — Kentucky, Louisiana
and North Carolina — are among the top five heaviest-financed campaigns
among the November general election candidates this year, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics.
In Kentucky, where current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
holds a slim lead over Alison Grimes, McConnell has raised almost $24 million,
Grimes just over $11 million.
In Louisiana, incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu is leading
four Republicans and one independent in a winner-take-all primary-style
election. Landrieu has raised $14 million. Republican Bill Cassidy has raised
$8.6 million, Republican Rob Maness $1.5 million, Republican Paul Hollis
$624,000 and independent candidate Brannon McMorris $4,900.
Finally in North Carolina, where incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan is in a
tight race with Republican Thom Tillis, Hagan has raised $16.6 million, Tillis
$4.7 million.
The other Senate race in the top five is Minnesota, where incumbent
Al Franken, who is leading investment banker Mike Fadden by double digits
in most polls for a seat that Real Clear Politics puts in the Democratic
camp, has raised over $25 million while McFadden has raised just over $4
million.
In a key race that ranked in the top five when also including candidates
that ran in the primary, the daughter of former Democratic Senator Sam
Nunn, Michelle Nunn, who is trailing Republican David Perdue in five of six
polls, has raised $9.2 million while Perdue has raised $5.8 million.
Another campaign that doesn’t rank in the top 10, but rivals Georgia, is
Arkansas, another toss-up state that pits incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor
against Republican Tom Cotton,
a current member of the House
of Representatives. It’s a race
where a television spot against
one candidate may be followed
by a spot for that same campaign.
Neither is it uncommon
to see four, five maybe even as
many as six spots for and/or
against both candidates during a
30-minute TV program.
Polls show this race is a mathematical toss-up.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus recently touted
the importance of this campaign, saying during a stop in Little Rock, Arkansas,
that “if you want to stop [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid, you’ve
got to actually fire Mark Pryor. If you want to end this dysfunction in Washington,
you have to fire Harry Reid. If you want better healthcare, better
schools, you have to fire Harry Reid. You have to also retire Mark Pryor.”
Pryor has raised $8.9 million, Cotton $6 million.
If Lessig and his group are successful, they hope to offer Congress two
options on funding elections.
There are two prominent types of “small dollar public funding”: a matching
system, and vouchers, and his group would be fine with either, Lessig
said.
The matching system is where small dollar contributions are matched by
the government, at the extreme with a 9-to-1 match.
“So if a candidate agrees to fund his or her campaign with small contributions,
those small contributions can be matched up to 9-to-1 so a $100
contribution could be worth $1,000 to a campaign,” Lessig said.
A voucher system gives small dollar vouchers to all registered voters.
Voters can use those vouchers to contribute to candidates for Congress who
restrict their funding to vouchers only, as well as small contributions beyond
vouchers.
“Both of those are achieving the same objective, which is to radically
increase the number of relevant funders of campaigns so that this tiny,
tiny number doesn’t have this extraordinary veto power over policy,” Lessig
said.
Good ideas, no doubt, but only if the PAC is successful in electing candidates
that favor reform.
Money says that likely won’t happen.
— Lawrence Lessig, founder and chairman, Mayday PAC
Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

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Coming to
By Dorothy Cox
America
Fox News Anchor Bret Baier says it’s not if,
but when, President Barack Obama, with the
stroke of his pen, gives millions of illegal immigrants
the necessary documentation to stay
in the U.S., get jobs and eventually become citizens.
And two important questions for trucking
are these: Will this newly empowered group be
attracted to a $45,000- or $50,000-a-year job
that doesn’t require a college degree? A job like
driving a truck? And, will these workers take
trucking jobs for less pay than seasoned drivers,
thus artificially driving down pay rates just
when they’re beginning to go up?
It depends on who you talk to.
Baier, anchor of Fox’s “Special Report with
Bret Baier,” tells Truckload Authority that a large
influx of former illegals into trucking or any business
“may be a problem … the talent pool would
change and … change the dynamics with pay.
Some [industries] of course would welcome it.
That’s the yin and yang of the whole issue.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Hispanics and Blacks have had considerably
lower earnings than Asians and Whites. In 2010,
for example, “median usual weekly earnings of
full-time wage and salary workers” were $535
for Hispanics and $611 for Blacks, compared
with $765 for Whites and $855 for Asians.
Will that wage disparity continue and bleed
over into trucking? Nobody knows as yet, although
Baier answered with a rhetorical question:
“When you think of immigration reform do
you think of highly skilled [labor] or poor people”
who would be willing to work for less?
A wealth of fresh workers to man unseated
trucks could be a boon to trucking on the face
of it.
“I think if immigration happens, the general
consensus is it would be a good thing for trucking,
especially if you look at the driver shortage
above 200,000 and immigrants being hardworking
and entrepreneurial … especially as owneroperators
who create a life for themselves and
for future generations,” says Arizona Trucking
Association CEO Tony Bradley.
Immigration reform of the sort Obama is considering
— and many think is sold on — would
open up “a pool of drivers attracted to the industry
who will be very successful,” Bradley says.
And both Bradley and Texas Trucking Association
CEO John Esparza say immigration reform
or not, the number of Hispanic workers is
growing and will continue to grow at a fast clip.
In fact, Esparza says by 2050 Texas will be an
Hispanic majority state.
“Mexico is more like a front porch than a
backyard” to Texas, he is fond of saying.
Esparza’s own family of truckers dates back
to the 1900s when his grandfather started a
trucking company; the now 93-year-old drove a
truck for 56 years.
“I would suggest that while we need drivers
so badly what I hear is that more [Hispanics]
view trucking as a way to provide for their families,”
Esparza says.
In the belt of counties below San Antonio,
shale oil companies are renting RVs “and six
guys live there and wire a lot of money back
home” to Mexico from driving trucks, he says,
adding that these drivers are making more
money than ever before because of the pressing
need.
But will higher wages make the jump over to
other driving jobs?
Some in the industry think recent wage increases
by Swift, U.S. Xpress and other carriers
could definitely spell a trend.
Others are not so sure.
Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association
Executive Vice President Todd Spencer
says if illegal immigrants are allowed to stay in
the U.S. and they find work as truck drivers,
he hopes trucking will not be “penny smart and
pound foolish.”

He says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
as well as some major trucking stakeholders
have gone on record wanting to hire workers
from “other parts of the world. … Not to
say they aren’t decent truckers in their own
countries but not many countries have a lot
in common with [truckers in] America.
“We are perilously close right now to
permanently creating a situation for trucking
companies where the jobs are simply
no longer considered a smart career option
[but] something you can do until something
better comes along,” he adds. “Regrettably,
trucking is probably not going to attract anything
close to the best and brightest and no
amount of technology is going to compensate
for the expertise and professionalism
that an experienced driver can provide.”
Spencer says he hopes trucking companies
won’t “blow” an opportunity to “fundamentally
increase amounts of revenue for
providing needed, valuable service” thus
creating a “greater driving workforce.”
Maverick USA Chairman and CEO Steve
Williams is of the opinion that “in the near
term,” if something were done to increase
the numbers of job-ready immigrants,
“there won’t be a tremendous uptick in the
availability of drivers because it’s generational;
a lot of the people in the Hispanic
community don’t want driving jobs that are
available” where individuals are gone away
from home for a long time.
People say the driver shortage is “not
about the money, [but] it is,” Williams says.
It’s also about home time and quality of
life, he notes. On the other hand, he says,
“There’s a price point where people will do
things they don’t want to do whether Hispanic
or Anglo American.”
It would seem that at least for the oil
shale truckers in south Texas, the money to
be made is well worth the time spent away
from home.
A new Pew Research study found that
44 percent of Mexicans think life north of
the border is better, 34 percent said they
would move if they had the opportunity and
17 percent said they would do so illegally.
A whopping 79 percent said crime is a big
problem in their country and 72 percent
worry about drug cartel-related violence.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
the percentage of Hispanics in the
“driver/sales workers and truck drivers” labor
category is steadily increasing without
immigration reform.
Hispanics comprised 17.5 percent of this
category in 2010. By 2011 that percentage
was 17.6 percent and in 2012, the latest figures
available, it was 19.3 percent.
Meanwhile, the truck driver shortage has
made mainstream media news.
“We could put 100 people to work tomorrow
if we had qualified graduates,” a director
of career services at National Training, a privately-owned
truck driver training school that
operates a 350-acre training ground in Green
Cove Springs, Florida, told one media outlet,
even as The New York Times published an
article highlighting Swift’s pay increase and
the depressed state of truck driver wages.
President Obama has kept details of his
immigration plans pretty close to the vest,
but each new tidbit of information makes
headlines.
The White House refused Aug. 29 to
commit to executive action on immigration
by the end of the summer, stirring speculation
that the president might be planning to
delay some of the more controversial steps
until after November elections.
“I just don’t have any additional information
to share with you about what that time
frame is,” White House press secretary Josh
Earnest said, The Hill reported.
Obama hinted that developing a federal
response to the summer surge of migrant
children across the border had hindered
progress on broader immigration efforts.
“Some of these things do affect timelines
and we’re just going to be working through
as systematically as possible in order to get
this done,” Obama said.
“But have no doubt: In the absence of
Congressional action, I’m going to do what I
can to make sure the system works better.”
Lisa Navarrete, adviser to the president
of La Raza, (Spanish for “the race” or
“lineage”), the U.S. Hispanic civil rights
and advocacy organization, says broader
immigration efforts are definitely on the
group’s agenda.
“We believe it just doesn’t make a lot of
sense for our government — if we’re on the
cusp of passing comprehensive immigration
reform — that we should be spending
resources on people who might otherwise
be eligible for relief in a larger bill,” she was
quoted as saying.
A story released in August in the Huffington
Post says a newly released e-mail
showed the Democratic research firm American
Bridge had highlighted 10 instances in
which past presidents had used their authority
to apply selective prosecution of immigration
laws and that Democrats see that
as a springboard allowing Obama to “go big”
on immigration reform.
Those past instances targeted specific
populations caught up in complex and dangerous
foreign policy crises.
Immigration lawyers who are sympathetic
to the White House say that these actions
provide a sound basis on which the current
administration can act.
Critics of the president, however, argue
that past presidential actions do not necessarily
justify future ones of a different and
wider scope.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of
the Center for Immigration Studies and an
opponent of Obama on immigration, says
nearly all past presidents issued executive
orders in response to emergencies abroad,
which fell under their foreign policy powers
and responsibilities.
Should Obama make as dramatic a
change as many think he will, things will
“blow up” politically, predicts Fox’s Baier. He
says it would cause Republicans and other
critics to even more vehemently demand
the president’s impeachment.
In the short run, Baier says the immigration
issue will likely lead to Republican midterm
victories but that by 2016 Democrats
will again be positioned to win seats, the
American people having moved on from the
immigration crisis to something else.
If Baier is right, and even if he’s not, it is
incumbent upon trucking stakeholders and
voters in general, not to have memory lapse
come election time.

From Where We Sit
perspectives from across the american
political and business landscape
same old washington
“Today is about doing what Congress does too often: kicking the can down the road, avoiding one crisis while setting
up another.”
— Republican Rep. Thomas Petri of Wisconsin on Congress’ failure to pass a new surface transportation bill.
IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW
“Why wait until after the election? We may lose seats in the House; we may lose seats in the Senate. Then they will
simply say, ‘Oh, there they go, protecting those immigrants afterwards; why didn’t they do it before? Because they were
afraid.’ Let’s not be afraid of standing for our values, of standing for what we believe in as Democrats.”
— Democratic Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez of Illinois, urging President Barack Obama to act on immigration reform immediately.
PRESIDENTIAL TIMBER
“It would be wonderful if somebody would come along who really understood the Constitution, who understood
freedom and the importance of our Judeo-Christian traditions, who understood how business works and who
understood that our role in the world is as a leader, but not as a meddler in everything.”
SENATE TAKEOVER
— Dr. Ben Carson, noted pediatric neurosurgeon, author and speaker
“Summing [up] the probabilities of each race yields an estimate of 51 seats for Republicans. Some races have
slightly changed. Senate races in Montana, Mississippi, Georgia and Arkansas have all improved chances at a
GOP victory. Democrats in the Senate races in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Kansas, meanwhile, have all
slightly improved their chances at winning.”
— Nate Silver, noted American election and baseball statistician
social media revolution
“I am the most pumped-up guy over social media. Social media for me has been
a breath of fresh air because now we can interact with you. We have students that
say, ‘I’m about to graduate can you hire me?’ I’ll explain we require six months
experience, but here are companies that will take students that are good, solid,
legit companies and they’ll remember the favor.”
— Ed Kentner, National Carriers social media director
12 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

