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Clare Casey Safety Award | Inside Out with Hunter Livesay | capital recap
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
SUMMER 2017
ONE VOICE
TCA and ATA: A winning combination
Page | 6
Data Dump
What will FMCSA do with
the additional ELD data?
Page | 24
Politics in the fast lane
Arkansas is in “high cotton”
with a fast-paced senator
Page | 40
Last Call
Setting high hiring standards
and sticking with them

SUMMER | TCA 2017
President’s Purview
Embracing Change
O ften, the only way to respond to changes around you adequately is to make changes
yourself. We know trucking is a fast-paced, constantly evolving industry, and coupled together
with the tense and uncertain political climate, we all have the choice either to let
the environment dictate what we do and who we are or to stand up proudly and enact the
changes we wish to see. Here at TCA, we have a focused direction and we are embracing
change.
In my joint interview with ATA President Chris Spear in this issue of Truckload Authority,
we discuss the collaboration between our organizations in taking on the issues facing trucking
— including F4A, tax reform, and hair testing — and we discuss the changes that we
have each enacted in our brief tenures leading our organizations. I think it is an insightful
discussion and I hope you take the time to read it.
We’ve made great strides in proclaiming the Voice of Truckload. The new TCA Government
Affairs team is working hard on the Hill, partnering with coalition safety groups to tell
our story. Thank you to all of our members who have donated to the government affairs
initiative. We’ve received 104 donations so far and more are coming in every day.
John Lyboldt
President
Truckload Carriers Association
jlyboldt@truckload.org
We also have some exciting news in terms of honoring our pledge to our members to
make your companies more profitable. More details will be forthcoming, but TCA’s Profitability
Program is shaping up to be the most robust benchmarking program in trucking. I cannot
wait for you all to begin taking advantage of this program and quickly begin seeing the gains
in your balance sheets.
Finally, we had one change that was bittersweet for us. Debbie Sparks has moved to a
new role at Wreaths Across America. Debbie served our association for more than 10 years
and provided us with an electrifying energy that will be impossible to replace. Luckily for us,
she’ll still be involved with trucking at Wreaths, and we know that she’ll help propel them to
new heights.
As we continue forward along the road ahead of us, we know that there will be some
bumps and unexpected turns, but we nevertheless move with certainty, focused on the
destination, and ready for change.
John Lyboldt
PRESIDENT’S PICKS
Here We Go Again
Improving the infrastructure
has always come down to money.
Page 8
Obamacare vs. Trumpcare
The real problem is not which plan
is better but the rising cost of care.
Page 10
Inside Out with Hunter Livesay
Meet TCA’s young multi-talented
Conventions and Marketing Coordinator.
Page 36
TCA 2017
www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority

T H E R O A D M A P
SPRING 2 017
PRESIDENT’S PURVIEW
Embracing Change by John Lyboldt | 3
LEGISLATIVE LOOK-IN
Data Dump | 6
Make America’s Infrastructure Great Again | 8
Health Cost | 10
Capitol Recap | 12
TRACKING THE TRENDS SPONSORED BY SKYBITZ
One Voice | 14
NATIONAL NEWS MAKER SPONSORED BY THE TRUCKER NEWS ORG.
Politics in the Fast Lane with Tom Cotton | 24
A CHAT WITH THE CHAIRMAN SPONSORED BY MCLEOD SOFTWARE
Never Enough Time with Rob Penner | 28
MEMBER MAILROOM
How do I stay informed about all of TCA’s events and programs? | 34
TALKING TCA
Inside Out with Hunter Livesay | 36
Last Call | 40
Welcome to Phoenix | 43
Small Talk | 44
Mark Your Calendar | 46
Phone: (703) 838-1950 • Fax: (703) 836-6610
PRESIDENT
John Lyboldt
jlyboldt@truckload.org
VICE PRESIDENT - GOV’T AFFAIRS
Dave Heller
dheller@truckload.org
FIRST VICE CHAIR
Dan Doran, President
Doran Logistics, LLC
TREASURER
Dennis Dellinger
President
Cargo Transporters, Inc.
SECRETARY
James Ward
President & CEO
D.M. Bowman, Inc.
ASSOCIATION VP TO ATA
Bill Reed Jr., Chairman & CEO
Skyline Transportation
AT-LARGE OFFICER
Dave Williams, Executive VP
Knight Transportation
VICE PRESIDENT + PUBLISHER
Ed Leader
edl@thetrucker.com
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
Rob Penner, President & CEO
Bison Transport
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
William (Bill) Giroux
wgiroux@truckload.org
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
Ron Goode
rgoode@truckload.org
SECOND VICE CHAIR
Josh Kaburick
CEO
EarlL.HendersonTruckingCompany
IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIR
Russell Stubbs
Chairman
FFE Holdings Corp.
AT-LARGE OFFICER
John Elliott, CEO
Load One, LLC
AT-LARGE OFFICER
Roy Cox, President
Best Logistics Group
AT-LARGE OFFICER
Mike Eggleton, Jr., Vice President
Raider Express, Inc.
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Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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SUMMER | TCA 2017
Legislative Look-In
By Dorothy Cox
For some time, trucking industry leaders have been anticipating the
wealth of data that can be mined from electronic logging devices,
or ELDs, which are mandated to replace written logs in commercial
trucks on December 18.
What if there’s actual data to back up what the industry has been
saying for years anecdotally about, for example, detention time or
parking?
Take detention. If one looks at the American Transportation Research
Institute’s (ATRI) top 10 trucking issues, “Detention impacts everything
on that list,” said Truckload Carriers Association Vice President
of Government Affairs David Heller. “There’s not anything it doesn’t
play into.”
“We have been speaking anecdotally about detention time, and for
years and years and years it’s been an issue, but there’s never been
any true data to back that up.”
With ELDs, there could be.
TCA President John Lyboldt said: “That data explosion we’re going
to have from ELDs is going to be well-received by everyone, because
we’re going to learn an awful lot about the things that we already
know, but we’ll have data to prove ourselves to better trucking. So
ELDs were a great way to move things forward for trucking in North
America.”
TCA Chairman Rob Penner noted that data has become more and
more “prevalent” in the world of trucking and has helped improve
safety. He noted that “detention of drivers is an industrywide problem
and we must take appropriate actions to deal with it.”
“Paper logs,” added Heller, “were only pencil marks on a piece of
paper. In December, the truckload segment will have ELDs designed
to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s specifications.
The agency now should be deemed responsible to use that data and
figure out the bad apples.”
The problem is that FMCSA apparently hasn’t the time, manpower,
resources, or desire to keep such data.
DOT data purge
The agency says it doesn’t have the legal authority to do so.
“The statute requiring use of ELDs limits the purposes for which the
U.S. Department of Transportation may use ELD data,” said FMCSA
spokesman Duane DeBruyne. “Enforcement officials are to use such
data only for determining Hours of Service (HOS) compliance.”
He pointed out that the agency won’t be maintaining the ELD data
it reviews “except in those cases where enforcement action is taken
and the data is needed as evidence.”
What’s more, he told Truckload Authority, “Routine inspections will
transfer data to law enforcement and then be purged from the system.”
Said Heller, “It’s not their data to purge. It’s a question of whether
or not they are legally obligated to acknowledge excessive detention
time by knowing the ramifications. It does contribute to unsafe practices
— they have the studies on it.”
“The bigger question,” he said, “is if plaintiffs’ attorneys take motor
carriers to task for not capturing all the data [from ELDs], why not
hold regulators to the same standard?”
“At a minimum,” explained a J.J. Keller & Associates fact sheet on
ELDs, “the device must record engine use, road speed, miles driven,
the date and time of day. … In order to be considered an ELD, the device
must meet specific technology requirements and be included on
the FMCSA’s registration site.” As of December 18, ELDs are required
“by interstate drivers of commercial motor vehicles who currently
use a driver’s record-of-duty status [log] to record their HOS.”
Of course, many ELDs have a lot of bells and whistles besides the
ability to track HOS.
For example, SkyBitz offers GPS tracking features, giving what it calls
“full visibility” to trucks in a carrier’s fleet, thus “helping to improve
productivity and the bottom line,” the company says on its website.
SkyBitz President Henry Popplewell explained that while “lots of
ELD solutions offer ELDs only, SkyBitz’s Local Fleets can offer vehicle
and asset tracking with ELDs on the same platform, the SkyBitz OpsCenter.
The OpsCenter provides tracking, dispatching, messaging,
reefer monitoring, and more in one portal. As a result, we not only
ease the pain of meeting the mandate, but enable companies to optimize
their fleet and driver utilization. SkyBitz has more than 20 years
of serving fleet customers with industry-leading solutions. We are
now bringing that knowledge, experience, and reliability to the ELD
through our SkyBitz Local Fleets brand.”
Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

“SkyBitz Local Fleets E-logs,” he added, “monitor exactly how much
time your drivers spend on jobs. In addition to making sure you’re
not violating HOS, you’ll be able to improve your scheduling by ensuring
no one is underutilized and no one is over-scheduled. Complying
with HOS regulations is way easier when you can improve your
scheduling and make the most of the hours your fleet is allowed to
spend on the road.”
David Palle, Omnitracs vice president of product management, said
Omnitracs’ new software update, Roadnet Anywhere v4.5, provides
Fleet Overview, “a brand-new feature that allows managers to even
more easily track the status and performance of their entire fleet in
real time. Fleet Overview provides a better singular management
area for vehicles that have a route plan, or do not have a plan at all.
By utilizing Fleet Overview, managers can ensure that their team
stays on schedule, ensuring timely deliveries and that the best route
options are utilized, ultimately increasing revenue and customer service
levels for the company.”
Speaking about data generated by these products, Heller said,
“Here’s the thing — you’ve got a compliance-review officer who
walks into a focused audit [of a carrier]. They’ll say, ‘I want to see
Hours of Service records for drivers 1-2-3-4-5’ because right now
he’s just looking at HOS to make sure they’re compliant.
“And eventually, as everybody starts adopting ELDs, what he’s
going to start noticing is that latitude and longitude is the same”
for where drivers are being detained unreasonable amounts of
time. It’s the same at the neighbors down the street and at their
neighbors down the street. He’s going to go, ‘Where the heck is
this latitude and longitude, because it keeps popping up on every
single one of these driver’s HOS electronic reports as being
detained.’ And they’re going to look, and they’re going to see it’s
this shipper.”
But will FMCSA do that and who’s going to make them do it?
At some point, Heller said, Congress may give FMCSA the authority
to use the data for something other than tracking HOS compliance.
Or, he pointed out, the agency may already have that authority.
“They have policing power over carriers, brokers, shippers, and
freight forwarders to get on them for coercion. Isn’t this kind of
the same thing? If a shipper forces a driver off its property,” even if
they’re out of hours, “isn’t that coercion?”
Do the right thing
“It will get to the point that we as an industry have
to hold their feet to the fire,” Heller said. We took ELDs
under advisement. A lot of our members have had them
in their trucks for years, which was the reason why we developed
that grandfather clause.
“I remember the meeting in which we changed policies. We
stopped calling them EOBRs (electronic onboard recorders) and
started calling them ELDs and supporting ELDs. We’ve done our part
and we’ve got the battle scars to prove it. Now, at this point in time,
with this explosion of data that we’re about to see, we expect the
agency to have our backs on the same thing. They have to make the
decision to do what’s right. And now we’ve got data to say what
we’ve been saying anecdotally all along.”
Although FMCSA now says they will “purge” non HOS-related data,
they may not do that in the future, Heller said, adding that the other
data’s too important for trucking to give up the fight.
“This is the beginning of the battle, not the end of the war. This is
just the opening salvo. Just because they believe right now they can’t
do anything with the [non HOS] data” doesn’t mean that will ultimately
be the case, he said.
“Some of these things need to be addressed,” he added. “If we
could get professional drivers [more time] to drive, what do you
think that’s worth?
“This is going to become the next big issue, this data explosion. The
agency wanted ELDs; now that they’re here they have to be prepared
to deal with this.”
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority

Trucking Fears
Privatization
Road to Ruin
By Cliff Abbott
It was an election year, and the front-running Republican presidential candidate
sought to reassure a nation recovering from both war and economic
recession. He spoke of infrastructure, its importance to security and commerce,
and the economic impact that investment in infrastructure would
bring to the nation.
The nation’s infrastructure had been discussed for decades and Congress
had passed a number of bills addressing the issue, but the debate always
seemed to come down to how the work was to be funded. While the argument
continued, important construction projects were delayed or cancelled
altogether.
The candidate was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who signed the Federal-Aid
Highway Act of 1956 into law on June 29 of that year, just months
before being elected to a second term in the White House.
While the act, popularly known as the “National Interstate and Defense
Highways Act,” is generally accepted as the origin of the U.S. Interstate Highway
system, Congress had addressed a national system of highways as early
as 1916, with the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act. In addition to laying
out a plan for more than 40,000 miles of limited-access roads, the 1956 act
created the Highway Trust Fund, directing that proceeds from the then current
three-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax go directly to the trust fund rather
than into the general fund, as they had previously.
More than six decades later, the fuel tax has grown to 18.4 cents per gallon
of gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel fuel. Politicians are still talking
about infrastructure, and still arguing over how to pay for it.
President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “make America great
again” included a pledge to address the country’s deteriorating roads and
bridges as part of a larger package to repair and expand the country’s transportation
infrastructure. His opposition claimed that his proposals lacked
detail and did not mesh with other campaign promises to cut taxes while
increasing defense spending and building a wall to curb illegal immigration.
In fact, Democrats in Congress attempted a preemptive strike with the release
of their “Blueprint to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure” on January 23,
the Monday following Trump’s January 20 inauguration. The plan called for $1
trillion in spending to be funded entirely by the government. Republicans and
Trump, however, refused to take the bait, insisting that their own plan was
forthcoming.
While Trump hinted that privatization and tolling were two options in addition
to increased fuel taxes to address infrastructure improvements, Democrats
warned that the nation’s travelers would be at the mercy of big business.
In a May 1 meeting with the Independent Community Bankers Association
held in the Kennedy Garden at the White House, Trump said that he would
explore the possibility of an increase in federal gasoline and diesel taxes.
In a June 7 speech in Cincinnati, the president hinted that a portion of
the necessary funding might come from reprioritization of some current
spending.
The following day, Trump’s team, including Secretary of Transportation
Elaine Chao and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, met with state and local
leaders at the White House to develop plans for infrastructure replacement.
On June 9, Trump took to the podium again at the U.S. Department of
Transportation in Washington, D.C., to discuss his plan.
Citing his private-sector experience, Trump hit at “the painfully slow, costly
and time-consuming process of getting permits and approvals to build.”
Pointing to a tall stack of binders used for the demonstration, he spoke of an
18-mile Maryland road project that spent $29 million, or $24,000 per page, on
an environmental report weighing 70 pounds.
The president added that U.S. building projects should use “American iron,
aluminum and steel,” noting that “It is time, at last, to put America first.”
Trump’s plan, available on the whitehouse.gov website, contains these
major goals:
• Reduce the average permit time from 10 to two years
• Unleash private sector capital and expertise to rebuild cities and states
• Invest in rural infrastructure
• Reimagine America’s approach to infrastructure with transformative
projects, and
• Create a workforce training initiative focused on skill-based apprenticeship
education.
As expected, Trump’s plan to “unleash private sector capital” was a
cause for concern for many who fear privatization of bridges and highways
will result in increased tolling. Just a month earlier, however, a
bipartisan coalition of senators introduced the Building and Renewing
Infrastructure for Development and Growth in Employment (BRIDGE)
Act in the Senate. The Act, cosponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal,
D-Conn.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Lindsey Graham, R-
S.C.; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.,
would create a new infrastructure financing authority that helps state and
local governments leverage private funds to build and maintain infrastructure.
Regardless of the source of funding, however, a repayment system
is needed.
Proposed use of private funds is good news to the International Bridge,
Tunnel and Turnpike Association, whose stated mission is to advance tollfinanced
transportation.
David Heller, the Truckload Carriers Association’s vice president of government
affairs, however, isn’t a fan of the idea. “Trump obviously wants
to get in some public-private partnerships, which traditionally are not the
way to go,” he said, “because it generally leads to more tolling.” Heller
thinks that other forms of revenue generation, such as dedicated user
fees that would raise revenues from electric and other alternative-fuel
vehicles, should be on the table for discussion. The fuel tax system, however,
may provide a quicker revenue fix for infrastructure repairs, and the
trucking industry is willing to help.
“I mean,” Heller said, “we’re an industry that’s proposing to do our part.
We say charge us more on our fuel tax. All the collection tools are there, the
disbursement tools are there. The model’s already put in place.”
New methods of user-generated revenue will undoubtedly be discussed,
and experiments are in progress worldwide. “But at this point in time,”
Heller said, “that fuel tax could be done quickly; it can be done accurately.
“Is it going to foot the entire bill?” he asked. “No.” Willing to explore other
funding possibilities for new construction, Heller is adamant that tolling isn’t
an option in the current system. “Anything on existing capacity,” he said,
“probably isn’t a conversation starter for us.”
Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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HEALTH
CARE
Health expenses up
despite plan choice
By Lyndon Finney
COST
Four years ago, the entire country, including the trucking industry, began to realize the huge
impact of something called the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka Obamacare.
Would it be a tough pill to swallow?
Yes, for many, because it was about to set the traditional world of health care insurance and
health care delivery on its head.
Would it be complex, confusing and costly?
Yes, because it introduced new vernacular such as “health care exchanges” (huh?) and “Medicaid
expansion” (huh?), and was fraught with more out-of-pocket costs because of high deductibles,
anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 for many Americans.
And now, along comes “Trumpcare,” President Donald Trump’s effort to fulfill a campaign
promise to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature legislation.
Trumpcare, as introduced in the House, has already run afoul of Democrats anxious to preserve
Obama’s legacy, and the Republican-led Senate, where lawmakers are wary of a bill that
cuts Medicaid by $800 billion and rolls back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which has covered
millions of people in states represented by Republican senators.
Trump’s version of a new health care act that passed in the House also repeals the mandate that
requires individuals to purchase health care insurance and the mandate that requires businesses
with 50 or more employees to offer health care insurance as part of their benefits package.
That said, despite the cries of foul by Obamacare proponents after the Congressional Budget
Office released a report estimating 14 million Americans would lose coverage by 2018, the decline
in the number of Americans with health insurance could be as much a voluntary decision by individuals
who choose not to renew their policies without the mandate, as it would be involuntary,
as in the case of employees whose companies choose not to offer coverage.
It is also very likely that low- and middle-income families would drop individual coverage because
Trumpcare would replace upfront, fairly generous subsidies to buy health care insurance with backend
tax credits, and those tax credits undoubtedly would not match subsidies dollar-for-dollar.
But is the real issue facing Americans access to health care and health insurance?
10 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