Ferro’s
Farewell
By Lyndon Finney
The office of the administrator of the
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
occupies a relatively small space on the
sixth floor of the Department of Transportation
headquarters in southeast Washington,
D.C. — only a stone’s throw from the Navy
Yard and Nationals Park, home of the Washington
Nationals.
Its size and somewhat conservative décor
are a reflection of John Hill, the agency
chief during the George W. Bush administration
who helped design the current FMCSA
headquarters layout and who believed that
the public’s call for less government
meant office size, too.
But while the size of the office
may be small, the job is
not. It is one of the most thankless
jobs in government since
the person who resides there
frequently finds themselves
entangled in a heated tug-ofwar
between safety advocates
who want more regulations and
commercial vehicle industry
stakeholders, who say they are
already overregulated.
Hill felt it during two court
battles over Hours of Service,
the beginnings of an ongoing
debate about electronic logging
devices and the early development
of CSA.
Anne Ferro felt it from the day
she set foot in the Senate confirmation
room on September 23,
2009, when the late Democratic
Sen. Frank Lautenberg looked her straight in the
eye and told her: “Given your ties, Ms. Ferro, to the
trucking industry [she was president and CEO of the
Maryland Trucking Association when appointed] ...
I am concerned about your ability to take the bold
action we need to keep Americans safe.”
And she felt it to the day she left the agency August
24 amidst continued ongoing controversy over
what else — Hours of Service, electronic logging
devices and CSA — among other issues.
If there was anything Ferro experienced that
Hill didn’t, it was a skirmish with trucking lobbyists
who were at odds with Ferro over portions
of the July 2013 HOS rule. When they didn’t get
the response they wanted from the administrator,
they went straight to Congress and got an
amendment to the surface transportation bill that
would have delayed trucking’s despised 34-hour
restart provision for one year while a study was
conducted on its impact on highway safety. The
amendment died when the bill was pulled from
the Senate floor.
She could be harsh and straight to the point
— such as in her rhetoric last January during
a question-and-answer session at the Mid-
West Truck & Trailer Show in Peoria, Ill.
“We are not changing the rule,” Ferro
said, obviously frustrated at the ongoing
push from trucking stakeholders to change
the 34-hour restart.
“This is the first time in a decade that
we’ve got a rule that passed legal challenge.
There are today no changes afoot,” she continued,
making a reference to the fact that
after three lawsuits, the Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia finally upheld an
HOS rule, saying that the FMC-
SA had “won a war of attrition.”
But she was also an amiable
administrator who liked to get
down in the trenches and talk
directly to the drivers who were
affected by the agency’s regulations.
Often she went to the Mid-
America Trucking Show to conduct
public hearings during
which she and the FMCSA were
the target of drivers’ criticism.
Toward the end of her tenure
at FMCSA, she came under fire
from one trucking association
who asked Transportation Secretary
Anthony Foxx to fire her,
a fact that she said later had no
bearing on her decision to leave
the agency to become president
and CEO of the American Association
of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
As she left, Ferro said she was most proud of
some of the things for which she had been most
soundly criticized.
She maintained her absolute defense of the current
HOS rule.
She touted CSA, calling it “a game changer”
which “put safety in the boardroom” and gave safety
management a place at the table.
And although Ferro said she was proud of language
against coercion that is included in the latest
electronic logging device proposed rulemaking, she
said it was no “silver bullet,” adding that in the current
economic climate where there is more demand
than supply, greater driver compensation should be
the result and that shippers which are abusive to
drivers “should be shut out if they don’t pay detention.”
So today, that small office is empty, waiting for
the next administrator who will likely serve through
the end of the Obama administration.
And who will leave office caught in that tugof-war
over HOS, CSA and electronic logging devices.
14 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

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TOP10
issues facing the new FMCSA administrator
1
Compliance, Safety, Accountability
Carriers feel CSA does not give a true picture of a company’s safety
record and want all BASIC scores hidden from public view.
2
Hours of Service
The rule has been in effect for 14 months, but the
controversy is heating up, with trucking desperately wanting
to return to the pre-2013 restart provision.
3
Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse +
Hair Testing
There is now no system to report failed drug tests to a common
clearinghouse, making it possible for drivers who test positive to
move from one carrier to another without detection. But even when
the clearinghouse is put into place sometime in 2015, many carriers
believe the FMCSA must address hair follicle testing.
4
Electronic Logging Devices
Is the language in the rule prohibiting coercion of drivers by
motor carriers, shippers and receivers strong enough to pass
muster with the commercial motor vehicle industry?
5
Drivers
The shortage is deepening each day, with an estimated shortage of
200,000-plus still forecast for 2020. While the new administrator
won’t hire drivers, he or she certainly will continue to hear from
trucking executives on how more regulations make recruiting much
more difficult.
6
Detention Time
Can the agency come up with a regulation that will
eliminate or greatly curtail excessive uncompensated
waiting times at shippers and receivers?
7
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
After years of providing regulatory “guidance,” the FMCSA says it
will address this issue through the rulemaking process as soon as
the necessary research is completed. Rules governing sleep studies
will certainly be met with disdain by drivers, many whom will have
to pay out-of-pocket for such tests.
Split Sleep
8
The agency is planning a pilot program on the impact of
split sleep, which allows a driver to divide the 10-hour rest
period differently than the current 8-2 split, something that
is heavily desired by drivers and carriers.
9
Financial Responsibility for Motor Carriers,
Freight Forwarders and Brokers
The minimum liability is now $750,000, although most companies
now carry at least $1 million. A minimum of $4 million has been
floated about, but the suggested amount has received at best a
lukewarm response from most carriers, especially small ones.
10
But how many more need to be shut down?
Passenger Carrier Safety
Operation Quick Strike put 52 unsafe
bus companies and 340 vehicles off the road.
© 2014 CAT Scale Company
Like us on
Facebook.
16 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org

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WITH
Prescription
for America
By Micah Jackson and Lyndon Finney
We all know about fairy tales, stories that range from those originating
in folklore to more modern stories defined as literary fairy
tales.
Wikipedia, the Internet encyclopedia, even has a long list of
worldwide fairy tales dating back to the 17th Century, 570 to be
exact.
We’re all familiar with how they begin — “Once upon a time …”
— and end — “and they lived happily ever after.”
And while most would say that fairy tales are fictional in nature,
how many times have we heard a relative or friend say someone’s
fairy tale came true, whether it be a trip to Walt Disney World for a
child stricken with a life-threatening disease, the college graduate
who lands that dream job or the woman who breaks through the
glass ceiling to become president and CEO of a nationally-known
company.
This is about someone whose story already has a “fairy tale”
ending, but one that may be headed toward an even greater sequel,
perhaps as the leader of the free world.
Meet Dr. Ben Carson, ghetto graduate, renowned pediatric neurosurgeon,
author, philanthropist and possible — maybe even probable
— candidate for the president of the United States, whose acclaim
exploded on the national scene when he took on the policies
of the Obama administration at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast
with President Barack Obama sitting within 10 feet of the dais.
During that speech, Carson made politically conservative comments
on several social and fiscal issues, including political correctness,
education, the national debt, healthcare reform and taxation.
Political correctness, he said, is dangerous because one of the
founding principles of the United States was freedom of thought and
freedom of expression.

Brought to you by
“Political correctness muffles people,” he
said. “It puts a muzzle on them.”
Throw out Obamacare, he said, offering another
healthcare plan.
“Here’s my solution. When a person is born,
give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical
record, and a health savings account to which
money can be contributed, pretax from the time
you are born, to the time you die. When you die,
you can pass it on to your family members.” Carson,
an avowed and outspoken Christian, talked
favorably about the flat tax system, which he
prefers to call a “proportional tax” based on the
Biblical principle of the tithe.
Carson believes his speech, delivered primarily
off the cuff to the angst of a White House that
had requested an advanced copy, was inspired
of God.
“And obviously it resonated extremely strongly
with millions of people across America. It was
something that needed to be said. It needed to
be brought to a conscious level what was going
on in our nation, and the fact that we were being
intimidated into just accepting these changes
without debate and without question because
we’re all afraid of political correctness.”
He gave a post mortem to a national broadcasting
network.
“There are a number of policies that I don’t
believe lead to the growth of our nation and
don’t lead to the elevation of our nation,” he
told ABC News when asked about his speech. “I
don’t want to sit here and say all of his policies
are bad. What I would like to see more often in
this nation is an open and intelligent conversation,
not people just casting aspersions at each
other.”
The speech, since seen by millions on the
Internet, ignited what for a while remained a
backroom call for him to run for president in
2016, including a favorable editorial in the Wall
Street Journal. But now that call has moved
front and center as conservative Republicans
begin to view potential contenders for the GOP
nomination.
In recent weeks, he’s formed a PAC to explore
a possible run for the White House, prompting
noted author and political analyst Earl Ofari
Hutchinson — like Carson, an African American
— to write in the Huffington Post that “the silliness
about a Ben Carson presidential bid just got
sillier,” questioning exactly “what makes him real
political timber, let alone presidential stuff?”
Yet when Carson won a one-county presidential
straw poll in Iowa in late August, the Democratic
National Committee took notice, sending
a short e-mail to reporters about “Ben Carson’s
2016 Momentum,” drawing attention to previous
headlines about Carson, including “Ben Carson:
‘Obamacare’s worst thing since slavery’” and
“Ben Carson: America’s now ‘very much’ like
Nazi Germany.”
The fact that he is so seriously considering
a run for president just might be the result of
Carson believing the right man or woman has
not yet stepped forward.
“We would prefer an alternative to running,”
“It would be
wonderful if somebody
would come along
who really understood
the Constitution, who
understood freedom
and the importance
of our Judeo-
Christian traditions,
who understood how
business works and
who understood that
our role in the world is
as a leader, but not as a
meddler in everything.
If that person came
along and caught fire,
then I wouldn’t need
to run. But if it doesn’t
happen I obviously
would have to give it
extreme consideration.”
— Dr. Ben Carson on a
possible 2016 presidential bid
he said when asked during a spring interview
with Truckload Authority about whether he and
his wife Candy had discussed a possible candidacy.
“She feels about it the way I do,” Carson
replied. “It would be wonderful if somebody
would come along who really understood the
Constitution, who understood freedom and the
importance of our Judeo-Christian traditions,
who understood how business works and who
understood that our role in the world is as a
leader, but not as a meddler in everything. If
that person came along and caught fire, then
I wouldn’t need to run. But if it doesn’t happen
I obviously would have to give it extreme consideration.”
He quickly added that if a decision was made
to run he could hit the ground running quickly.
“There is a tremendous amount of support
from all facets of society. It really is a little
overwhelming to be honest with you,” he concluded.
So exactly who is this Ben Carson?
He’s a self-acknowledged street fighter, a terrible
student, a “dude” who thought it was cool
to wear flashy clothes, someone who was called
a dummy, and a young man so filled with anger
about his poverty-filled life in the ghetto that
one day in a temper-induced rage, he tried to
stab someone.
“Had it not been for that belt buckle [on the
person he tried to stab], I probably would not
have been talking to you today. It’s interesting
how God takes an incident like that and makes
a career out of it,” Carson said looking back on
those years.
Then he paused to reflect on the reasons for
that anger.
“I came to the conclusion it was because I
was selfish,” he says today. “Somebody was always
in MY space and they took MY thing, me
MY. I begin praying and I picked up the Bible.
There were all these virtues in Proverbs about
anger and I came to the understanding that if
you take yourself out of the center of the circle
then everything won’t be about you. After being
locked in the bathroom so to speak, I came
out with that understanding and didn’t have an
angry outburst after that. That has been helpful
in my adult life, especially in my post-retirement
years when some people tried to anger me by
saying things.”
Carson and his brother were raised by a
mother whose husband she later learned was a
bigamist and who abandoned the family when
Carson was 8 years old.
“She only had a third-grade education and
couldn’t afford to stay in Detroit so we ended
up moving to Boston to live with her older sister
and brother-in-law,” Carson remembers. “Very
typical ghetto setting. All the things you could
imagine — rats and roaches. My mother worked
extremely hard, two or three jobs at a time,
because she didn’t want to be on welfare. She
didn’t see anyone come off welfare that went on
it, so she didn’t want on it to start with. Occasionally
she would have to accept food stamps,
but she worked very hard to remain indepen-