“I think Obamacare was
effective in getting insurance
for a large number of people,” said
Tom Kane, senior vice president at Stephens,
Inc., a Wall Street investment firm
located in Little Rock, Arkansas. Kane deals
primarily with employer health care benefits.
“What’s frustrating for me is that I don’t hear
anybody on the national stage talking about health care
costs. They talk about health insurance costs, but there’s
not any talk about health care costs. And the reason health care
insurance costs continue to go up is because health care costs are
going up and we’re also seeing increases in utilization.”
Kane believes the federal government should sit back and ask why health
care costs are going up.
One reason is prescription drugs, he said.
“You are seeing drug manufacturers raise prices for no other reason than
because they can,” Kane said. “That’s very concerning for us. Today, we are
seeing the medical inflation trend around 5 percent. Prescription drugs are in
the low teens; specialty prescription drugs in the low 20s. I remember when
we first started offering prescription co-pays, the drug spend as part of the
total spend was 15 percent. Today I have clients where it’s well over 30 percent
and we are going to continue to see that rise as these drug costs go up.
That’s really what’s driving the increase in health care costs today.”
Hospital charges are also running rampant, Kane said, so much so that
those “charges” do not reflect the actual cost of providing the care.
“That’s another problem we have in this country today,” he said. “If you
look at the hospital charges compared to their costs of goods it ranges across
the country from 300 percent to over 500 percent” above the actual cost for
providing the service.
Kane talked about a relatively unknown term in health care pricing — the
hospital chargemaster.
Writing in Becker’s Hospital Review, author Carrie Pallardy in an article
headlined “Deconstructing the enigmatic hospital chargemaster,” had this to
say:
“Patients struggle to understand health care costs, but the process of setting
costs and charging for services rendered can be complex enough to confound
industry experts. The chargemaster is at the heart of the cost structure
matter, yet ask hospital executives to explain how it works and the answers
run the gamut from barebones basic to overly vague.
“At the most simplistic level, the chargemaster is a list of prices for any
service or product a hospital offers. At its simplest form, think of it as a menu
— anything you can charge a patient. But, looking past the obvious, understanding
the inner workings of this set of data elements grows more difficult.”
Every hospital negotiates its chargemaster separately, Kane said.
Those negotiations normally wind up with the insurance company and the
hospital agreeing to reimburse the hospital a set percentage of the actual
charges.
Again, it’s important to remember that a hospital’s charge for a certain
service has little reflection of the actual cost of providing that service.
“So, when I [as the hospital] bill Blue Cross for an incident, the bill goes
into the chargemaster in reference to what the pricing is, which may vary
from hospital to hospital,” Kane said. “One hospital says ‘we want to make
more money on hips and knees’ and another hospital says ‘we’ll use hips and
knees as a cost leader and we’ll make it up on stints and bypasses.’ And so,
you are going to see a huge variation in pricing.”
Another problem inherent to the pricing issue is that in America today
people typically equate cost with quality.
“So when you’re buying a car and you buy a Lexus you are going to pay
more than if you buy a Chevrolet,” Kane related. “In health care, this is not
necessarily true. In fact, oftentimes we see higher costs associated with lower
quality. One of the things we have to do as part of this big picture is create true
transparency in cost and quality in health care so that consumers can look and
say, ‘I had this laparoscopy done at Baptist or St. Vincent or UAMS or Saline
Memorial (four major central Arkansas hospitals),’ and see what the costs are
and what the quality outcomes are. And until we get to that point, what we
have to be careful of is when these insurers say ‘we offer a 60 percent discount
to our network,’ 60 percent of what? Sixty percent of $27,000 or 60 percent of
$10,000 [for the same procedure]? Because what the hospital does is keep raising
its prices, charging more and more and more. If your discount is a percent
of that, then the cost of the insurance plan continues to go up.”
And so the average American becomes the victim of this charge vs. cost
game, regardless of whether they are covered through a company plan or
have to purchase an individual plan from the exchange.
“Regardless of whether it’s Obamacare or Trumpcare, the problem is the
upward spiral of health care costs. Health care costs have continued to rise and
employers have shifted costs to their employees in the form of higher deductibles,
higher co-pays, and the concern has reached a point to where the average
American — truck drivers included — cannot access basic health care to
manage their chronic diseases because they have a $5,000 deductible,” Kane
said. “So, if the first $5,000 comes out of my pocket and I don’t have any disposable
income, I can’t afford to get a prescription filled or go see a doctor to
have my diabetes checked. And what happens if that person cruises along until
they have a major health event and then they arrive at an emergency room or
doctor’s office and then you have a really bad situation. And they are going to
get the care and it’s going to be expensive to the system. In America, we have
the best disease care system. We wait until people get sick and then we try to
deal with that instead of trying to keep people healthy. And that goes back to
my thing that we really need someone in government to start showing some
leadership and have some honest conversations with the American public that
we all have to be more accountable for our own health.”
What’s the impact of these rising costs (translated rising insurance costs)
on trucking?
“I think it’s going to be difficult for the owner-operator or a driver working
for a small company,” Kane said. “I think larger carriers are competing for quality
drivers and I think we’re seeing the labor market continue to be difficult,
especially in trucking. So if I’m a good driver, obviously I have a good record
and I’m going to be able to seek employment where I can get good benefits,
and that’s across every industry. And I think we’re going to see the labor markets
get more and more competitive and employers are going to have to offer
benefits, but for those smaller companies, it’s going to be a struggle.”
So, the question remains: Is anyone out there listening to experts such as
Tom Kane who believe the answer is not about Obamacare or Trumpcare, but
all about quality, fairly priced care?
Only time will tell.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 11

CapItol recap
A review of important news coming out of our nation’s capital.
By Lyndon Finney and Dorothy Cox
F4A
Perhaps the incessant pounding of the pavement
on Capitol Hill is going to pay off for the trucking industry
as most believe that a Congressional fix to the F4A debacle
could well be included in the FY2018 Transportation,
Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies
appropriations bill.
“Most of the response I get on Capitol Hill is that people
know the issue, which is good, and if you know the
issue you don’t have to educate them as much,” said
David Heller, TCA vice president of government affairs.
“For a long time, they would give you that look like, ‘what
is the issue?’ But the majority of people who are advocating
for F4A federal pre-emption language have done
a good job educating lawmakers and their staffers on
what this problem really is. So long gone are the days of
educating. Now are the days of ‘hey, let’s emphasize this
is something we as an industry need.’ And those are the
kinds of conversations we are really starting to have.”
The term F4A comes from the fact that language was
included in the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization
Act of 1994 that contained language the trucking
industry believed would prohibit individual states from
passing laws that superseded federal regulations, especially
on the Hours of Service issue.
But California did just that and in 2015, the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals overturned a district court’s ruling,
saying that F4A does not pre-empt California’s meal and
rest break laws because those state laws are not “related
to” prices, routes or services as stated in F4A.
The trucking industry took exception to the court’s
ruling, noting that compliance with meal and rest
brake laws were indeed related to prices, routes and
services.
“I think now 19 or 20 states have their own separate
meal and rest break laws that are outside of the federal
Hours of Service regulations, which becomes an entirely
different beast altogether,” Heller said. “Imagine if you’re
a hazmat hauler and are exempt from the 30-minute
break on federal Hours of Service but you’re supposed
to be taking a meal break. There’s the confusion. It’s not
unheard of for truck drivers to drive [through] three, four,
five, six states in a day. Trying to keep track of all those
local rules and regulations on top of keeping track of the
federal HOS regulations becomes a geographical nightmare
and logistical problem at the very least.”
TCA Chairman Rob Penner, president and COO of
Bison Transport, pointed to the F4A issue as one of the
top issues facing truckload carriers, especially.
“I think without question F4A is a big deal for us
because that impacts the most important resource we
have, our people,” Penner said. “We can’t allow individual
states to create huge inefficiencies and create
these real barriers to interstate commerce. We simply
can’t have different employment laws, rest breaks,
things that hurt our drivers and the ability for us to effectively
use them. We have to get that off the table.”
Should Congress be able to agree on including F4A
language and then actually pass an appropriations bill,
any new law would become effective the first day of the
federal government’s FY 2018, which would be October
1, 2017.
HAIR TESTING
Twelve Congressmen, including five from Arkansas,
home of J.B. Hunt, have recently joined the push to
make hair testing an option when it comes to pre-employment
testing for substance abuse.
Five senators — John Thune, R-S.D., John Boozman,
R-Ark., Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., Deb Fisher, R.-
Neb., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis. — recently sent a letter
to Health and Human Services Secretary Thomas Price
requesting swift action in taking steps to what could lead
to the use of hair testing.
Seven members of the House of Representatives
— Rick Crawford, R-Ark.; Don Bacon, R-Neb.; Bruce
Westerman, R-Ark.; Martha McSally, R-Ariz.; Steve
Womack, R-Ark.; French Hill, R-Ark., and Ted Budd, R-
N.C. — signed a letter offering their support for a petition
submitted to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
urging the agency to allow hair testing rather than
a urinalysis to meet federal drug testing requirements
for commercial truck driver applicants.
It is a well-documented fact that J.B. Hunt, located in
Lowell, Arkansas, is a strong proponent of hair testing.
J.B. Hunt Transport has voluntarily conducted hair
exams on commercial driver applicants for more than
10 years.
Since then, more than 4,700 J.B. Hunt driver applicants
who passed the urinalysis required under current
regulations were identified as lifestyle drug users by
analysis of their hair samples. This exemption, if granted,
would permit the sharing of hair test results as currently
allowed with the required urine test results.
Thune is chairman of the Committee on Commerce,
Science and Transportation; Fisher and Johnson are
members of the committee and Fisher chairs the subcommittee
on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine
Infrastructure, Safety and Security. The other three
are on commitees that directly impact transportation.
The letter noted that the Department of Health and
Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration (SAMHSA) has been working
on guidelines since the early 2000s but has not produced
anything, even though the Fixing America’s Surface
Transportation (FAST) Act placed a December 4,
2016, deadline on SAMHSA’s work.
Under law, SAMHSA must set or amend drug testing
guidelines before the Department of Transportation can
act, so DOT has not been able to move forward with the
allowance of hair testing as a federally approved drug
testing method.
Both the Truckload Carriers Association and the
American Trucking Associations are strong proponents
of hair testing.
“Hair testing is that big thing that carriers are starting to
wake up to and say ‘hey, we need to get this done,’” said
David Heller, vice president of government affairs at TCA.
Speaking of the letter from the senators, Heller said,
“I think they did it in an effort to basically give HHS a
swift kick in the butt to get the ball rolling.”
Heller noted that some carriers are effectively using
hair testing to enforce a zero-tolerance policy for drugs
and alcohol because “it makes them a safer fleet and it
upholds their zero-tolerance policies and trucking’s zero
tolerance policies are working.”
sleeper berth
The great bard William Shakespeare wrote: “What’s
in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet.” So, would a split sleeper berth pilot
still smell as sweet if it was called a proposal?
A Federal Register notice published by the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration June 6 called it “The Flexible
Sleeper Berth Pilot Program,” and set forth parameters for
the pilot.
But an FMCSA spokesman said the notice was actually
saying that the agency wants comments on its pilot
“proposal,” whether there should be a different time frame,
what it’s missing and suggestions on how it should be
structured and whether or not it would work for the industry.
However, “There’s no pilot, per se, at this time,” said
FMCSA Spokesman Duane DeBruyne.
To say the least, the Federal Register notice may have
muddied the waters a bit.
But wait, there’s more.
A website, sleeperberthstudy.com, which contained
information for drivers on how to complete an application,
take a questionnaire and provide written consent
to be part of a pilot, was “inadvertently posted” and will be
removed, DeBruyne said, again emphasizing, “there is no
study.”
The bottom of the website showed names and logos
from FMCSA, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, Washington
State University and Smartdrive. As of press time, it
was still up, but a protected password had been added to
gain access, which was not the case earlier.
Trucking has until August 7 to comment on the pilot as
set forth in the Federal Register notice.
That being said, FMCSA’s “proposed” pilot would
involve 200 or more commercial drivers, with study participants
being exempt from current sleeper requirements
and allowed to split up their time, with none less than three
hours, and splits of three and seven, four and six or five
and five.
In other words, there would be “relief” for pilot participants
from the current regulation that requires at least
eight consecutive hours in the sleeper berth plus a sepa-
12 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

ate period of two consecutive hours in the berth, off-duty or a combination of the two
before returning to duty.
Whenever there is a pilot program, DeBruyne said, it will be “comprehensive and robust,”
involving as broad a range of drivers as possible.
Truckload Carriers Association Vice President of Government Affairs David Heller said
trucking would no doubt support a pilot or future pilot, but added: “They’re late to the table.
They were supposed to be down this road last September.”
David Owen, president of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, said
he would be pleased if FMCSA were to conduct a split sleeper pilot “in good faith” if it
would lead to getting needed flexibility back into the sleeper berth and 14-hour portions
of the Hours of Service rules. That way, he said, a driver could take a restorative, three- or
four-hour nap while waiting to be loaded and it wouldn’t stop the 14-hour clock.
“It would help our guys tremendously,” he said.
However, he suggested that FMCSA have a control group of drivers abiding by the
current sleeper berth rules and compare their fatigue results with the pilot group, with pilot
participants splitting time in the sleeper as specified and comparing both groups’ participants
as to heart rate, fatigue results and other health factors.
The duration of the proposed pilot would be three years or less, according to the Federal
Register notice.
The comment period opened June 6 will be available at the regulations.gov rulemaking
portal via Docket No. FMCSA-2016-0260.
The results of such a pilot will be reported to Congress. So it may take a while, no
matter what it’s called.
TWIN 33S
The third rail of trucking, aka twin 33s, are back in the news.
The principal of a company that provides logistics management advisory services predicts
that a proposal to allow widespread adoption of twin 33-foot trailers on the nation’s
highways “will be one of the few things approved during this session of Congress.”
Writing in DC VELOCITY, a magazine targeting logistics and supply chain managers
and executives, Clifford F. Lynch of C.F. Lynch & Associates, says that the debate on twin
33s two years ago “was hardly the first go-round on the issue.” Lynch says the current
political landscape and the newest findings showing that twin 33s would result in 3.1 billion
fewer vehicle miles traveled and 4,500 fewer accidents, are proving to be particularly
advantageous to advancing legislation and allowing twin 33s nationwide to “finally see
the light of day.”
Supporters of twin 33s lobbied for the longer trailers during adoption of the FY2016
omnibus appropriations bill and had convinced lawmakers to include pro twin-33 legislation
in both the House and Senate versions of the bill.
But Congress eventually approved the omnibus appropriations bill with those provisions
having been stripped out.
“But it appears the twin 33’s day has finally come,” Lynch wrote. “What’s different this
time around? To begin with, we have a new administration and a new Congress, both with
a decidedly anti-regulatory bias. More importantly, perhaps, there’s new lobbying muscle
in town, with FedEx chairman Fred Smith leading the charge.”
“Twin 33s are a great configuration for the LTL segment of the industry,” said David
Heller, Truckload Carriers Association vice president of government affairs. “If we were the
LTL Trucking Association, I would be beating down the house on that, too, because that
industry is set up perfectly for those trailers because they can get more cubic space in
packaging without a doubt. You don’t have to break those trailers apart in terms of what’s
inside the packaging.”
But … “Transfer that over to the truckload side,” Heller continued, and “inevitably some
shipper is going to say, ‘hey, I can get more mugs in twin 33-foot trailers than I can in a
53-foot trailer, so why don’t you get twin 33-foot trailers or you’re not going to haul my
mugs.’”
But isn’t there enough freight to keep a TL carrier busy transporting coffee mugs?
“The problem is that the majority of truckload guys would say, ‘Well, then OK, I’m not
going to haul your mugs.’ But guess what, somebody is going to say, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ And
they’ll pull up with two shiny twin 33-foot trailers and start loading those mugs.”
Then those carriers that didn’t want to haul the coffee mugs will say, “‘We’ve got to get
back that freight’ and they’ll do all these things just for getting that freight,” Heller said. “And
eventually it will snowball to a point where all the shippers insist on hauling the freight on
twin 33-foot trailers because you can get more on them. That’s beside the fact that our
industry is not set up for it. It really isn’t. If you pull into a loading dock, you can’t back twin
33-foot trailers up. You have to unhook them and back them up as single units. And the
way the loading docks work in the truckload segment of the industry, that alone is going
to be an issue.”
J. J. KELLER’S ELD INSIGHTS
ELD Mandate Do’s and Don’ts
DON’T…
#1 Wait until the last minute to roll out ELogs.
ELogs will inevitably result in operational changes. Plan appropriately and
ease into using the system. The less stressful the change, the fewer drivers
you are likely to lose. With time, drivers realize they are still free to do their
jobs as they see fit, as long as they make their pickups and deliveries legally.
#2 Pick an ELD based on price alone.
Select a system that meets ELD mandate requirements and is supported
by a reputable, established provider that understands Hours of Service
regulations and offers ELD installation support and ongoing customer
service for you and your drivers. The cost of the system can be offset by
compliance gains, increased productivity, awareness of fleet availability,
and the reduction in inspection and audit-related fines.
#3 Set unrealistic expectations for change.
It will take time for drivers and supervisors to adjust to the accuracy of
the electronic logging system and the speed at which violations will be
discovered and reported. The ELD system itself may be compliant with
the mandate but of itself, it will not make you compliant with the Hours of
Service rules. Make sure all staff and drivers know who to contact if there are
questions or concerns.
DO…
#1 Choose a reputable ELD provider.
The most important criteria in selecting an ELD is that it meets the mandate
requirements. You can find those on the FMCSA website. Also, having a
system that can be easily updated to meet the technical standards in the
ELD rule and future regulatory changes will help you avoid costly updates
down the road.
#2 Make sure all management is on board.
Be prepared to manage resistance. Support from management is critical
when dealing with “saboteurs” of the program. In extreme cases, these
individuals will take active steps to derail the change. Make sure all
managers are in agreement on disciplinary procedures for anyone at the
company who does not follow protocol.
#3 Conduct ELD training early and often.
Train drivers, supervisors, and support staff on how to use the device
during normal operations and roadside inspections, and what to do when
problems occur. Both the operational and safety supervisors will also need
to be trained on common problems that drivers encounter with the system,
along with the solutions to those problems, to allow for quick resolution.
For more ELD related articles, visit ELDGuidance.com.
To learn about the J. J. Keller® Encompass® Fleet
Management System with ELogs, see the ad in this
publication or visit JJKeller.com/Elogs.
Fleet Management System
with ELogs
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 13