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dent. Eventually we moved back to Detroit, still in a horrible neighborhood
but at least she was independent at that point.”
And she cared deeply about the future of her children.
When Carson began to fail in school, his mother learned his eyesight
was bad, so she got him glasses.
“I went from an ‘F’ student to a ‘D’ student,” Carson said, but his
mother was anything but pleased with his educational progress.
“I was happy, but my mother was not happy.”
His mother made them turn off the television and start reading books,
which Carson thought was a “horrible” idea, yet it was an idea that would
lead him to the field of medicine where he became one of the top, if not
the top, pediatric neurosurgeon in the world.
“You have to do what your parents tell you and an interesting thing
started to happen. That stimulated me because I really did hate being
called dummy. I started reading everything I could get my hands on and
in a year and a half I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the
class,” Carson said. “The other thing that happened was I started reading
about people. I began to understand one very important principle and
that is this: The person who has to deal with what happens to you in life
is you. You could commit to decisions, you could decide how much energy
you want to put behind it. Once I understood that I didn’t mind being
poor anymore. I knew it was temporary and I could change it. I stopped
listening to other negative people around me who were saying that the
system is against you and people are against you and I started planning
my career as a physician.”
His mother was all about teaching her children life lessons, too.
At the point in his life when fancy, expensive clothes and hanging out
were more cool to him than education, his grades started to suffer again.
It took about a year and a mother’s touch to disabuse him of that notion.
“That dawned on me after the day she said, ‘I am going to give you all
the money I make this week scrubbing toilets and washing floors. I want
you to take the money and pay the bills and buy the food and with all
that’s left over you can go out and buy all the fancy clothes you want.’
“And as I sat down to allocate the money, I realized that my mother
with a third-grade education was a financial genius and I was a fool. I
never asked for clothes again after that. I got back to business and started
studying again. Guys would call me names, but I told them ‘Let’s see what
I’m doing in 20 years and let’s see what you’re doing in 20 years,’ and
that usually shut them up. When I graduated from high school they voted
me most likely to succeed and those kinds of things helped me begin to
realize you don’t necessarily go with the majority, you don’t necessarily
do what everybody else is doing if you want to be a person who achieves
something.”
Carson’s love for medicine began during his childhood.
He’d always loved to hear anything and everything about medicine.
“The way I got interested in Johns Hopkins Hospital (where he would
later become director of pediatric neurosurgery) was all the news stories
featuring Johns Hopkins. But also at church and Bible school they talked
about missionary doctors and they seemed to lead exciting lives traveling
all over the world to bring not only physical, but mental and spiritual
healing and they were some of the most noble people on earth,” Carson
recalled. “So I decided when I was 8 years old that I was going to be a
missionary doctor.”
At age 13, however, he decided he’d rather be a physician with a practice
in America, and was planning to be a psychiatrist until he got to medical
school after earning his bachelor’s degree at Yale University.
When he enrolled at the University of Michigan Medical School, he
started thinking and thinking and thinking.
“God gives everybody special talent. And when I started thinking back
over my life, I realized that I had a lot of eye-hand coordination and the
ability to think in three dimensions and that I was a very careful person.
I put all those factors together and started thinking about all my interest
in the brain and that I should be a brain surgeon. A lot of people thought
that was a very strange idea because at that time there had only been
eight black brain surgeons in the world. I didn’t worry about that because
I felt that was the talent God had given me.”
Talent, indeed.
In the mid 1980s, at age 33 he became the youngest major division
director in Johns Hopkins history as director of pediatric neurosurgery. He
was also a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Craniofacial Center. He would
remain at Johns Hopkins until last year when he decided it was time to
retire “at the top of my game.”
Along the way, he successfully performed brain surgery on thousands
upon thousands of children, exhibiting the traits of a doctor who’s willing
to take life and death into his or her own hands.
“You don’t get a lot of timid people going into neurosurgery because
you have to have a fair amount of confidence that you can open up somebody’s
head and go in there and do procedures and they will come out
better than when you started,” Carson said. “It’s one of the reasons a lot
of people think neurosurgeons are very arrogant because many of them
are. But there are some who are very reasonable people, particularly the
pediatric people because they deal with children a lot and they really need
a different type of personality. But one of the real key factors is that one
has to be very, very calm. You can’t be an excitable person, because when
you’re deep in the middle of somebody’s brain and something goes wrong,
you have to be real calm and you have to run through very quickly what
the possibilities are and what you can do about it. Those things have to
20 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

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be decided instantly because you usually have a matter of minutes before
something terrible happens.”
As a pediatric neurosurgeon, Carson may be best known for two surgeries
to separate conjoined twins.
In 1987, Carson made medical history by being the first surgeon in the
world to successfully separate conjoined twins — the Binder twins — conjoined
at the back of the head. Operations to separate twins joined in this
way had always failed, resulting in the death of one or both of the infants.
Carson agreed to undertake the operation and led a 50-member surgical
team that worked for 22 hours. At the end, the twins were successfully
separated and now survive independently.
The operation received such wide acclaim that Carson’s life story up to
that point was made into a 2009 movie titled “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson
Story,” starring Cuba Gooding Jr. The movie flashed back to Carson’s
childhood and ended with the doctor sharing news of the successful operation
with the parents.
But not all medical outcomes are successful, and in 2003, Carson was
part of a team in Singapore that attempted to separate the 29-year-old
Bijani twins, only to see them die on the operating table.
“I always pray and ask God for wisdom on what to do and He always
gets the credit for the success. But He also gets the blame for the failure.
He’s ultimately in control and He’s given us one task. That task is to do the
best you can with what He’s given you and as long as I know I’ve worked
as hard as I can and done the best that I can, then I can move on, recognizing
that I don’t have the ability to control everything,” Carson says.
“And that’s a tremendous advantage, to be honest with you, because a
lot of people you know become very depressed when something bad happens.
They beat themselves up and think, ‘Well, if only I had done this
or that and the other,’ but you can’t go about your life like that. And a lot
of people do that outside of surgery, too. They make a mistake or they
repeat a mistake and they conclude that they’re evil and they just give
up on life and become depressed and obviously that’s not the way we’re
supposed to be.”
Carson, who received the President’s Medal of Honor from President
George W. Bush, says the most gratification in his life has come since he
retired from his medical career.
“Because I operated on so many thousands of patients, there’s virtually
nowhere I go that either one of my patients or a family member doesn’t
come up to me and say, ‘I have a friend that you operated on’ and to
recognize that you touched so many lives in a very positive way is truly
the most gratifying thing. Many parents of children I didn’t even operate
on come up to me and say their child had a procedure that I popularized
and say, ‘Thank you for what you did because you made it possible for
my kid to get operated on.’ And just to recognize that
you’ve been able to use the talent that God gave you
to affect so many people in a positive way, not to mention
all the ones who come up and say, ‘I read your
book, or my kid read your book and it changed his life
and now they’re a terrific student doing very well,’” is
gratifying.
He’s also gratified by the success of the Carson
Scholars Fund he and his wife established to address
what Carson calls an educational crisis in America.
“We started it 18 years ago; we gave out 25 scholarships,
one for each county in the state of Maryland.
And as of this year we’ve given out over 6,200 scholar
awards in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
And many teachers tell us that when you put a scholar
in their classroom the GPA of the whole class goes up
because now the kids have something else to aim at.
Before it’s just the quarterback or the all-state wrestler,
but now it’s that kid who’s so smart that they’ve
brought recognition to their school; there’s a big trophy
that is given out along with all the sports trophies;
they get a medal, they get to go to a special awards
ceremony and it’s just very gratifying.”
Another facet of the Carson Scholars Fund are reading
rooms in schools in Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia,
Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia with the goal of
supporting local schools so they can create a nurturing
environment for children to feel safe and secure as they develop their
reading skills.
“These reading rooms are the kind of places no little child would pass
up,” Carson says. “They’re decorated a lot of times with a theme that is
consistent with the geographical area where they’re located. For instance
in Denver, some of the reading rooms have teepees and little riding horses
and things of that nature and one of the reading rooms near the coast a
parent built a pier that goes out to sea, and they pipe in the sound of the
waves. It’s really fascinating the imagination some of the people put into
designing and building of these reading rooms. Children get points for
the number of books they read and the amount of time they spend in the
reading room and they can accumulate them and turn them in for prizes.
In the beginning they do it for the prizes but it doesn’t take long before it
has a powerful effect on their academic performance. And really that’s so
vital for our nation that we re-elevate education to the place that it should
be, because that is really the key to escaping poverty.”
As he moves toward a decision on whether to become part of an already
overly crowded field of GOP contenders, it’s Carson’s message of
hope for America that has many Americans shouting the battle cry of
those who want him to “Run, Ben, Run.”
It’s a hope that forms the basis for his latest book, “One Nation: What
We Can All Do to Save America’s Future,” a New York Times best seller
published last May.
“The thing that gives me the most hope is traveling around the country,”
he said.
As he toured the country to promote his book, there were, in Carson’s
words, record-breaking turnouts.
“People were coming out and saying, ‘You mean I’m not the only one
who has common sense, someone else has common sense?’ And they
would get excited about that.”
People, he interjected, have been beaten down by “the constant barrage
of secular progressive media and politicians and the No. 1 rule of Saul Alinski,
the socialist, who wrote the book ‘Rules for Radicals,’ which said you make
the majority feel that their opinion is irrelevant, that no one thinks that way
anymore, and that the only way intelligent people think is the way that secular
progressives think. And of course [secular progressives believe] if you can
co-op the media in the process, you’ll go much further and much faster. I actually
encourage people to read books like ‘Rules for Radicals’ so you have a
much better idea of what the agenda is for those who want to fundamentally
change the law in America. From the land of the free and the home of the
brave, to a ‘utopia,’ they call it, where no one has to worry about anything.”
It’s where the government redistributes everything in an “equitable”
way and a “fair” way, Carson relates.
22 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

“That, of course, has been tried in a number of other places and the
only thing that ever happens with consistency is that you develop a small
ruling class, a massive dependent class and an ever-shrinking middle
class. Those are exactly the things that are happening in America today.
And we have to recognize it.”
His politics, obviously, are quite the opposite of the man he would replace
should he decide to run in the 2016 race.
“We’ve created an almost permanently depressed economy because
the government heavies put regulations upon the throat of big business
and small business,” he says. “We have ever-increasing taxes and we insinuate
these taxes into everything. Family income has declined over the
last five or six years. And that’s just going to continue with these kinds
of policies that make it so easy for people to receive handouts. In fact, in
35 of the 50 states, you can get more by just sitting back and accepting
federal relief than you can working a minimum wage job.”
Socialists, he believes, want to stir up class warfare.
“In the meantime, their power continues to grow because those who
feel that they’re being treated unfairly, their ranks will swell and when you
reach the critical mass, you’ve permanently changed the whole social setting
because you can always say, ‘I’ll be your savior, I’ll take care of you
and those rich people over there, they’re evil. And you know we will deal
with them and we will take what they have and we will give it to you.’
And people say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’s a great idea.’”
But it has never worked and that is key, Carson continues.
“What we — and when I say we, I’m talking about people
with common sense and with solid Judeo-Christian conservative
values — have to do is when we gain control, we have
to govern the way God would have us govern for everybody,
not for a special interest group. We have to get rid of the
unnecessary regulations so we can unfetter the business
sector. We have to develop our natural resources, our energy
resources that God has given us,” and not allow the Environmental
Protection Agency to depress those resources.
“Finally, we have to be not only smart enough to read and
inform ourselves about what’s going on, but we also have to
be courageous enough to stand up for what we believe because
the way that the secular progressives win is by getting everybody
else to just go along. Think about Nazi Germany. Most of
those people did not believe what Hitler believed, but did they say
anything, did they do anything? No. And as has been famously said,
‘All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do
nothing.’” Carson is certainly not sitting back doing nothing.
It could well be that his professional career, which
he says has been dedicated to the well-being of
children, will ultimately weigh heavily as he decides
whether to run for president.
“I recognized some time ago that we were
destroying the future of children. I recognized
that for my own children and my own
two grandchildren as well as those many
patients I’ve taken care of over the course
of time, and the many students I interact
with through our scholarship and reading
programs,” he says. “I could sit back and just
enjoy the fruits of my labor, live very comfortably
for the rest of my life and not worry
about anybody else, but I couldn’t do that. I
would not be able to sleep at night knowing
that I had turned my back on an obligation
to try to make a difference for those children.”
Think about the economic future of those
children, he continues.
“We have a $17.5 trillion national debt.
I mean that’s just a staggering amount of
money. If you tried to pay that back at a
rate of $10 million a day it would take you
4,700 years. I mean that is just mind-boggling,
and you look historically at nations
that have continued to accumulate that,
France and Spain in the 17th and 18th centuries,
and then you look at Greece, man. You see what’s happened. And
the arrogance of us to think that we can do it and avoid the same catastrophe
is pretty mind-boggling. But of course when you begin to read
neo-Marxist literature, you begin to realize that they say the way to bring
the United States down is through unsustainable debt and it makes you
wonder, are there people who don’t have your best interests in mind who
are driving all of this and particularly by creating unsustainable programs
that require enormous amounts of money, like Obamacare?”
Carson poses more questions.
How do you provide the maximum in healthcare to people who absolutely
can’t even contribute to their own financial well-being without
bankrupting a country?
How do you provide food stamps for virtually anybody who wants them
and housing subsidies for anybody who fills out an application?
“These are unsustainable things that just continue to drive the debt
and it seems to me that if someone was truly interested in the welfare
of the nation, what they would be doing is asking the question, ‘Why in
the economic freedom index has the United States dropped from No. 1 to
No. 12? Why are all these other countries passing us up? Why did Canada
lower its top corporate tax rate from where ours was to 15 percent a few
years ago? And why is there that big sucking sound that Ross Perot used
to talk about of all our business going up there?
“These are not hard concepts to understand and
it makes me wonder — and I talk about this in the
book — if there are people who intentionally keep the
economy suppressed because if we had a roaring
economy there would be no appetite for all these
programs. And things would fundamentally change
in America.”
All of which sounds like a man who will — as
many now wish — would run and win in 2016,
and perhaps help Americans “live happily ever
after.”

Fall Edition | TCA 2014
Tracking The Trends
Tech
Take
ver
By Aprille Hanson

Sponsored by
In the summer edition of Truckload Authority, we tackled the vast concept of technology and how
it’s impacting the trucking industry. We’ve gone from paper to computers. We are currently focused
on the concept of diagnostic analytics, which means data that shows a truck traveling from
point A to point B, but took a detour at point C and understanding exactly why it did.
We found that the best way for companies and drivers alike to embrace
new technologies all boils down to training and proper utilization.
As time keeps moving on, it’s hard not to think back on pop
culture phenomena like the 1962 cartoon, “The Jetsons”
and the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, “2001: A Space
Odyssey,” to speculate on what futuristic
technology will look like.
So here we go — full speed
into the future.
WHERE WE’RE GOING
Our world is connected. For anyone with a Smartphone, we’re never
really alone. What that means in terms of what road the industry will
take is complex.
According to Michael Kornhauser, executive vice president and general
manager of ALK Technologies, which provides navigation software and GeoLogistics
Supply Chain Solutions, trucking technology should take its cue
from smart devices.
“The technology needs to be easier to use and more user friendly like the
technology that’s in everybody’s everyday life,” Kornhauser said. “If using a
transportation management system was as intuitive as using a Smartphone,
I think that would do a lot for adoption of that technology.”
Taking it further, Rustin Keller, executive vice president and chief operating
officer for J.J. Keller Associates — a private company that helps businesses
understand regulations and creates lasting management solutions
— said it’s plausible to see trucking companies giving drivers tablets to be
more efficient.
“If I have a fleet of trucks, I’m going to deploy iPads to everybody with
applications that help do their inventory management, to do their routing,”
and apps that update drivers on current regulations, Keller said.
Steve Mitgang, CEO of SmartDrive, which uses video and vehicle data to
give fleets more safety and fuel efficiency, said video data is the next “giant
frontier for maintenance, fuel and safety.”
The “joke” in the industry, Mitgang says, is this: A driver sits down with
the safety manager who is evaluating data on the truck and notices a hard
brake event.
“The first answer is, ‘Well the data is wrong.’ The safety guy or operations
guy can’t tell” and if their technological system can confirm the data was
not wrong, the excuse is then, “I was avoiding a deer or I was avoiding an
80-year-old grandmother pulling out on the highway.”
Mitgang said with video, what happens out on the road, driving around
the truck yard or anywhere that truck has been can be proved.
Not only can it prove a driver innocent to his or her superiors, but it can
prove their innocence to police, potentially in an instant.
“He [a carrier’s safety officer] sees that video of the driver on the side of
the road; highway patrol comes along and he’s exonerated, so the cargo can
be back on the road within an hour. We’d like to close that loop to where the
video automatically gets in the patrol officer’s hands, but we as an industry
have not gotten there yet,” Mitgang said. However, he admitted that video
can catch drivers behaving inappropriately behind the wheel.
“If you’re a tank truck driver and smoking a cigarette behind the wheel,
it’s against federal law. We don’t want drivers to be texting and driving or
smoking a cigarette carrying combustible cargo,” Mitgang said.
The ability of every mechanism of the truck to be in constant communication
with the driver and carrier is inevitable, with engine connectivity as the
key, said Rick Ochsendorf, senior vice president of operations for PeopleNet,
a provider of fleet mobility solutions and onboard communications.
“There’s going to be a lot more analytics. That’s a very vague and open
term but what will change tremendously in the future will be taking all that
data and turning it into actionable items,” Ochsendorf said. “We’ll be able to
pull in weights of the load, traffic conditions, history of tens of thousands of
vehicles in a particular area … we can be predictive a half a mile ahead of
time if you’re coming up into an [accident-prone] hot spot. Devices will be
much more dynamic … there will be sensors inside and behind the trailer,
looking for the danger zones.”
In 10 years, Mitgang said he believes utilizing data through prescriptive
analytics will be embraced by the industry to keep up with the evolving
technological world.
“It’s all about prescriptive analytics, data-gathering systems. No longer
will we have to have maintenance people scheduling things. The data coming
off the vehicle will automatically schedule the truck to get serviced,”
Mitgang said. “The amount of automation in terms of how we manage the
vehicle taken on and off the road, how we optimize routes, saying this vehicle
is a better type of vehicle in a mountainous zone as opposed to flat
roads, all that is going to be in decision-making down the road.”
But what about the technology that is bound to exist 20 years down the
road? Or 30? Or dare we ask, 50? We dared.
THE FUTURE
Like the creator of “The Jetsons” and the haunting vision Kubrick had
for H.A.L 9000, we can dream. Raj Rajkumar, a professor at Carnegie Mellon
University who directs CMU’s U.S. Department of Transportation-funded

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transportation research center and co-directs the CMU-General Motors Autonomous
Driving Collaborative Research Lab, said he can not only imagine
a world with technology that was only a fantasy 50 years ago, he can
see it. Rajkumar is one of the lead researchers of autonomous cars, often
called “driverless cars.” The car technology has been invented and is being
tested.
J. J. KELLER’S ELD INSIGHTS
Successfully Transitioning from
Paper Logs to E-Logs
Switching from paper logs to electronic logs is not as simple as “plug in the device
and let the data flow.” While electronic logging devices (ELDs) are nothing more
than “very accurate logs,” the switch to an E-Log system will impact all phases of
your operation.
Prepare for the Change
The first step is determining what your “future state” should look like. What do you
need the ELD system to do? Next, you’ll need to secure the sign-off from all of senior
management and to assign a “project sponsor” who will keep the project moving.
You’ll also need a project leader who will oversee the day-to-day activities of
implementing the change. Finally, you’ll want to include all of the managers in
affected areas of the company.
Select an ELD System
With the team in place, you’ll need to compare vendors’ systems to your desired
“future state,” verifying their experience and qualifications, checking the options
available in each vendor’s system, and confirming their implementation and ongoing
support mechanisms.
Manage the Change
The planning process for making the transition should include:
• Scheduling resources and training
• Determining an implementation timeline
• Developing thresholds and settings for the system
• Installing the devices.
Train Drivers and Supervisors
Driver training during this phase should include:
• Training drivers to use E-Logs for all day-to-day logging tasks
• Training drivers to set the device up for roadside inspections
• Training drivers to request a correction.
Supervisor training should include:
• How and when to make corrections
• How to locate a driver’s available hours in the system
• How to determine who “unassigned miles” should belong to and
assign them appropriately.
Reinforce the Change
Activities that will need to be monitored include:
• Are you seeing significant error rates involving drivers forgetting
to log in or out, forgetting required entries, etc.?
• Are violations related to Hours of Service dropping?
• Are support calls decreasing over time?
In Closing
Companies that wait until the ELD mandate is final are going to
find the transition from paper logs to E-Logs nearly impossible
to get through in time. But by preparing for, managing,
and reinforcing the transition, you stand to gain
significant productivity and profitability.
Download our complete “ELD Change Management” whitepaper at
JJKeller.com/ELDchangemanagement. To learn about the J. J. Keller
Encompass® E-Log system, see the ad in this publication or visit JJKellerELogs.com.
with E-Logs
“That would be a big revelation for fleets and 18-wheelers. The question
is not if, it’s when,” Rajkumar said.
Indeed, Daimler unveiled an “autonomous” truck in Germany on July
3, with a driver in the truck cab but not actually steering on a “connected”
highway and using active sensors in the infrastructure to guide the vehicle.
This left him free to manage loads, routes and other duties. Then he took
the wheel when it was time to get off the connected route.
While the industry is bound by Hours of Service regulations for what
the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) alleges is for
preventing fatigue, driverless trucks would theoretically eliminate it. “If
it’s able to drive itself, you can be using it 20 hours a day. With the driverless
technology, drivers wouldn’t get distracted or sleepy,” Rajkumar
said.
He added this would not eliminate the job of a driver, but change it. The
primary job of a trucker would no longer be driving, but utilizing technology
to be involved in other areas.
“One question is what would happen to these jobs? In 30, 40 years from
now, the monotonous job of driving goes away,” Rajkumar said.
Vikas Jain, chief operating officer with Zonar, which provides electronic
inspection, tracking and operations solutions for public and private fleets,
predicted that driverless technology will be a similar concept to what airline
pilots are already utilizing.
“A pilot today is really in the plane for take-off, landing and any changes
to plan, but at 10,000 feet, it’s essentially automated,” Jain said. “A driver
may reach that point for pick-up and delivery, fueling and changes to plan.
But the redundant part of the constant driving at 60 mph, maybe a truck
doesn’t need a driver to do that.”
The technology might be available, but public acceptance is what will
hold the idea of driverless trucks back, Rajkumar said.
“There are multiple dimensions to it: The technology has to become
secure and the public has to accept the technology,” he added, noting that
four-wheeler drivers watching a tractor-trailer coming down the road and
“finding there is no driver behind the wheel, most people would freak out.
It would probably be 10 to 15, 20 to 25 years for full automation. A human
will still be in the driver’s seat.”
Rajkumar said the early stages of driverless trucks would have to be in
a regional environment rather than over-the-road.
“In the near term, this technology could be used to train drivers, acting
as a trainer, getting them to a loading dock in an urban situation,” he
said.
However, the legalities of what happens when driverless technology
fails and potentially causes an accident would pose a unique problem for
the trucking industry.
“The transportation and trucking industry has some challenges because
of the liability of an 80,000 pound machine going down the highway,” PeopleNet’s
Ochsendorf said. “Technology will find a way, but that’s a ways
off.”
Looking down the road 50 years and understanding what kind of impacts
technology will have on the trucking industry is hard without a crystal
ball. But some key changes in our society today might render clues.
“We’re seeing more and more home delivery, stuff happening on the
consumer side. I think trucks will start to play a much larger role in that. If
something is going to go away, it may be retail,” Kornhauser said. “We’re
getting to a direct ship to the depot so to speak. I think trucks obviously
play a role in that. LTL multi-stop is something that will continue to grow.
How trucking plays a role in what’s happening in the consumer world will
be to see more services over the Internet, as opposed to consumers going
to a brick-and-mortar shop to get products.”
According to Mitgang, the focus will be on what is important to us as
a society.
“When you talk 50 years, you’re stepping into cultural issues, how does
transportation evolve? Will trucks versus automobiles be segregated into
different lanes to reduce carbon emissions?” Mitgang said. “You think about
infrastructure and access kinds of questions when you go that big.”
So maybe we’ll be like George Jetson and see our vehicles taking flight.
Or maybe one day, our technology will overrun our lives and end what we
understand to be our existence like Dr. Dave Bowman in “2001: A Space
Oddysey.” There’s real possibility and fear.
No matter what direction technology takes, it’s coming. And it’s all in
how we use it. As the famed American psychologist and inventor B.F. Skinner
put it, “The real problem is not whether machines think but whether
men do.”
26 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

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Socializing
for success
By Aprille Hanson
Facebook —– a funny name for a photo album?
Tweet — the sound a bird makes?
Instagram — a strange e-mail greeting or a singing telegram?
Pinterest — some sort of nickname for an old-fashioned pin-up model?
A decade ago, these words and all the other social media platforms meant
nothing, but have now taken over in ways that people could never have imagined.
They touch every breaking news clip, every celebrity meltdown and the thoughts and
emotions of everyday people.
Social media is the cool DJ and we’re just all happy to dance along to the beat of the constant
music. But what does that tune sound like for the trucking industry?
According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 87 percent of adults in 2014 have
used the Internet. Of that, 71 percent of them use Facebook — and let’s not forget the website
was only created 10 years ago by a Harvard student and has more than a billion users.
Some could argue social media was around long before the Internet — and that the trucking
industry made this early media popular.
“I think CB radio was the first social media there was before there were computers,” said
Jeff Maurer, chief listening officer with IdleAir, the largest provider of Truck Stop Electrification
(TSE) services at major travel centers. “The idea of being connected to strangers and having
open conversations publicly is very, very common, or very, very natural and integrated to trucking
life.”
Social media’s primary intention was purely … well, social. It’s a way to stay in touch with
friends, family and connect with people all over the world.
But, despite its name, social media is far from just being social, anymore. It’s a means of
recruitment, customer service and a direct link between the top executive of a company to the
over-the-road trucker who has spent the last two weeks delivering freight.
“This sense of transparency and immediacy, I think, is really revolutionary,” Maurer said.
However, social media is only as good as its handler, meaning that a company can choose
how to make it successful, and there are few better examples than National Carriers Inc. Ed
Kentner, who first worked as director of recruiting and then in the truck lease program for
National Carriers, became the company’s social media director in July 2012.
“I am the most pumped-up guy over social media,” Kentner said. “Social media for me has
been a breath of fresh air because now we can interact with you. We have students that say, ‘I’m
about to graduate, can you hire me?’ I’ll explain we require six months experience, but here are
companies that will take students that are good, solid, legit companies” and they’ll remember
the favor, he said, and eventually might wind up in a National Carriers truck. National Carriers
operates three terminals nationally and has offices in Irving, Texas, and Liberal, Kansas. Its trucks
travel throughout 48 states.
The following stats (as of August 26) for this social media-savvy carrier are staggering:
37,100 followers on Twitter; 11,136 on Facebook; 110 Instagram; 1,142 Pinterest; 455 LinkedIn;
1,072 views on GooglePlus; 240 subscribers on YouTube (not including how many viewers it
receives); and 634 on Foursquare.
It all starts with National Carriers’ website, drivenci.com that has links to all their social
media platforms, in addition to information about the company, weather, traffic maps and a link
to its sister site, nationalcarriers.com. Certain drivers write blogs for the company website about
their experiences on the road that are linked to various social media posts, urging followers
to “learn more by clicking the link.” Monthly driver management meetings are featured on its
Facebook and Twitter pages where National Carrier officials “can take questions from people on
the roads,” Kentner said.
It’s a one-stop, multi-connected Internet platform meant for truckers or
future truckers with National Carriers, Kentner said.
“I started with Facebook and Twitter. I’m blessed with an 18-year-old daughter; she turned
me onto Instagram, that’s going to be the next big thing,” Kentner said. “On LinkedIn, GooglePlus,
I interact with the young group; Pinterest hits an audience. A lot of our trucker wives or
spouses of our drivers keep up with the company or what’s going on with their
mates and Pinterest is a great way to do that. Foursquare works out well for
folks traveling; they can look to see where there’s a great restaurant, what
truck stop to avoid.”
The point, Kentner said, is that each social media platform has a
niche.
“I’m always looking for what the new hot thing out there is
and if it looks like something our folks will be in, National Carriers
wants to be there … This is how we communicate as a society. I don’t want to
be part of a site that’s selling me constantly. I want to be a part of a site to hear
something interesting,” Kentner said.
Understanding what kind of traffic and feedback to get from each platform
is more than just a side job.
“In my opinion, you don’t have the receptionist in her spare time take care
of your social media. If you can’t dedicate someone to become that, breathe it and
make it part of their everyday being, you’re probably not going to see the success
we’re fortunate enough to have,” Kentner said, explaining just one example of where he
put social media to work in an instant. “A fellow wanted to know if we hired out of his particular
area. I happened to be sitting having lunch. Within three minutes, I was able to respond and
answer his questions. He said, ‘I never dreamed anyone would be there to answer so quickly.’”
According to Ryan Hunt, corporate communications manager for CareerBuilder.com, a global
leader in human capital solutions, that’s the kind of social media interaction that helps attract
employees to a company.
“When we’re counseling job seekers, we recommend they look at the company’s social
media platforms. Most major companies have some type of social media presence,” Hunt said,
adding that posting on a company’s social media site or tagging them in a post with a comment
like, “Hey I just applied for a job,” can help a candidate get an edge on the competition.
“That could really help you get a higher profile and be on the employer’s radar.”
A national online survey by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder from February 10 to March 4,
2014, included more than 2,000 hiring managers, human resources professionals and more than
3,000 private sector workers in various industries and company sizes. That survey tallied some
of the common reasons why an employer decided to hire a candidate in regard to social media
and 24 percent said the candidate had interacted with the company’s social media accounts.
In terms of what to post on the various social media platforms, Kentner said he always posts
things of value to National Carriers.
“I focus on our people — anniversaries, jobs well done,” Kentner said. “Sometimes we
forget to brag about ourselves and we forget there are some really cool things going on with the
trucking industry.”
If a customer service rep calls to say kind things about a driver, Kentner will call the driver,
share the story and often post the driver’s photo along with the kind message on social media.
“It says, ‘Look at that guys, we are the ‘Elite Fleet,’” the company’s tagline, Kentner said. “That in
turn creates a huge following and interaction.”
But not all trucking executives should have their people run out and join every social media
platform — they won’t all work. For example, Twitter is great, but limited to 140 characters and
the trucking industry’s complexity can’t always squeeze into that limitation.
“Stylistically everybody’s different and people express themselves differently in different
mediums, so it’s important to be in several platforms. It’s hard to be in all,” Maurer said. “I don’t
think it’s great to be in any medium that you’re not really fully present and aware of. If you’re
missing comments and if you’re just a ghost presence, I think that’s disadvantageous and is not
as professional as it should be.”
Along with great PR that social media can provide, there are some ugly scenarios and negative
comments that play out on a very public platform.
“This just sounds crazy but I monitor these sites 24/7. My job is to protect and enhance
the reputation of National Carriers,” Kentner said. “There are people out there who are spiteful,
competitors that try to put you in a poor light.”
But the other side of the coin is when truckers or others have legitimate complaints or
concerns. Kentner uses those comments to help the company create positive changes.
28 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