SUMMER | TCA 2017
Tracking The Trends
One Voice
Foreword and Interview by Lyndon Finney
The date was Sunday, March 26. The setting was a meeting room at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center in
Nashville, Tennessee. The occasion was the 2017 Board of Directors meeting of the Truckload Carriers Association.
American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear stood before TCA President John Lyboldt and the board of
directors and said in the future, the two organizations need to become “one voice” on like-minded issues, noting that
the two organizations did in fact see eye-to-eye on most everything. Working collaboratively, not separately, Chris
Spear said ATA and TCA could impact real change. In an unprecedented interview in late May, the two leaders sat
down with Truckload Authority for a wide ranging discussion of issues facing the industry today.
TLA: Chris, John has shared with Truckload Authority some of your
comments at the recent Truckload Carriers Association board meeting
about collaboration between the two organizations on issues of
like-mindedness. Could you share with TCA members a little more
about those comments?
Chris: I think it starts from understanding the mission of both associations.
Both have enjoyed long-standing support from our membership
and we do share membership just as we share common objectives.
Those are mutually beneficial. In deference to where we want
to go as associations with those shared objectives, the realities we are
working with in Washington are dramatically different and that’s sort
of a recent phenomenon. I think ATA and TCA had enjoyed for a long
period of time the ability to share our views in Washington with key
decision-makers in a manner where we didn’t really require the perspectives
or support from others. That was a time when a lot of bills
were debated and voted on and passed and there were a lot of opportunities
to advance an agenda as a result of that environment. Today
we have a very politically polluted Washington. There are few bills
moving, a few votes being taken and so the ability to advance that
same agenda has taken a different turn. That turn requires associations
and voices coming together and working collectively to advance
that agenda. So our mutually shared priorities I think really now
depend on understanding this environment and having a healthy
appreciation for how we leverage our two associations for the betterment
of our industry and our memberships. So I think it’s just taking
into account this new environment we are working in and really underscoring
what we need to do to get results and I think we’ve done
a very healthy job of taking that step back and really understanding
what we need to advance, what’s important to our members, and
how we work together to get it done.
TLA: John, share your thoughts on what Chris has just expressed.
John: Well said Chris. I would like to add that on the first Wednesday
of every month we have an ATA-TCA leadership call that puts
us all on the same page by sharing what we’ve been working on and
how we are working together to best serve our memberships and the
industry. This is a transparent relationship. This isn’t a relationship
where we’re holding any cards back. So my reaction to Chris’s comments
is that we have an excellent opportunity to meet Washington
head-on in a collective and collaborative effort so that we can start to
pass industry favorable language, F4A being one of them.
TLA: Chris, you mentioned the environment in Washington. What’s
it going to take to change that environment?
Chris: Backbone. And I’m not referring to our two associations. We
both have plenty of backbone. Our industry is not unaccustomed to
a fight. We are not foreign to challenges as we’ve faced many of them
over the past few decades. We’re ready. We know what our issues are
and what we need to do to get things done. The backbone I’m referring
to is a reference to key decision-makers in Washington not deciding
necessarily what’s good for their party, but what’s good for the
country, what’s good for our industry, and that’s what we are trying
to make them understand. Our industry moves 70 percent of the
14 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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surface freight in this country. One in 16 jobs is trucking. It’s the
top job in 29 states. We help move 56 percent of the GDP. These
are no small figures. And when you have 7.3 million employees
in trucking spread across every state and every Congressional
district, that’s something key decision-makers here need to understand,
why it matters to the country and why it matters to
them. So we have a responsibility and an obligation — John and
I — to make sure we are leveraging those facts and that reality
and educating these folks on what they need to do to advance an
agenda that’s good for the country, and not just because it’s politically
appealing. We understand the politics in this town, but
it’s reached the point now where it is so caustic, so toxic that we
are seeing the country suffer as a result of that and that is obviously
directly impactful on our industry and on our members,
their employees, their families and on our customers. So that
context is very important for us to keep in mind and make certain
that we give them the reasons in Washington to vote and put
the country first.
TLA: John, what’s your take on this environment?
John: Chris has been in this environment for a long time and I
have a few years under my belt, too. We have both worked during
difficult times before and know what it takes to win. We were
talking on the way to this interview about how challenging it is
in Washington. However, I believe good politics requires solid
facts, knowing what our industry brings to the table and repeating
these as many times as you possibly can with everyone you
talk to. Pulling trucking up through all of that is challenging and
requires strategic and tactical approaches. Our associations have
tremendous credibility and are well respected because we have
members leading and working with us every day. The numbers
Chris mentioned tell an incredible story about what trucking
brings to the table. It defines who we are and the economic
engine that trucking delivers to North America. I concur with
Chris.
TLA: Both of you have been in your current positions about the
same length of time — about one year — and during that time
both of you have made some significant changes in your organizations.
So I want to ask each of you: Have those changes been
made to help meet the challenges of the current environment?
John: TCA’s direction is clearly defined and has been communicated
numerous times to the membership as well as to the entire
industry. I have tested this direction when I have been in front
of groups and I have received positive confirmation from them.
We are careful on how we use our resources by managing them,
knowing that our members are counting on us to move things
forward in shaping our future. At TCA, we are increasing our
membership by increasing the value proposition of being a member
by helping members increase their company’s worth and
profitability, increasing the retention of their skilled workforce,
and finally, being the voice of truckload. Yes, what we’ve done
at TCA is in response to where the industry is today because being
profitable in trucking is becoming more difficult. It will take
embracing technology and really getting good at operational
practices. Establishing a government affairs operation, developing
the TCA profitability program and increasing our educational
offerings are moving us into a position to deliver on our
promises. Building the TCA brand also requires us to give back
16 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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Angel, to name a few.
TLA: Chris, you’ve made some real significant changes.
Chris: There’s a reason for those changes and it’s not just new leadership.
Decisions were made by our board to go in a certain direction,
and John and I agree we’re obligated as the leaders of our two associations
to identify the issues and to take steps necessary to help
advance those agendas. Sometimes that requires us working together;
sometimes we’ll be very surgical in how we do it as individual associations.
The lion’s share of our issues are pretty mutual and where
they do align, coordinating and communicating is key. To do that I
think you have to have a structure and a team of talent that gets up
hungry every day wanting to win. This is not a country club. If people
want to belong to a country club, there are plenty of them around
to belong to in Washington or wherever they are from to socialize,
network and so on. It’s about getting things done first and foremost.
The networking that comes from being a member of our two associations
is certainly beneficial. That’s not being displaced by the changes
that have been made, but the alignment of the structure and the talent
is all about ensuring that we are in sync with the issues that are
going to matter to our memberships or impact them. There are priorities
we want to get done — and we are very proactive in driving that
outcome. There are also the block-and-tackle types of issues, things
that come at us we are not advocating and we want to prevent, such
as tolling and reengineering elements of the industry from federal to
state. For instance, we’re in interstate commerce so we’d like a standard,
a federal role, and when more states are stepping up and doing
things that are adverse to that, if we don’t make adjustments in how
our association is structured, staffed and aligned with those realities,
then we aren’t doing our job on behalf of our membership. This is
what they wanted to see when they brought John and me in. Work
together, leverage your resources. Speak with one voice but also compound
that voice with individual elements to it. So we amplify that
individually and do it collectively. We align with issues, from traditional
ones such as safety and infrastructure to autonomous technology.
We are not going to sit back and let other modes of transportation
dictate outcomes that are directly impactful on our members. We just
won’t allow that to happen. So the alignment, the structure, the staff,
the talent, all those changes, in our opinion, are needed to make certain
we’re meeting our members’ obligations.
TLA: John, what are the top issues facing the truckload sector today?
Then, I’m going to ask Chris issues facing his membership today.
John: There are a few concerns that we need to fix permanently
which we can advocate on in a unified voice. As you know, nothing
is fast about Washington. Being at the table in an effort to shape solutions
and influence outcomes can keep things moving. To name a
few, first and foremost is F4A; it is the most pressing issue we have
before us. Infrastructure funding and approval, detention times,
and reducing driver turnover are other pressing issues. Finally, the
long-standing discussion on size and weight which TCA is actively
working on as being the voice of truckload needs to come to a conclusion.
Chris: Near term, F4A is something we’re both vested in for our
members. It’s a shared issue and it’s one that we want to be sure we
win — not just because of the impact it’s having on the membership,
but because it’s part of the bigger problem we are starting to see
where states, as I mentioned earlier, are stepping up and doing things
that are completely adverse to our future, our ability to grow. If we
have a patchwork of 50 different requirements it’s going to set our industry
back, it’s going to set our economy and our nation’s ability to
compete globally back exponentially. So F4A is sending a signal back
to California and the Ninth Circuit and any other state that’s giving
thought to replicating what they’ve done, to think twice. So it is
18 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