“Last winter, it was 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night. I had a guy post a picture from a truck stop;
it was snowing and our driver was outside urinating only 100 yards from the truck stop. The post
said, ‘I’ve seen this three or four times all night.’ The next morning at 8 a.m., our director of driver
services called this fellow. To the fellow’s credit, he didn’t lie,” admitting he was the driver in the
photo, which led to a conversation regarding what the driver needed to do next time in that situation,
Kentner said. “You can’t get away with anything … There’s eyes everywhere.”
Just as it can hold a driver’s feet to the fire, it can make a carrier more accountable.
“Some of it’s painful. People who used to sweep things under the rug before, it’s harder to get
away with things,” Maurer said.
Trucking companies can see the most change by addressing problems head on and by asking
drivers or other employees what can be done better.
“People will become frustrated if you have a negative comment, a fair observation but meant
in a constructive way to say this isn’t as good as it should be and yet have it deleted or bulldozed
because nobody wants to acknowledge it. I think people will expect that to change,” Maurer said,
comparing where the trucking industry is heading in terms of social media to the way various
airlines now operate — if someone has a complaint, it’s shared on social media.
From a non-carrier standpoint, Maurer pointed to an experience IdleAir had a few years ago
that encapsulates the way social media became the ultimate customer service tool.
“It was a driver who was in Salt Lake City and it was like a Saturday morning, there
was a couple hours’ time difference to where I was on the East Coast. He had a problem
with the interface and he posted on Facebook about it and went into the truck stop to
take a shower,” Maurer said. “I saw the comment, relayed it to our customer service rep
in Knoxville, Tennessee. They were able to reset the interface or do what they needed to
do to make it work again remotely. They also contacted our site representative that was
on the ground in Salt Lake City so by the time the guy came out of the shower, all of these
things had happened and they were greeted by the site rep saying, ‘I know you had a
problem, sorry about it, but it’s fixed.’ And the driver commented, ‘Wow that’s impressive.’
And it was. It bounced around the United States but we were able to work together as a
virtual and a real, on-the-ground team to be able to serve the customer. It comes down to
the golden rule — treat others as you would want to be treated and I think that’s where
social media has its best and brightest future.”
But once something is posted, it’s there … forever. Sure, the “delete” button still works,
but that’s after it’s been stored, retweeted, reposted, etc. to the endless corners of the Internet.
Hunt said the 2014 Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder found that 43 percent of employers
check social media sites to learn more about job candidates, up from 39 percent last year.
“I think job seekers and employers that use Facebook and LinkedIn have a better understanding
of how to use the Internet” to find a job and to utilize social media, Hunt said. “Job referrals
are still one of the best ways to find a job. You can make connections with employers” through
social media.
Hunt said social media searches should be a supplement to an interview, never the basis on
whether or not a person is qualified for the job.
“What we tell employers generally is to make sure you get the best sense of the candidate
through the interview process. Social media can help you find information about that person that
can’t come up in that process, but it’s a rarity,” Hunt said. “Make sure you are not trying to make
a determination based on what they have publicly available on social media.”
However, judgments are in nature pretty swift. Any red flags on social media can be immediate
deal-breakers for serious applicants who just dropped off a resumé. According to the poll, 51
percent of employers who research a candidate have found content that made them decide not
to hire someone, up from 43 percent last year.
“If you have a public social media page, that exists forever,” Hunt said. “We find that employers
that see provocative photographs and information, that’s reason enough not to bring that
person in for an interview. We hear that a lot from employers. That could be a sign of character
that’s not attractive for the employer.”
While trucking industry leaders continue to discuss and debate the driver shortage and how
to attract younger drivers, the conversation should start where they’re at — on social media.
Because of the surge in social media, corporations like CareerBuilder are working to help employers
understand how to build their brand online.
“What a job seeker thinks of your brand is very important. Social media is one of the best
places” to advertise that brand, Hunt said. “Developing a robust social media presence is important
not just for your consumer brand but an employer brand as well.”
While it’s important for a job candidate to understand the advantages and ramifications of
social media, it’s just as important for the company to utilize it.
“I’d say most companies have really nice career sites with their internal job postings. Unless
there’s a really active job seeker out there organically they’re not going to find it,” Hunt said. “You
have to use social media to draw more attention to the work you’ve done on your career sites.
Reach out on social media, like Twitter and Facebook, with job opportunities, post [links to] career
Web pages with explanations of benefits to working for that corporation, if you’ve won awards
make sure to share press releases about it.”
But ultimately, a social media strategy must play to the company’s goals.
“I think social media will continue to play a significant role for the recruitment process with
companies,” Hunt said. “Recruitment is a game of information — how do we learn as much
about the candidate as possible in the short time we have to hire?”
So, as the social media DJ continues to spin us new information, the trucking industry has to
decide when to cut into the virtual dance.
“If it’s my direct competitors, it’s horrible, don’t try it,” Kentner said of social media. “For
anybody else, this is the future.”
www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 29
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It’s not me, it’s you
By Cliff Abbott
Few would disagree that improved communication
goes a long way toward driver retention.
Trent Dye, director at Jeffersonville, Ohio-based
Paramount Freight Systems (PFS), knows the
importance of driver communication. “A couple
of years ago,” Dye related, “we put a hard focus
on retention versus recruiting. It comes down to
communication.”
PFS has been awarded Truckload Carriers
Association’s “Best Fleets to Drive For” award
for owner-operators for three consecutive years.
The company conducts a monthly national driver
call to disseminate information and provide drivers
with an arena to voice their concerns.
“It sometimes turns into a two-hour complaint
session,” Dye said, “but we’ve received so
many great ideas from it.” Based on feedback
from drivers, Dye says that PFS changed the
way dedicated lanes are assigned.
“We used to base lane assignment strictly
on the driver’s seniority,” he explained. “Drivers
said they felt that safety and service records
should be considered, in addition to seniority.”
The result is that the company’s important dedicated
customers are served by the best available
drivers rather than simply the ones that have
been around the longest.
Allan Hicks, vice president of safety, compliance
and human resources at Oxford, Alabamabased
BR Williams Trucking says turnover is
“historically low” at Williams, “usually less than
20 percent.” Communication is a big part of retention
efforts at Williams as well.
“Communication has to be two-way,” he said.
“We’ve made some important policy changes based
on input from our drivers.” A part of the communication
effort at Williams is based on management
accessibility to drivers. “We have an open-door
policy, even with the owner. We try to keep it personal;
the driver isn’t just a truck number,” he said.
Hicks said that recruiting the right drivers
aids in retention. “It’s like a marriage,” he says,
“in that each partner’s expectations are understood
and match up well with the other’s.”
There is one retention strategy, however,
that isn’t often discussed or, when it is, is often
expressed with an unnecessary eloquence
that obscures the intended meaning. In simple
terms, the best retention policy just may be: DO
WHAT YOU SAY YOU’LL DO.
“You can’t lie to a driver,” said TCA Owner-Operator
of the Year Terrance “Terry” Smith, 63, of
Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada, who has been
in the industry for 42 years. “You’ll see trucking
companies promise the world, but I can call 20 of
my friends and find out what’s really happening.”
While carriers who intentionally treat drivers
in a dishonest fashion are in a small minority,
driver perception can change a company policy
or even an innocent mistake to a bold-faced lie
in the mind of the driver who is impacted.
Consider home time policies, for example. In
an all-too-common example, the driver responds
to a magazine ad that claims, “Home Weekends!”
The driver needs to be home on Saturday
for a child’s birthday party, but gets dispatched
on a load that delivers 200 miles away on Saturday
afternoon, guaranteeing that the earliest the
driver will arrive at home is late Saturday night,
long after the party ends.
That driver isn’t happy, and the chewing out
from the spouse and accusing looks from the kids
don’t help. Complaining to the driver manager
brings out the fine print of the carrier’s home
time policy. “We commit to getting you home for
at least 34 hours sometime between Friday night
and Monday morning,” the driver is told.
The carrier may have followed its own policy,
but the driver’s perception is one of being lied
to. It won’t be easy to overcome that perception.
“To attract new drivers into the industry, they
have to tell them up front what is going to happen
and keep a handle on them when they’re
young and first starting out,” said TCA Company
Driver of the Year Jack Fielding, 55 of McKellar,
Ontario, Canada. “Be fair to them, pay them
right, keep in touch with them. Don’t just send
them out on the road and expect everything
is good for them. Bring them in every once in
awhile to talk. Take a genuine interest in them.”
Pay problems often turn into accusations of
cheating or dishonesty when drivers don’t fully
understand the reason(s) behind an unexpectedly
small settlement check. One common area of
contention is accessorial pay, such as detention.
The driver sits for hours, perhaps even missing
the pickup appointment for the next load. When
there’s no detention pay listed on the pay statement,
a phone call is made. The explanation that
This is the third article
in a four-part series on
driver recruiting and
driver retention.