imperative that we not only win this issue and provide relief to our
members but we also tamp down the inclination of some states to
expand that purview. We believe we can get that done, hopefully by
September, where we see a vote taken. Beyond F4A, tax and infrastructure
are almost synonymous. We’ve been very engaged in that.
We’ve been over to meet with the president, the vice president, the
secretary of transportation and the five committee chairs and ranking
members [of committees that impact transportation] on Capitol Hill.
Our members have been very active and vocal on the importance of
this issue and the importance of having dedicated, sustainable funding
for infrastructure that isn’t coming from competitive sources,
such as discretionary monies. So we want to shore up the trust fund
and have good roads and bridges. Tax reform is part of that because
if you are going to do a 10-year, trillion-dollar bill it’s going to have
to be funded out of some sort of tax reform.
I think the third issue would probably be trade. We have a different
president, a different path being taken with respect to trade. Trucking
moves 76 percent of the NAFTA surface freight; we move 83 percent
of the cross-border traffic with Mexico and Canada is our largest
trade partner in the world. So trucking would be the first to feel any
dramatic change in the relationship we have with our trade partners
to the north and south.
TLA: The president has said he’s going to renegotiate NAFTA. If he
doesn’t get what he wants, he’s going to drop it. Let’s assume he’s
going forward and he’s intending to get it done. From a truckload
perspective, what is there that needs to be changed in NAFTA if anything?
John: I don’t really see much that needs to be changed in NAFTA.
Adjustments in some areas could benefit trucking and they should be
in the forefront of discussions.
Chris: I think less than more. You have to separate some of the campaign
rhetoric from reality. The reality is that if you make changes to
that agreement that are too dramatic, as I said, our industry would be
the first to feel it and it will be impactful. John and I were just down
on the border in Laredo. It’s the biggest border crossing with 16,000
trucks a day. We met with Customs and Border Patrol (CBP); we met
with local trucking companies [and with] people that pretty much are
in the thick of it, if you will. And they understand the importance of
it. I think there are several elements beyond having a good, free, fair
and sound trade agreement. I think the framework is there. It may
be a little dated since it was enacted in 1994. It could be upgraded
maybe in environmental and labor standards. However, I think the
framework is still very much intact, as John and I have noted. There’s
a security element to our borders that has a trade component. But
also as we saw with CBP, security is very integral. They’re screening
everything. You can just imagine with that many trucks coming
across the border, the mandate they have is absolutely massive. And
I would say beyond that is infrastructure — you’ve got to have good
infrastructure to handle that kind of throughput to and from [the border]
— and they certainly didn’t. You saw that firsthand. There was a
lot of backup. We saw a lot of traffic. And fourth, I think tax policy is
really key in terms of how that’s built into the trade agreement. Those
are important elements to it. Those four things right there are kind
of in a constant churn and we witnessed that together by touring the
border. And I think we got a firsthand view of what needs to be done
and what shouldn’t be done.
TLA: John, what was your takeaway from that visit?
John: Chris said it well. I would like to add we also were impressed
with the members and leadership of the newly formed Laredo Motor
Carriers Association. I had no idea of the number of trucking
companies that have established themselves in the Laredo area. It is a
hotbed for trucking. The association has grown quickly, has a bright
future and we look forward to working together to tackle the issues
at hand. The dedicated professionals at the CBP have a really big job
to do and they do it very well. Our visit with them shed light on the
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 19

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fact that the things we are working on in Washington will help to
keep freight moving safely and efficiently. Many of the drivers crossing
the border were driving power units that were what, about 20
years old, Chris?
Chris: If not more.
TLA: Backing up a little bit — and I’ll say this, since I’ve been in
trucking, this is my third presidential transition — it seems as though
the bills and the regulatory process are the slowest of any of those
years. That said, the president says two for one. We’ve got to kick
out two regulations for every new one. How can that happen in an
environment in trucking where everything, just about, relates back to
safety?
John: That’s a good point, these actions need to be considered carefully
and comprehensively when it comes to safety, and the same
goes for anything else that might be reviewed.
Chris: The two-for-one executive order’s going to be really tough to
enforce, literally. It’s already receiving some court challenges. The
two-for-one doesn’t need to be all trucking. You could take two rules
unrelated to trucking in exchange for one that is trucking. It’s kind of a
mix and match as to how that would work. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
The administration has no authority to go in and just wipe the slate
clean. To take down a regulation you have to propose another rule to
pull it down. And in that new proposal you have to explain why the
current one needs to be pulled down. And it can’t be just because you
don’t like it. It has to be based on fact, science, data, and in our world, a
lot of it is safety. You’ve got to have very strong justification because if
you don’t, it’s going to get challenged in court; it will get tossed. Going
in willy-nilly and just saying you want to take stuff out, it doesn’t work
that way. So it sounds better than it is, in practice. I think it’s a lot more
complicated and that’s probably why the courts would be going back
to take a look at this to see if it’s permissible, if it violates the Administrative
Procedures Act. These are things that are going to come under
a lot of scrutiny. As far as our view of it, we’re not afraid of regulation;
we just want good sound regulation, regulation we can understand
and comply with. When you pump out a rule like the July 2013 Hours
of Service changes with back-to-back 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. periods and the
168 hours, this is based on a too-weak sleep study in a graduate school
up in Washington state. Now if you’re going to change the regulatory
framework for an entire industry, do your homework, OK? Do it right,
do it in a way that our industry can understand and comply with. That
wasn’t the case here and we bounced it. It took us three years but we
got it done. So we’re not afraid of a fight; we’re not afraid of regulation.
We just want good, clear regulation and want to be in the process itself,
so include us. Let us help you with it. We’ll tell you what works and
what doesn’t work. We could have told you from the beginning that it
wasn’t going to work.
John: Chris, I agree with you. Being involved by being at the table to
arrive at solid solutions is a business imperative. Instead of looking
comprehensively at how to move freight safely and efficiently across
North America, in the past we’ve had patchwork solutions put in
place that do not take into consideration all of the facts that are necessary
in arriving at a forward-thinking decision.
TLA: What are some of the common issues that TCA and ATA are
aligned on?
Chris: I think we named some of them right here. F4A, obviously, out
of the gate. That’s a near-term goal that we both share for our members.
I think on infrastructure we’re perfectly aligned. Tax reform
impacts our members almost identically. Trade and some of these
broader, bigger issues are very encompassing of both ATA and TCA,
and down to a very surgical issue like F4A we see a lot of alignment.
By segmentation you always see some areas of specialty where an
issue becomes more of a priority to say, truckload, than it does to a
broader federation like ATA, in which we represent not just truckload
but LTL and flatbed, tank trucks and so on. Tankers obviously led
the charge on wetlines; it’s an issue that’s specific to them and they’re
going to drive and advocate that as well as the TWIC card issue, and
having that as the go-to identification for entering sensitive sites. And
they’re the best equipped to tell that story. Truckload does the same
thing in areas that are specific to their segment. So when we draw
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distinctions, it’s not that we don’t have commonality or support for
TCA and what it’s advocating, it’s just that TCA is better positioned
to represent that position for truckload than ATA is as the entire industry
association. And that works very well. As long as John and
I and our teams are working together and understand what those
differences are, we have a healthy appreciation for that and we staff
and align accordingly and I think we have a pretty good working relationship
to make sure there’s no channel conflict between the two.
John: Well said, Chris.
TLA: Obviously F4A is a big issue, but let’s name two more.
John: Well, Chris did: Infrastructure and tax reform.
TLA: I’m sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I meant from a regulatory
or legislative perspective: hair testing, entry-level driver training,
safety fitness determination etc.
John: As I had said earlier, a comprehensive approach to improving
safety and efficiencies could generate a larger return on investment
than we have experienced in the past. All of these fall into the same
bucket. On hair testing, if we can figure out how to do things to produce
better results, why wouldn’t we embrace it? We do support it.
Chris: Yes, we advocate it; we proposed the language that got into the
FAST Act that mandates it. We were just over at the Department of
Health and Human Services with the chief of staff and Secretary [Thomas]
Price. We were waiting on their piece of the rule, which has to come
next before DOT can complete the over-arching rulemaking, and we’re
pushing them to get that done. They’re six months behind schedule so
we’re very engaged with them on that. Because in the meantime, the
handful of carriers out there, and they’re largely truckload, that are doing
hair testing and are advocating it as government policy, are having
to pay for both. Paying for urinalysis and hair. This isn’t a mandate. It’s
just simply giving carriers the option of choosing one versus the other.
And some of these carriers are spending in excess of a million dollars a
year to do the hair testing on top of the urinalysis. It just seems to John’s
point, that if there’s a better cost-effective way to do it that gets good
results, this obviously seems to be it. We’re a big proponent of it. We’re
going to keep pushing hard to get this issue done and hopefully we will
see some results in the coming weeks that are good indicators that these
carriers will have the relief that they sought.
TLA: Would you both agree that hair testing got caught up in that
different environment you talked about earlier?
Chris: Well it has and it hasn’t. I don’t think this is subject to the
political pollution as much as it is bureaucracy. You have two departments
that have two different views. You have DOT that will administer
it, but it can’t administer it unless it has the HHS protocol that
allows it, and the HHS piece, and they don’t talk to one another very
well. They don’t coordinate well. Even if they’re mandated by law to
do it, you’re still seeing some trepidation on the part of HHS to actually
proceed with it. I think the support exists at DOT, but HHS has
always been a bit resistant to this. I think we’re really talking more
about bureaucratic headwind than political headwind, because we’ve
had the Hill beating them up left and right to get it done. They are
required by law to do it. Yet it’s still slow. I think it is bureaucracy.
TLA: Last question. Let’s talk about the economy. As leaders in your
organizations, where do you see us going the rest of the year? I know
that tonnage has been down the last two months. I think even Bob
[Costello, ATA chief economist] said he was a little bit surprised.
What about the economic outlook, John?
John: The biggest opportunity for any trucking operation is improving
overall operations. This is the very reason why we will be introducing
the TCA Profitability Program in the ensuing weeks. It has
been a challenging first two quarters, without question. However,
there is still time to close the year stronger than it started. The combination
of political, regulatory, and economic factors will play a role as
we move into the third quarter. One example will be the overall positive
effect of the adoption of ELDs. Consumer confidence is down
slightly; however, it is still high. We believe trucking has a bright future,
especially if we can pass an infrastructure bill that makes sense
which in turn could fuel strong growth.
Our associations have dedicated members and staff who work hard
to ensure we are focused on relevant and timely initiatives to improve
the trucking business model.
22 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Chris: I think we need to look at it not as a matter of a few weeks’ time,
but more in a year, minimum. Bob’s projections still suggest that the
indicators are going to be strong. Forecasts look positive. I think we
have a surplus of equipment out there; it’s obviously impactful. But
we’re seeing some good indicators that suggest that carriers should
have a much better year over last year. Having said that, more of it depends
on delivering a good infrastructure bill. That could be huge for
our industry. A tax bill, cutting our corporate tax rate from 29 percent
to 15 percent as the president proposed. That’s a lot of cash going back
into carriers’ pockets that they can invest in new equipment, driver
pay, training and safety enhancements. These are all good things and
that money, by the way, all belongs to the carriers. It doesn’t belong
to the government. So letting people have more of their own money
to do things that they choose as a priority is key. I think making sure
trade is done in a thoughtful way and not in a way that upsets the
applecart would be good for our industry. Those deliverables could
be very impactful. And then I think beyond that, we look five, 10, 15
years out. What is this industry going to need to look like, what’s it
going to need to align with? Workforce development is huge. Driver
shortage projections, technician shortage projections: We need good
sound policies in place to attract talent and retain it and do it with the
help of our government, not as a headwind but in collaboration with
our industry for the backbone of the economy. If we don’t have talent
to fuel this sector, the economy is going to hurt. So we need support
from the government, not more headaches. And I think lastly beyond
workforce development is technology itself. I think [with] autonomous
[vehicles] you’re really talking about driver-assist technology, not
driverless. That’s a bunch of hype as far as we’re concerned. A bunch
of garbage. It creates more anxiety in our industry than truth. And we
need to deal with truth and data and not emotion. We’ve had enough
of that with the anti-truck crowd. Those people would have us move
freight by donkey cart if they had their way. The fact is, we are the
dominant force of the economy and we’re pro safety, we’re pro jobs,
we’re pro growth. We’re some of the most caring, compassionate, patriotic
people in the country. And if we’re going to get things done for the
benefit of the country, the government’s got to start working with us
and doing it in a data-driven way that’s based on good, sound policy
and not on emotion and rhetoric. That’s the best way to pave a good
economy for the future.
TLA: Anything you’d like to add?
John: Teamwork can produce a highly competitive advantage for those
who embrace it, leverage it and live it.
Chris: We’ve got a good story to tell and doing it together when it’s
possible is of mutual interest.
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Now accepting:

W i t h U . S . S e n a t o r T o m C o t t o n
By Lyndon Finney
To say Tom Cotton runs in the fast lane might be considered an understatement.
To wit:
He graduated from Harvard College in three years.
He currently holds the title of fastest senator and the second-fastest
member of Congress as a result of his placing first among senators in the
annual ACLI Capital Challenge, an invitational track race for teams representing
the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal
government and the media.
Cotton also won the race as a member of the House of Representatives.
He possesses a rapid-fire but succinct and understandable speaking
pattern that allows him to say far more in a 30-minute interview than
most people can say in an hour.
He had a short but successful military career, which included service
in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He earned the rank of captain and received
several awards, among them the Bronze Star Medal, which is awarded to
any person who distinguishes himself or herself by heroic or meritorious
achievement or service not involving participation in aerial flight and
occurring after December 6, 1941, while serving in any capacity with the
Armed Forces of the United States.
He zipped through his first race for the House of Representatives in
2012 and two years later left incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor in
the dust in his initial run for the Senate.
And, there are many who think Cotton won’t stop running until he
reaches the White House.
So, who is this 6-foot 5-inch Arkansan who was labeled a “conservative
superstar” in a 2014 edition of The Atlantic, a magazine covering news
and analysis on national and international politics, business, culture,
technology and life?
He was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle, Arkansas, in the shadow
of Mount Nebo, which rises 1,350 feet and offers sweeping views of the
Arkansas River Valley.
More than its height, the mountain is famous for its annual fried
chicken festival.
Cotton isn’t the only Dardanelle alumnus with a famous name.
Professional golfer John Daly, known for his colorful attire and who
has won both the PGA Championship and the British Open, hails from
Dardanelle.
So do Jim R. Caldwell, ironically the first Republican to serve in the
Arkansas State Senate in the 20th century; and James Lee Witt, former
director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Cotton grew up on the family farm and says his childhood days were
wonderful.
“It’s a great place to grow up and a great place to have kids,” he told
Truckload Authority. “It was a place where when I was a kid, you could
leave your home early in the morning on your bike and not come back
until sunset. The only trouble you had to worry about was the trouble
you got into because a neighbor or church member or family friend was
likely to call your parents and report back on you.”
His father, Len, and mother, Avis, are both Arkansans and met while
attending the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
They were, in Cotton’s words, “salt of the earth people.”
His father is a Vietnam War veteran active in community affairs and
his mother was a school teacher and later a principal.
“She was a resident expert on all the [neighboring] families by the
time she was done,” Cotton says, since she taught her students’ children
and their grandchildren. “I couldn’t have asked for a more blessed upbringing.”
What Cotton probably didn’t realize then was the impact his conservative
upbringing would have on his political philosophy and his eventual
path to Congress, even though politics was pretty much a taboo subject
around the Cotton household.
“I grew up in a traditional, conservative household not necessarily
conservative politically, but a conservative upbringing where at an early
age you were taught to take responsibility, take initiative, be disciplined,
have a strong work ethic, love your country and do what you could to
support it,” Cotton said. “Again, that was not a political upbringing, but
I think a lot of those principles my parents instilled in me led naturally
into military service in a time of war and ultimately into public service, as
well.”
Two things happened during high school that would also impact his
future.
First, Dardanelle High School had a strong junior ROTC program, and
since Cotton’s father was a Vietnam veteran, he developed a high respect
for the military.
Second, Cotton started reading the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
at age 15 in 1992 when Bill Clinton was running for president.
“Maybe that was because when you first start taking history you get
interested in biography. Maybe it was because my governor was on the
front page. So that was really the first time I took notice of politics. 1992
was exciting for me just as it was for many Arkansans.”
But once Clinton was in office and introduced his Democratic agenda,
24 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Brought to you by
Cotton came to the realization that “I must be a Republican.”
Cotton would go on to graduate from Harvard University with bachelor’s
and law degrees, but what happened during his final year of law
school changed the world and Tom Cotton.
“It was the 9-11 attack. I was in my last year of law school. I thought I
was going on to be a lawyer and live a long life in that field, but those attacks
changed a direction in my life and I knew from that point forward I
didn’t want to practice law anymore,” he said. “I wanted to join the Army
and go to the front lines. I worked a little while to pay off my law school
loans, but as much as anything else to get myself physically and mentally
ready to join the Army and go to war.”
In 2005, Cotton enlisted in the United States Army.
In May 2006, he was deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom to
Baghdad, where he was a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division.
In October 2008, he headed to Afghanistan.
There were several close calls.
“I drive safely on the roads these days because I feel like I left eight of
my nine lives in Baghdad,” he said.
His military career over near the end of the decade, Cotton headed
home but had no inkling he would become a politician.
He laid his law degree aside and joined McKinsey & Company, an
advisor and counselor to many of the world’s most influential businesses
and institutions.
“I knew coming out of the Army I did not want to go back to law,” he
said. “There’s nothing wrong with law; I just found from my time in the
Army I enjoyed being part of a bigger team and working together, which
is something that doesn’t always happen in law, especially as a junior
lawyer. McKinsey gave me the chance for some business experience and
to be exposed to main business functions like strategy and finance and
marketing and operations, and my goal was to marry up my experience
in the Army and my business experience but as things happen, circumstances
kind of intervened.”
In 2011, when results of the 2010 census were released, Yell County,
Arkansas, Cotton’s home county, was moved from the Second Congressional
District, which had just turned Republican with the election of Tim
Griffin, to the Fourth Congressional District, where the sitting Democrat,
Mike Ross, decided not to run for re-election in 2012.
“Because the transition in Arkansas politics [from Democratic domination
to a Republican majority] had occurred very quickly, I felt the district
was ripe for the taking in a general election,” Cotton said.
At the time, he was already planning to transition out of his job at
McKinsey because at the consulting firm, there were no operational responsibilities
and Cotton was looking for an opportunity to lead an organization.
Election to the House would give him “a new and different kind
of platform to serve the country again and hopefully do some important
things” as a leader in Congress.
In the 2012 general election, Cotton bested Arkansas State Sen. Gene
Jeffress 59 percent to 37 percent.
After two years in the House, Cotton decided he wanted to move to
the upper chamber, but to do so he would have to take on an incumbent
Democratic senator with a good reputation and pedigree, Mark Pryor,
son of former Arkansas Governor and U.S. Senator David Pryor.
“I wouldn’t have taken a shot at it if I didn’t think I was going to win.
A lot of people suggested in my first term [in the House] that I should
wait my time, but I decided that some of the problems we were facing
didn’t really have much time to wait,” Cotton said. “When I was in the
House I saw the biggest challenge that we faced in making progress aside
from President [Barack] Obama was the Senate, particularly the way
Senator Harry Reid was running the Senate as majority leader. And if I
wanted to make progress on some of the issues on which I’d campaigned,
we needed to win the Senate and if we didn’t win Arkansas, we weren’t
going to take control of the Senate.”
From his earliest days as a member of the House, Republican senators
began to notice the impact Cotton was making.
“They asked me to consider a campaign,” Cotton recalled. “I didn’t
say I’d do it, but they asked me not to foreclose it. So [after] about six to
eight months of observing the way Congress was working and especially
the way the Senate was working — or not working — and after talking
with my family, including my girlfriend who is now my wife, I decided
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 25