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“we pay only if we collect from the customer” is perceived as a slap in the
face by many drivers, who put in the time on behalf of the carrier with the
expectation that the carrier would do its part. After all, what carrier ever
says, “We can’t pay your mileage pay for this load because we couldn’t
collect from the customer?” To the disenfranchised driver, there isn’t much
difference.
Some carriers deny promised layover pay on the grounds that the driver
was grounded long enough to achieve a 34-hour restart if eligible, or that the
driver spent the down time at a company terminal rather than a truck stop.
While such practices may contribute to the carrier’s bottom line, they also
contribute to the driver’s perception that the company’s integrity is suspect.
“You can recruit all day long, but if a driver says, ‘This is terrible,’ normally
I’ll believe them,” Smith said. “I have a friend who does recruiting who said,
‘You hire your problems.’ If you don’t do your homework, it’s either pay now
or later.”
Equipment issues can contribute to the perception of dishonesty, too.
Drivers are hammered with safety information and training, and disciplined
when safety procedures aren’t followed. The driver who is told to limp a
vehicle with a DOT safety concern to a terminal much farther away than the
nearest repair facility perceives a huge conflict between the carrier’s safety
policy and practice.
“If they say safety is their priority they have to back that up,” Fielding
said. “They have to do what’s right and not force a driver to do something
that’s not safe or give them equipment that’s not safe.”
Then there are carriers who thoroughly educate their drivers about the
importance of their CSA scores, but provide directions to avoid weigh stations
when the driver reports an overweight load.
Carriers who are truly concerned about retention should take a hard look
at such policies from a driver perspective rather than from an economic or
efficiency perspective. When driver perceptions are that policy and practice
don’t match results in turnover, the carrier may spend much more in
the long run to replace the driver than whatever amount was saved by the
policy.
Perhaps a worse problem is that poor retention also impacts recruiting
efforts. Everyone knows that word-of-mouth is a powerful advertising tool.
Many carriers attempt to capitalize on this adage with driver referral programs
that use their own drivers as recruiters.
For better or worse, social media has turned word-of-mouth into WORLDof-mouth.
With just a few clicks, a disgruntled former or even current
driver can send a derogatory opinion of the carrier flying down the “global
grapevine” to inquisitive minds around the world. The carrier’s side is rarely
represented, and privacy concerns often prevent the carrier from responding
directly.
Once negative driver perceptions of the carrier populate the Internet,
there isn’t much a carrier can do to counteract them. The impact on the
carrier’s recruiting efforts can’t be measured, but also can’t be denied. And,
measurement provides a segue to another driver retention topic.
Revered management educator and author Peter Drucker, who is credited
with popularizing the concept of Management by Objectives — MBO — said,
“What gets measured gets managed.”
Another highly successful business figure, John D. Rockefeller, put it this
way: “One thing I learned early in my business career is that anything of
significance that is measured and watched, improves.”
While many carriers express a concern for retaining drivers, how many
actually measure occurrences that can directly impact retention?
Driver and equipment utilization is undoubtedly important, for example.
Most carriers carefully track on-time delivery performance, out-of-route
miles and operating ratios. Statistics like these are vital to managing the
business.
Statistics that could shine a light on driver satisfaction and retention,
however, often aren’t given a second thought.
For example, how many carriers track on-time performance as it relates
to getting drivers home as promised? Measuring how often the commitment
to get drivers home is kept (or not kept) not only provides a tool that can be
used to improve performance, but also a recruiting statistic that can be used
to bring in new drivers and retain current ones.
Nearly every department can measure something that relates to driver
satisfaction. In addition to statistics on preventive maintenance and the
cost of parts, maintenance facilities can track service times with an eye to
getting drivers back on the road as quickly as possible. Payroll departments
can measure numbers of complaints against total settlements to determine
a percentage of unhappy drivers. Of course, payroll errors should be monitored
as well and compared against complaints to determine if the angst is
generated by payroll mistakes or possibly driver misunderstanding of policy
caused by poor communication.
Operations staff, who undoubtedly measure and are measured by utilization,
might adopt a policy of measuring driver “YOUtilization,” with a focus
on getting the driver the miles needed to make a living and needed home
time. Too often, driver managers must choose between obtaining good utilization
numbers for the tractor and satisfying the driver who pilots it.
When departmental reporting includes statistics on actions that impact
driver satisfaction, actions can be implemented to improve driver retention.
Requiring such reporting, however, will require a paradigm shift for
many department managers who find themselves buried in the day-to-day
running of their departments.
There is definitely a precedent for such a paradigm shift. Carriers who
win safety awards like TCA’s National Fleet Safety Awards share a common
philosophy when it comes to safety: It’s EVERYONE’S job. They’ve learned
that the safety department can have only so much impact without the support
of everyone else on the team.
Some carriers involve leaders from every department in safety training
and implementation. Some have revised reporting procedures to more accurately
track things that are likely to impact safety. Most understand that
every department must value safety in every business decision.
More than a few recipients of the TCA award have related this paradigm
shift as a factor in improving their company’s safety performance.
Carriers who want to make a significant impact in retaining their current
drivers would do well to look for a similar paradigm shift in policies
that impact driver turnover. When decisions are made with a slant toward
keeping the driving team satisfied and statistics are kept to monitor how
often it happens, more carriers will be able to tout turnover percentages
that really impact the bottom line instead of merely being a little better
than those of the carrier down the street.
Or, as Drucker put it, “What gets measured gets managed.”
Aprille Hanson contributed to this article.
5 Keys to Better Retention
Make retention as important
as customer satisfaction.
Measure “home time delivery”
commitments as you would any
other appointments. Add “Driver
YOUtilization” (enough miles
to make a decent living and
enough home time to enjoy it)
to the items that are measured
and reported.
Never compromise integrity.
Statements about how much
you “care” ring hollow when
the driver is assigned a tractor
that is not in good condition.
Claims that “safety is No. 1”
mean nothing when the driver
is instructed how to avoid a
scale or asked to violate Hours
of Service rules.
Eliminate the fine print.
Regardless of the policy, the
more complicated it is, the
more likely it is that drivers
will suspect insincerity (at
best) or outright dishonesty (at
worst). Pay (including bonus
programs), home time, performance
improvement and any
other policies should be kept as
simple as possible.
Acknowledge good
performance.
Reward performance outside of
simply not wrecking the truck
or saving a few bucks on fuel.
Isn’t it ironic that carriers with
a wall full of customer on-time
service awards have no rewards
program for drivers who
are never late?
Listen carefully.
An “open door” policy is meaningless
if those who use it don’t
feel welcomed. A driver who
feels that his or her input is
falling on deaf ears will simply
stop offering it. Get away from
the phones, give the driver
your undivided attention and
give honest consideration to
concerns and requests.
32 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

Truckload Demand Creates Opportunities in 2015 Bid Season
By Mark Montague
D
Truckload trends crucial to you and your business @ DAT.com
emand for freight
transportation is
trending up, but capacity
challenges are likely to persist
in 2015 due to HOS and driver
shortages, among other factors.
Recent statements from at least
two large public fleets cited
a lack of drivers as a primary
factor in disappointing quarterly
results, for example, and such
news has raised awareness
among shippers.
That awareness contributes to a
favorable pricing environment
for carriers in the 2015 bid
season. While many fleets will
seek a global rate increase in the
5 percent to 8 percent range,
others can take advantage of
market data and benchmarks to
price individual lanes with an eye
to historical demand, capacity and
market rates. By constructing bids
strategically, carriers can benefit
from market conditions without
alienating customers or losing
business to competitors.
4 Winning Strategies for the
2015 Bid Season
When responding to a shipper’s Request for Proposals (RFP)
decide on your goals and strategies. Here are four examples:
1. Win the entire bid. If the
shipper’s business is very attractive
and it fits well with your existing
business, you may decide to
secure as much of the package as
you can, even if you compromise
on pricing to enhance your bid’s
appeal.
2. Win part of the bid. Choose
the lanes that work best for you,
and design your bid to focus on
that portion of the contract. This
helps you to build or improve your
relationship with the shipper. You
may be able to add lanes later, if
competitors drop out.
3. Lose the bid, but make a good
impression. If the contract price
is low, you can still benefit from
completing the RFP package. Make a
good impression, and you can open
DAT Trendlines
National Van Load-To-Truck Ratio
July 2014
Load-To-Truck Ratio
5.5 and Above
2.6 to 5.4
1.1 to 2.5
1 and Below
the door to future opportunities
with that customer.
4. Cultivate 3PL customers.
Capacity challenges in 2014 have led
shippers to transfer 7.2 percent more
shipments to third-party logistics
(3PL) partners, including 20 percent of
all LTL freight. Build relationships with
3PLs to gain access to consolidated
LTL, seasonal and “exception” freight
that might not be offered directly in a
shipper’s contract.
In any of these strategies,
carriers can benefit from a deep
understanding of long-term and
more recent trends in spot market
freight, which provides insight into
emerging trends in contract freight
by lane, market or region. The
combination of spot market trends
and contract rate data found in
DAT RateView supports carrier
pricing models and benchmarks in
any bidding scenario. For a broad
overview of current trends, subscribe
to DAT Trendlines.
In partnership with
DAT Trendlines
National Van Load-To-Truck Ratio
July 2014
Load-To-Truck Ratio
5.5 and Above
2.6 to 5.4
1.1 to 2.5
1 and Below
DAT RateView
National Van Hot Market Map
D
N

Fall Edition | TCA 2014
A Chat With The Chairman
Foreword and Interview by Micah Jackson
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus
famously said, “There is nothing permanent
except change.” Changes are simply an unavoidable
part of life and business. Some welcome
change as the burgeoning of a better
day, while others resist it with furious abandon.
Remarkable leadership is often demonstrated
by those who readily embrace necessary,
even if unexpected, changes and seize
the opportunities that are born from them.
Only in new opportunities can greater victories
be achieved.
In Shepard Dunn, TCA is fortunate to have
a leader of such distinction during this important
time of transition. As the summer sun
fades to fall, Chairman Dunn sits down exclusively
with Truckload Authority to discuss his
tenure thus far. We “chat” about TCA’s ongoing
search to find a new president, the recent
officer’s retreat, and his “wild” adventures on
safari in Africa.
Thank you for joining us for our second
edition of Chat with the Chairman.
You made it clear that one of your
personal objectives this year as you
travel and serve is to listen carefully to
members. What are some things you have
heard that are encouraging and have
you been surprised by member feedback?
Well, it has certainly been an interesting
year, that’s for sure. Like all great things in life,
you prepare for things to go in one direction and
they always seem to go a different direction. It’s
how you deal with that direction that really matters.
That’s the big thing. As I’ve traveled around
the country seeing people, one of the fascinating
things I enjoy about visiting with new people
— some TCA members, some not TCA members
— is meeting some of these small carriers, or
even large carriers that I didn’t know before,
and be able to listen to their stories. As I walk
away from these meetings, there is one thing
I’ve learned for sure. There is more than one
way to make a living. Each of these companies
has its own niche about how they do things and
they are profitable. You can see in their faces
that they love what they do and they are passionate
about it.
Recently the trucking industry rallied in
a clear and unified way in response to
the now infamous Serial Killer magazine
ad. What was TCA’s involvement
in pushing back against this utter
mischaracterization of truckers?
I was in Africa with my friend Barry Pottle
when the ad came out and I had some media
reach out to me while I was down there. I didn’t
know what they were talking about. Finally, I
found it on some of the websites, so it took a little
while before it registered with me. Obviously
it was very bad press concerning our industry.
We are clearly not the monsters they make us
out to be. Certainly, TCA stepped up in conjunction
with the American Trucking Associations. I
am thrilled with the way it turned out. I think
we were able to put a positive spin on our message.
I think our members were appreciative of
us doing so. I don’t think it could have worked
out any better. It just shows you, whether you

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are eight or 10,000 miles away, you can still get
things done.
What can we as an industry learn from
the whole episode?
I really think that we all have to be aware,
whether it’s our local communities or on the state
or national level, when you see an ad or bad media
or a bad event that happens concerning our
industry, we all have to step up and say “time out,
stop! This isn’t who we are.” You can’t be afraid to
do those things. This is a great example of that.
They’ve made us out to be monsters, which we obviously
are not. I think when we see those things
happen — in our local communities in particular
— we have to stand up as leaders in trucking and
we need to say “this is not who we are.” And then
correct the media and the TV; call them out on it.
Since becoming chairman, you’ve been
quite busy dutifully serving TCA, and as
you mentioned, you also made a trip to
Africa this summer to go on Safari with
Barry Pottle. Share with readers a few of
your most memorable experiences there.
It was a fabulous trip. I was very lucky to be
invited by my good friend Barry Pottle of Pottle’s
Transportation out of Bangor, Maine, and I kind
of fell in to it by accident but I’m so glad that I
did. Our intention was to go down there, have
some fun and photo shoot, which we did. There
were just so many great moments. One moment
I remember was when we were walking across
the border from Zimbabwe to Zambia, crossing
the gorge where Victoria Falls is, to watch
bungee jumpers. On the way we saw a whole
fleet of flatbed trucks that were just parked at
the border trying to cross. So we stopped and
talked to these truckers just to engage them
a little bit. We wanted to find out a little more
about their lives in trucking. One of the fun
things was when I asked a driver about Hours
of Service. Was there an Hours of Service issue
there and how did it work. The response that
I got was “We can work as much as we want
between Monday and Thursday.” The driver implied
that as long as they were home on Friday
and the weekend, it didn’t matter. I then took
a look at their trucks and their tires. There was
clearly a dog from every county on the drive
tires. I asked them about what happens when
they have a flat out here. How does a road service
company get out there and change a tire?
I asked the driver about that and he looked at
me funny and asked, “What happens if you get
a flat on your car?” I told him that I get out and
change it. He said that that’s what they do, too.
They get out and change it. I then asked about
a flat steer tire. He said “They were a little different.
You have to wait. You have to wait a
long time.” I just engaged them in some other
conversation. It was really fascinating. We kept
seeing this one thing on flatbeds and we asked
various people what it was and they said it was
“koper.” We looked at each other and assumed
it was a mineral. They said it came out of Zambia.
While we were walking that particular route
over the bridge, we saw one load that wasn’t
tarped. It turned out to be copper. So really,
“koper” meant copper. It was the most beautiful
product you’ve ever seen. It was just raw
copper pressed down like a piece of ply board.
That was fascinating and we got some good pictures.
There was another particular moment when
we were in Botswana. We were walking back to

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the lodge from town and we saw this group of
kids. I think there were five all the same age.
I didn’t know if they were siblings or cousins or
friends. They were clearly about 4 years old. They
all looked the same. There were girls and boys
mixed together and they all got together, wrapped
their arms around each other. They were screaming
that they wanted a treat or something. I went
over and got high fives from them and we got
beautiful pictures of these beautiful children with
nothing but smiles on their faces. It just shows
you the things we take for granted. We get by in
such a complicated world and they live in such a
simple world and didn’t have a care at all. It was
fascinating. There were many stories.
We were in Botswana on a boat, looking for
various animals. We saw a great big bull elephant
swim across the river. He went under the water
and all you could see was his trunk. It was moving
around like a periscope. It was moving in all
different directions. He was smelling and sensing.
You had the feeling that he knew where he was
going. When he got back to shallow water, it was
great to see a great big bull elephant coming out.
The water was running off of him and he walked
over to a grass island to feed. I don‘t know of
anywhere else in the world you could see that.
Those were just three minor things that were
great memories. There are many others.
The annual officer’s retreat was held in
August in Napa, California. It’s customary
for the chairman to select the officer’s
retreat location, so why Napa?
bay area and I just think that time of the year the
weather’s so nice. You can be in the city, it can be
cool, foggy and maybe a little mist and then you
can get up to the valley in Napa and it can be nice
and sunny and warm. The weather was absolutely
perfect. Of course what comes along with Napa
are great wineries, learning about those processes.
You always wonder when you look back
at these officers in the group and say “He drinks a
lot of beer, he drinks scotch” and you don’t think
of them as wine drinkers. But I promise you, they
were all drinking wine and loving it. In that part
of the world, it’s just fabulous. The wives were in
hog heaven out there, it just turned out perfectly.
It just couldn’t have been any better. We were
about three weeks to a month before harvest so
all the vineyards were full of grapes everywhere.
Some of the vineyards were doing some harvesting,
just a lovely area.
Bring us up to speed on the agenda of that
retreat and what were the key objectives
that you wanted to meet?
The key objectives were to work through the
new budget for 2014-2015 because our fiscal
year begins October 1. So we worked through the
budget. We got it approved and as I understand,
for the first time in a lot of years the officers’
group actually approved the budget during the
officers’ meeting with some minor adjustments.
Another item was the fact that this year we are
hiring a new president, so we had those discussions
about how that task force is coming along.
That’s obviously a big item on our plate and not
one I intentionally had on my plate when I accepted
this position back in March. So we’ll work
through that. We’ll work through the strategic
plan and what we call a scorecard — the three-
Why Napa? It was actually my second choice.
But Napa is a beautiful area. I’ve always loved the
36 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

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year strategic plan that Tom Kretsinger put into
place when he was chairman. We’ve got some
other things that are going on and there will be
some announcements made. One of those, which
some of the members are aware of, is we’re about
to roll out a new benchmarking program that begins
sometime in September. I began working on
that last year during Tom Kretsinger’s chairmanship
primarily because I knew that I couldn’t work
on that and be chairman at the same time so I
started that early. So we’re about to roll that new
product out and that was so we could grow the
benchmarking program for years to come and we
think we have a mechanism to do that. There are
a lot of things on the agenda, but those were certainly
highlights.
As our readers know, one vital trait every
great leader must possess is the ability to
adapt. You touched on this a moment
ago. With the resignation of former
President Chris Burruss, are you satisfied
and do you feel good about the progress
of the search by the task force thus far?
Yes, no question about it. Our task force has
nine members — six officers and three non-officers.
We have a really diverse group. I feel
very comfortable with where we are heading.
We received over 125 applications. It took virtually
two weeks to trim it down to four individuals
who don’t know yet who they are and we’re
going to begin the interview process next week
(week of August 25). We’re just in the process
of beginning to talk to some of those folks; we
feel very comfortable with that. Each conference
call or e-mail that’s sent out to the group says
to think about who this next president is going
to be; think about these individuals and once we
got it down to this number four we have, can you
envision the next president of TCA being in that
group? If the answer is yes, we’ve done our job.
If the answer is no, we’ve still got some more
work to do. But overwhelmingly the answer has
been yes. It’s amazing how you can take nine
individuals from nine different companies, nine
different businesses and when we go through
125-plus applications and we can all agree to
get it down to those top four and virtually be
spot-on with that. It’s amazing how that process
has worked. I have to tell you, I’m very proud
and looking forward to the opportunity soon to
introduce the next president of TCA to the membership.
there is a growing trend of carriers
raising driver compensation. Are we
going to see this trend continue? And if
so, what will that mean for drivers and
bottom lines?
Well, I certainly think that it is definitely
happening out there. As I’ve crisscrossed this
country talking to folks, one of the things I’ve
asked is what is happening in your company?
Where do you see things going? And there’s
this optimism. Before, I kind of said you know
it’s kind of hard to look down the road, but I
do feel some optimism coming. The optimism
I’m feeling is that they’re able to get increases
from their customers — the shipper community
— and by doing so, they’re able to get the
wages up. I’m not sensing a solution or an end
in sight to this driver shortage but you’ve got
to start somewhere, and I’m feeling as though
these carriers are feeling a lot better today than
they were in March. Some of that has to do with
getting their houses in order and it’s certainly
about the bottom line. That’s why we’re all in
business, but you’ve got to have a driver to
drive those bottom lines and if you don’t have
that, most of us don’t have companies. I think
we’re making some headway on that; I think
it’s a slow process and will continue to be slow.
Some companies are making bigger strides than
others. The driver shortage is all about wages
and lifestyle and that’s what has really created
the shortage. It’s not like the drivers just fell in
a big sinkhole and are gone — they’re still out
there but they’re doing other things for a living
right now. It’s our job to find ways to attract
them back to the industry and take it from an
unskilled labor force to a skilled labor force and
that’s going to take some time to do.
You have been outspoken about
continuing past Chairman (Robert) Low’s
emphasis on wellness. Talk about TCA’s
health and wellness clinics happening
around the country in September.
We are doing health and wellness clinics at
truck stops across the country. We did it last
year with some success. We’re hoping this year
we’re going to have more success. You know it’s
all about educating the people. As I mentioned
in my acceptance speech back in March, at my
company we opened up our own clinic. We’re a
small company in comparison with many of the
large companies. And if a company like ours can
do it, many others can. We’re not doing it alone.
We’re doing it with many other employers here
in town and it’s working. But we still have to
get utilization up. It’s all about education. And
it’s a slow process. Drivers and our own employees,
our staff, are slow to move in that direction
but it’s happening. It’s the right thing to do and
one thing we’re doing in our association is we’re
engaging our insurance members in TCA right
now.
It’s easier and cheaper for drivers to eat
an unhealthy diet while on the road. What
should a carrier’s role be to help drivers
make more responsible health choices?
As I mentioned before, I definitely think it’s
about education. And it’s not that the drivers
don’t know … some do, some don’t … but most
drivers know what to do and it’s hard to do. But
it’s no different than our lives. It’s hard to do
those [healthy] things. But it’s about education,
and if you go to a doctor right now and ask them
about health, they’re going to talk to you about
the basics — about nutrition. And that’s what
we’ve got to do for drivers. You’ve got to put it
out there. And if one picks up on it, it’s a big win.
And it’s one at a time. So it really is about educating
the drivers about the things they can do for
themselves, whether it’s nutrition or it’s exercise.
But all those things they can do right there from
the seats of their trucks.
Here are a couple of quick legislative
questions to wrap up our chat.
Congress put a band-aid on the solvency
of the Highway Trust Fund, kicking the
can down the road yet again. What is
going to have to happen before Congress
adequately addresses our crumbling
infrastructure problems and what can
TCA members do to help in the fight?
I think the only real solution is that we’ve got
to have some leaders in Congress, probably more
than a couple, to be able to stand up and say we
need to do this because it’s the right thing to do for
this country, and they’ve got to take into account
that they’re not worried about getting re-elected.
They’re funding these highways through whatever
mechanisms they decide and they’ve got to do
that without looking over their shoulders about
re-election; they may not get re-elected because
they raised taxes or … whatever, but that’s what
it’s going to take. And it’s probably going to take
a coalition of a couple handfuls of House members
and Senate members to put that together before
it’s going to work. Otherwise we’re just going to
keep kicking the can down the road, which isn’t
really getting us anywhere. We’re not getting our
potholes fixed, much less our bridges and the infrastructure
in this country, and that’s one of the
key things that makes this such a wonderful country
to live in and such a vibrant economy, is the
infrastructure. And if we let the infrastructure continue
to crumble we’re all in for a world of hurt.
Now what do we do as TCA members? I tell
most of our members when they ask this question
that we need to focus locally and we need to focus
on the states. If the federal government isn’t
going to help the states, the states have to make
their own minds up.
TCA does not endorse candidates, but
what should members be considering most
when deciding how to cast their ballots
this fall?
Politics is kind of like talking about religion as
well as talking about things you don’t always want
to openly talk about. But I think what they’ve got
to remember is that they’ve got to work with the
officials that are doing things to protect their businesses,
regardless of what side of the aisle they’re
on, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans or
whether they’re independents. They’ve got to work
together. It’s not just one side, it takes everybody
to make it work. So I think you’ve got to go out
and shake hands, you’ve got to tell them what the
issues are and ask for their help. They’re certainly
not going to help you if you don’t ask for it. But one
thing I’ve learned is spreading a little money around
certainly helps that process. You’ve got to spread it
to both sides because you need all the help you can
get from both sides, or from all sides. And that’s the
only thing that works. But I think they’ve got to hear
from you, whether it’s writing your Congressman or
calling in to their offices and letting them know how
you feel or whether it’s walking into the mayor’s office
and telling him what you think, but it’s got to be
good for your business and if it’s not good for your
business, it’s not good for trucking.
38 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

Fall Edition | TCA 2014
Member Mailroom
What is the significance of the annual
Wreaths Across America Gala?
This morning, as you arose from a safe night’s sleep to prepare for a day
of work, it’s likely you gave little thought to what it really means to live in the
greatest country in the world — the United States of America, land of the free and
home of the brave.
It’s a given fact that the majority of Americans alive today don’t have any
recollection of World War I, World War II and the Korean War, and the thousands of
men and women who gave their lives to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today.
The annual Wreaths Across America Gala raises money to place remembrance
wreaths on the graves of America’s veterans at Arlington National Cemetery
— which is observing its 150th anniversary — and cemeteries across the nation.
Set in Washington, D.C., this unforgettable event — which raised over $160,000
last year — also provides an opportunity to tell trucking’s story — one of charity,
patriotism and professionalism. Gratefully, many trucking companies and professional
drivers volunteer their time to transport the wreaths.
Dana Perino, former press secretary for President George W. Bush and current
Fox News contributor, was master of ceremonies.
“We couldn’t have been more thrilled that Dana Perino agreed to emcee TCA’s
second annual Wreaths Across America Gala,” said Karen Worcester, executive
director, Wreaths Across America. “Her dedication to our nation’s veterans
and troops through organizations like Companions for Heroes, which matches
rescue animals with vets suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and her
advocacy for hiring and supporting veterans with PTSD, as well as her work ethic
and integrity, are the core principles this organization values most. For her to
make time in her extremely busy schedule to be a part of this great event speaks
volumes.”
2014 Gala Sponsors
The event sponsors included Pilot Flying J, platinum; Walmart Transportation, gold; Randall-Reilly,
silver; and TravelCenters of America/Petro Stopping Centers, bronze.
Silent auction sponsors were Diamond Cutters of Maryland; Worcester Wreath Company; Bose
Ride; Mike Udermann, Kottke Trucking; and Wreaths Across America.
Box sponsors were Landstar Systems; Motor Carrier Services; Omnitracs; Tennant Truck Lines;
Kottke Trucking; Bestway Express; Garner Transportation; Load One; Raider Express; Fremont
Contract Carriers; PeopleNet; Bestpass; and Launchit.
TCA 2014 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 39

Fall Edition | TCA 2014
Talking TCA
TCA Honors America’s
2014 Highway
Highway Angel recognition is
awarded for a driver’s good deeds
ranging from simple acts of kindness
— such as fixing a flat tire — to heroic
life-saving efforts, such as pulling
someone from a burning vehicle and
administering CPR.
As the program continues to focus
on improving the public’s image of
truck driving as a profession, and
providing a program that recognizes
drivers and helps individual drivers
feel better about themselves and
their professions, companies use it
as a source of increasing morale and
self image among their driving force.
The Highway Angel program and the
image it reinforces is being emphasized
during the second annual Highway
Angel Truck Stop Tour headlined by
country recording artist Lindsay Lawler,
the national spokesperson for the
Highway Angel program.
The tour began in Knoxville,
Tennessee, on May 21 and is
scheduled to end Sept. 25 at Nashville,
Tennessee. Concerts are held at either
TravelCenters of America or Petro
Stopping Centers locations.
The program takes place atop a
flatbed truck and trailer provided by
Fikes Truck Line of Hope, Arkansas.
Each stop on the tour features
an hour-long acoustic performance
by Lawler, as well as a live, twohour
radio remote through Renegade
Radio, with whom Lawler already
hosts two radio shows (including
On The Road to Music City, which is
trucking industry-centered).
Tour sponsors include TA/Petro,
Schneider and Wholesale Truck &
Finance.
In this issue, we feature recent
recipients of the Highway Angel
award.
Rodney Dryden of
San Antonio, Texas,
drives for Transco
Lines Inc., of Russellville,
Arkansas
Tommy Colston
of Burleson, Texas,
drives for Frito-Lay
of Dallas
Robert Tyler of
Marysville, Washington,
drives for
Smokey Point Distributing
of Arlington,
Washington
Peter Holland of
Watertown, Ontario,
Canada, drives for
Challenger Motor
Freight of Cambridge,
Ontario,
Canada
Gary de Vos of
Trenton, Ontario,
Canada, drives for
Bison Transport of
Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada
Harry Welker of
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma,
drives for
Melton Truck Lines
of Tulsa, Oklahoma
William McNamee
of Christopher,
Illinois, drives for
Carbon Express
of Wharton, New
Jersey
40 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

angel award recipients
Sponsored by:
Arvil JR Finch of Lemitar, New Mexico,
drives for ABF Freight System of Fort
Smith, Arkansas
Tracy Fischer of Chester Hill, Pennsylvania,
drives for Barnhart Transportation of
North East, Pennsylvania
David Flaherty of Wilkertown, North
Carolina, drives for ABF Freight System of
Fort Smith, Arkansas
Highway Angel spokesperson
and country singer Lindsay
Lawler and guitarist Kevin Post
entertain truckers at the TA in
Knoxville, Tennessee, as part of
the Highway Angel tour.
Read their acts of
courage here:
James Mozey of Niagra, North Dakota,
drives for Britton Transport of Grand
Forks, North Dakota
Scott Parry of Marion, North Carolina
Robert Sutton of Meridian, Idaho, drives
for ABF Freight System of Fort Smith,
Arkansas
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TCA 2014 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 41
GWCC_SFTY_HP_COL_TCA_14.indd 1
2/25/2014 2:09:38 PM

TCA Honors America’s
top rookie
By Aprille Hanson
As a child, Julie Matulle said she
was always the “silly little girl that
wanted to drive a truck,” hoping to
follow in her father’s footsteps. On
August 22, that “silly little girl” was
named Randall Reilly’s fourth annual
Mike O’Connell Memorial Trucking’s
Top Rookie winner at the Great American
Trucking Show in Dallas.
Matulle, 48, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin,
drives for H.O. Wolding Inc. and
graduated from Fox Valley Technical
College in Appleton, Wisconsin. She
drives a 2014 Freightliner Cascadia
Evolution and was the only woman finalist
out of 10 other truckers in the
running for the title.
The winner of the Top Rookie honor,
sponsored by several trucking entities
and organizations including Truckload
Carriers Association, receives
several prizes including $10,000, a
custom plaque, a Cobra package that
includes a CB radio and cameras, another
$1,000 and 100,000 MyRewards
points from Pilot Flying J.
The other nine finalists receive
$1,000, a plaque and a prize package.
There were 55 drivers entered
this year, up from 46 in 2013. Some of
the criteria to be eligible for the award
included on-time deliveries, safe driving,
customer relations and availability
for loads.
Matulle called the honor “absolutely
unbelievable.”
“It’s a lifelong goal [to be a trucker],
win or lose. I kept saying, ‘I’m in
it to win it’ but then I tell everybody
‘I already won — I’ve got a brand new
truck waiting at home for me,’” Matulle
told Truckload Authority. “I’m just really
proud of everyone. We’re all over
the age of 40 that are in it [the Top
Rookie finalists]. It’s life-changing to
become a truck driver, the not being
home, not being close to your family.
It’s just life altering and I’m proud of
everyone.”
Matulle’s parents, Donald and Joyce
Buehring, grew up in the trucking industry
running Donald Buehring Trucking
in Oshkosh. Matulle told the crowd
that they always taught her, “some
things you have to work a little harder
for,” and that the advice rang true for
42 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

driver of the year
Sponsored by:
her eventual career in trucking.
“This is a business my father and
my grandfather did, but I had just
never done,” she said of her career
working in the shipping department
at Quad Graphics for two decades.
Matulle raised two children as a single
parent with help from her parents.
After her children were grown, she
“took a big chance. I quit my job and
signed up for driver training school,”
Matulle said in her essay submitted
for the Top Rookie award.
Her children are now grown and
Matulle is a proud grandmother to Holly,
who will be 2 years old in December.
“As a single parent, I think it gives you
the toughness that you need” for trucking,
Matulle said. “You don’t need to let
your guard down” out on the road.
But just because she’s tough,
doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a
sweet spot for the children she sees
along the way.
“I rode with my dad as a little bitty
kid. So whenever I see kids in truck
stops … I’d always buy them candy
bars because that’s what people would
do for me so I’m still the candy bar
queen,” Matulle said.
Matulle’s dispatcher with H.O. Wolding
said, in part, in a statement that
was shared at the awards ceremony:
“In her first few months Julie quickly
developed a reputation for being
a hard runner and for always having
a positive attitude, even when faced
with adverse situations. I can personally
say every time I’ve spoken with
Julie she’s left a good impression.”
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find software solutions?
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For a free consultation contact us
Independent Contractor Misclassification
Caused By Lack of Focus
Over the past six years we have had a front-row
seat view to the transportation industry continually
and increasingly being attacked by state and
federal courts and agencies for the misclassification
of employees as independent contractors.
When companies see or are the target of these
attacks, they always ask the big question …
Do you think the use of independent
contractors is going away?
By Scott GrandyS, Special contriButor
Our answer to this question is always the same.
We believe the independent contractor business
model is legal; however, the industry has put itself
in the position to be an easy target. The question
should not be …”will the model go away” but rather
…“what is the industry doing to improve itself to
understand and comply with the ever-changing
rules, regulations, laws, cases, etc., relative to the
independent contractor model?”
The trucking industry spends large amounts of
money fighting FMCSA issues and staffing full
departments with experts in DOT compliance.
However, when we ask our trucking clients how
much time, energy, money and resources they
put toward consistently monitoring and improving
their independent contractor model in comparison
with DOT compliance, the answer is almost always
the same … VERY LITTLE. Unfortunately,
this consistent answer is what makes the trucking
industry an easy target!
Independent contractor classification is a complicated
set of moving variables that needs to
be monitored, incorporated into operations, and
internally audited on a regular basis in order for
a company to
reduce their misclassification
risk.
The process of
maintaining this
critical business
model should not
receive any less
focus than DOT
compliance. Reality:
the DOT, IRS,
Scott A. Grandys,
CEO - Relevant
Business Solutions
Department of
Labor (state and federal) courts, etc., all have
the ability to financially and legally shut down a
company’s business for “non-compliance.” So we
ask the question …
What is the trucking Industry doing to
change their view of independent contractor
compliance?
We believe if the trucking industry put forth the
same effort in their independent contractor compliance
as they do with DOT compliance, it would
change the “big bad abusive employer” image; no
different than the way the Industry has changed
the “Smokey and the Bandit” image with the general
motoring public as well as state and federal
regulatory agencies.
State and federal agencies and courts have
changed the independent contractor game forever!
It is time for the trucking industry to catch up!
If you are unsure what steps to take or where to
start, call us. We can help you. It’s what we do.
Relevant Business Solutions - (800) 756-1699.
TCA 2014 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 43

2
2
2014 TCA
Scholarship Recipients
1
1
3 4 5 6
7
8 9 10 11 12
13 14
15
16 17 18
19 20
21 22 23
24
25 26
27 28 29 30
Thirty college students will receive scholarships from the
2014-2015 Truckload Carriers Association’s Scholarship Fund, a
program which has been providing assistance to students associated
with the truckload industry since 1973. Out of approximately
$90,000, this year’s scholarships have been broken down into
amounts ranging from $2,725 to $6,250.
Each of the winners is either entering or already a student in good
standing at a four-year college or university and is also associated
with a TCA member company as an employee, independent contractor,
or the child, grandchild, or spouse of an employee or independent
contractor. Additionally, each recipient has shown financial need
and scholastic achievement, maintained full-time student status, and
demonstrated that he or she is an individual of high character and
integrity. The TCA Scholarship Fund awards its scholarships without
regard to sex, race, color, national origin or religion.
Among this year’s awards are the Past Chairman John Kaburick Scholarship
and the Darrell “Clark” Wilson Jr. Memorial Scholarship, both of
which were established this year in memory of their namesakes.
To learn about all of this year’s winners, visit truckload.org/Scholarships.
Students who would like to apply for next year’s scholarship
will be able to fill out the online application on this site in May 2015.
Anyone interested in making a donation in the name of one of TCA’s
past chairmen should visit truckload.org/Past-Chairmens-Fund.
Following are this year’s winners:
1. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT TRUCKERS SCHOLAR-
SHIP WINNER ($6,250): Wendy McKamie, Hope, Arkansas, Fikes Truck
Line; 2. PAST CHAIRMAN’S JOHN KABURICK WINNER ($4,500): Kalie
Snyder, Mars, Pennsylvania, Wabash National; 3. KAI NORRIS SCHOLAR-
SHIP WINNER ($3,250): Joseph Kilmartin, Murray, Kentucky, Paschall
Truck Lines; 4. THOMAS WELBY SCHOLARSHIP WINNER ($3,250): Kenna
Nelson, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Warren Transport; 5. DARRELL “CLARK”
WILSON JR. WINNER ($3,250): Brittany Neyman, Lawrence, Kansas,
Hill Brothers Transportation; 6. REECE STUBBS WINNER ($3,250): Laura
Runkel, Whitehall, Wisconsin, Anderson Trucking Service; 7. TCA SCHOL-
ARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Gage Badeau, Evansville, Wisconsin, Cummins
Filtration; 8. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Alicia Basile,
College Park, Maryland, Roehl Transport; 9. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER:
($2,725): Declan Collins, North Andover, Massachusetts, Boyle Transportation;
10. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Makaela DeBoer, Arpin,
Wisconsin, deBoer Transportation; 11. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER:
($2,725): Molly Dye, Washington Court House, Ohio, Paramount Freight
Systems; 12. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Tanner Hayes,
Marshfield, Wisconsin, Roehl Transport; 13. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER:
($2,725): Tyler Hayzlett, Mount Juliet, Tennessee, Big G Express; 14. TCA
SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Hughston Hodges, Athens, Georgia,
Hodges Trucking Company; 15. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725):
Kaleigh Huff, Lonoke, Arkansas, Maverick Transportation; 16. TCA
Scholarship Winner: ($2,725): Mackenzie Jeffries, Savannah, Georgia,
Great Dane Trailers; 17. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): John
Kabase, Vestavia Hills, Alabama, McLeod Software; 18. TCA SCHOLAR-
SHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Lisa Lehman, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Celadon
Trucking; 19. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Michelle Lehnus,
Bourbonnais, Illinois, Hoekstra Transportation; 20. TCA Scholarship
Winner: ($2,725): Amanda Mankovich, West Lafayette, Indiana, Wabash
National Corporation; 21. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725):
Gabrielle Pybus, Jacksonville, Florida, Landstar Transportation; 22. TCA
SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Destiny Shelton, Warner, Oklahoma,
Paul Transportation; 23. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Amanda
Solt, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, Cowan Systems; 24. TCA SCHOLARSHIP
WINNER: ($2,725): Eric Thoma, Lafayette, Indiana, Wabash National
Corporation; 25. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Dylan Tungate,
Loretto, Kentucky, Hendrickson; 26. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER:
($2,725): Kaylie VanGalder, Paw Paw, Michigan, Ralph Moyle; 27. TCA
SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Meg Will, Fishers, Indiana, Celadon
Group Inc; 28. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Megan Wilt,
Liberty, Missouri, American Central Transport; 29. TCA SCHOLARSHIP
WINNER: ($2,725): Erin Winters, Macomb, Michigan, Load One Transport;
30. TCA SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: ($2,725): Sykora Zabel, Newark, Ohio,
Hendrickson Auxiliary Axles/The Boler Company.
44 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

Officer’s
Retreat 2014
Napa
Napa, CA
Truckload Carriers
Association officers and
staff met in August in Napa,
California, internationally
acclaimed for its fine wine.
Key objectives of passing
the 2015 fiscal year
budget and planning the
implementation of a new
benchmarking program, set
to begin immediately, were
both accomplished.
The retreat was certainly
not all work. The officers
and spouses joined staff
one afternoon visiting two
vineyards, learning all about
the wine-making process
and sampling some of
Napa’s best.
On another afternoon,
attendees had a choice of
activities: One group went
to The Culinary Institute
of America, where they
cooked a delicious gourmet
meal and then ate it. The
other group took the Audi
Speedway Challenge, where
they were certified as Audi
drivers.
TCA 2014 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 45

Mark Your
Calendar
November 2014
Benchmarking: TC-05 *Invitation Only* - Nov. 6-7 — The Westin Tampa
Harbour Island in Tampa, Florida. Find more information at Truckload.org or
contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
February 2015
September 2014
Wait Time, Treatment & Other Issues that Impact Driver Satisfaction &
Retention Webinar - Sept. 25 — Online. Find more information at Truckload.org
or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
October 2014
TCA at MC&E - Oct. 3-4 — Marriott Marquis and Marina Hotel in San Diego.
Find more information at Truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
Benchmarking: TC-01 *Invitation Only* - Oct. 23-24 — Sheraton Oklahoma
City Downtown Hotel in Oklahoma City. Find more information at Truckload.org
or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
Benchmarking: TC-06 *Invitation Only* - Oct. 27-28 — Chicago Marriott Suites
O’Hare in Chicago. Find more information at Truckload.org or contact TCA at
(703) 838-1950.
Recruitment and Retention Conference - Feb. 4-6 — Gaylord Opryland
Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Find more information at
Truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950. Exhibitor opportunities available.
March 2015
Annual Convention - March 8-11 — Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando, Florida.
Find more information at Truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
Exhibitor opportunities available.
May 2015
Safety and Security Division Annual Meeting - May 3-5 — Charlotte Westin
in Charlotte, North Carolina. Find more information at Truckload.org or contact
TCA at (703) 838-1950. Exhibitor opportunities available.
July 2015
Refrigerated Division Annual Meeting - July 8-10 — Stowe Mountain Lodge
in Stowe, Vermont. Find more information at Truckload.org or contact TCA at
(703) 838-1950.
46 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2014

Hendrickson understands the commercial transportation industry and the challenges it
faces every day. We are poised to supply Solutions through Innovation TM by drawing on
our 100 year legacy of superior design, quality manufacturing and superb customer service.
We deliver lightweight, durable, innovative suspension systems and components required
to carry freight around the globe. Hendrickson looks forward to serving the medium- and
heavy-duty commercial vehicle industry today and for the next 100 years.
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