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The road to
protecting
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in the summer of 2013 it was time to take the plunge. I wanted to accomplish
certain things in public office and it was going to be hard to do so if
the Senate remained in Democratic hands.”
In the 2014 general election, Cotton defeated Pryor 56.5 percent to
39.5 percent.
As he crisscrossed Arkansas during the campaign, the state’s residents
were not shy about telling Cotton what was troubling them.
“They were very worried about the state of the economy, about high
rates of unemployment, about stagnant wages for working class Arkansans
on jobs in Arkansas as well as in their own communities,” he said.
“They were very worried about the state of our military because of the
dramatic budget cuts it had seen, particularly since so many Arkansans
are veterans, themselves, or active duty service members, and they
wanted a change in direction.”
Those concerns continued the last two years of the Obama administration.
Will Donald Trump give Arkansans and other Americans the answers
they are looking for?
“Well, we certainly put an end to some of the worst excesses of what
was happening under the Obama administration,” Cotton said. “Now
we have an administration that is on the side of working families and
businesses trying to get our economy growing again and increasing
wages for working folks. You also have an administration that’s committed
to enforcing our immigration laws as opposed to looking the other
way and even trying to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants. Also, you
have an administration that’s willing to work with Congress in both
parties to try to increase defense spending and make sure our military
is well-prepared to meet the threats that our country faces. There are
a lot of challenges that we still have left in Congress to pass legislation
on some of these issues, but it’s the difference between night and day
between having the Obama administration breathing down the necks of
Arkansas businesses and working families and the Trump administration
trying for the rising tide that will raise all boats.”
Transportation Insurance
Specialists Since 1970
888-313-3226 www.ecbm.com
Offices in PA & MD
Sen. Tom Cotton finished
the 2016 ACLI Capital
Challenge 3-Mile Team
Race as the fastest
member of the Senate
26 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org

Sen. Tom Cotton and his son
Gabriel, 2, attend a Senate Armed
Services Committee last April 27.
Kids were on the Hill for Take Our
Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Trump’s election might have surprised many Americans, but Cotton
was not one of them.
“Donald Trump saw some things that pretty much every other candidate
did not see, whether it was on the Republican stage or against
Hillary Clinton,” Cotton said. “He understood that many Americans
had grown increasingly alienated from the establishment in both parties.
They had gotten a lot of things wrong on immigration, trying to consistently
grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, trying to expand legal immigration
at a time when so many people were out of work or hadn’t had
an increase in their weekly take-home pay.” On terrorism, he saw more
and more threats in the United States and in Europe and realized “there’s
too much political correctness or too great a willingness to accept those
threats as a new normal, a kind of a new, ordinary course of business for
our national life. If there’s anything you can say about Donald Trump, it’s
that he doesn’t do business in a traditional way.”
But with partisanship reigning strong in Congress, can a Republican
president move the needle?
“The Democrats on Capitol Hill are still reconciling themselves to
Donald Trump’s victory, I can tell you that,” Cotton said. “So, it is highly
partisan right now. My suggestion to them is they acknowledge that Donald
Trump won, and learn the right lessons from Hillary Clinton’s failure,
but in the meantime, try to work together where we agree to move the
country forward. There’s no reason why Republicans and Democrats
can’t agree, for instance, to increase our defense budget or can’t work
together to reform job training. There’s no reason we can’t work together
to reform legal immigration to ensure we’re getting the very best, highly
skilled, well-educated immigrants, which we need in this country, and
not, you know, the flow of unskilled and low-skilled immigrants that are
hurting working class wages.”
Is it a matter of ego that Democrats seemingly aren’t willing to work
closely with Republicans?
“I think they’re still so shocked that Donald Trump won, and I think
Donald Trump gets under their skin in so many ways, including his policies,
his rhetoric, his tone and his style,” Cotton said. “The Democrats
have a hard time accepting that he’s president, I will simply say. And
I understand. I was disappointed when Mitt Romney lost in 2012, but
the American people spoke. They elected Barack Obama. I opposed him
where I had to, and I tried to get his support where I could. I have the
same approach with Donald Trump. I support him where I agree and I
try to change his mind where we don’t. Of course, I happen to agree with
Donald Trump a lot more than Democrats do. The shoe was on the other
foot under Barack Obama, but you didn’t see the kind of immediate and
almost uniform opposition to Barack Obama in 2009-2010 that you saw in
the early days of the Trump administration.”
Cotton is a frequent guest on news shows, and as such, people are
perking up to his wit and wisdom.
He’s candid about any topic you want to discuss with him.
During the interview, he tied trucking to the infrastructure.
“Right now, we’re working on the details of the infrastructure,” Cotton
said. “The Congress will obviously put its own stamp on any infrastructure
plan, but it’s good for the administration, through the White
House and Department of Transportation and some of the other agencies
and departments, to work hand-in-glove with Congress. This is another
example of how we could get bipartisan support in Congress. You typically
do on infrastructure bills and I hope we can. It may not be something
that happens in 2017, given our crowded agenda, but I do think it’s
something that can happen in the first half of 2018.”
Trucks, of course, are among the biggest users of the infrastructure.
“Trucking is a vital industry. I mean, you can go into any store in
almost any town across Arkansas, across this country, and much if not a
majority, of what you find there at one point or another was on a truck,
whether it was a long-haul truck or a short-haul. So, the trucking industry
is vital for our economy. It’s also vital for our workforce. Millions of
Americans make their living through the trucking industry, and that’s
one reason why it’s so important that associations like yours represent
them to elected representatives and to the American people so they are
reminded of just how essential trucking is to our society.”
Trucking is high among the industries that believe there are far too
many federal regulations and that the country is overregulated, especially
after the Obama administration.
“That’s one of the big successes, I would say, in the opening days of
the Trump administration, following the Obama administration, is that
we’ve either through congressional action or through the president’s
executive action, repealed dozens of regulations that have an impact in
sums of tens of billions of dollars on our economy. There’s a lot left to
be done. We should try to permanently reform our regulatory policy so a
future administration can’t impose such big costs on our economy again.
I think one of the untold stories of the early days of the Trump administration
is the effort at regulatory reform.”
So, these are the words of Tom Cotton barely two years into his sixyear
term and now a frequent guest on network news programs and
Sunday talk shows.
He’s gaining notoriety throughout the country.
In just over two years from now, the presidential race will heat up
again, and Cotton has already campaigned in Iowa, declaring Americans
“ready for that new beginning” there recently, walking a delicate path
by raising his national political profile at a time of turmoil for Trump’s
White House.
To which he will only say, “I am looking forward to running for reelection
in 2020 if the people of Arkansas will send me back to the Senate.”
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 27

SUMMER | TCA 2017
A Chat With The Chairman
28 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Sponsored by
Never
Enough Time
Foreword and Interview by lyndon finney
Perhaps the most famous song the late Jim Croce recorded was “Time in a Bottle,”
written as a prelude to the birth of his yet unborn son. The first verse goes something like
this: “If I could save time in a bottle, The first thing that I’d like to do, Is to save every day,
’Til eternity passes away, Just to spend them with you. …” Another verse says: “But there
never seems to be enough time, To do the things you want to do, Once you find them, I’ve
looked around enough to know, That you’re the one I want to go, Through time with.” As
you read this, TCA Chairman Rob Penner will have completed a fourth of his one-year
term and we’re sure he’d like to bottle his time so he could spend more time working to
continue to build more value into the membership experience at TCA. We’re also sure
Chairman Penner would agree there never seems to be enough time to do all he hopes to
do. In this second Chat With the Chairman, Rob talks about accomplishments during the
first two months of his chairmanship, about what lies ahead this summer and about one of
the hottest topics in trucking today: F4A.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 29

Sponsored by Mcleod software
McLeodSoftware.com | 877.362.5363
As we conduct this interview, you’ve just completed your second
month as chairman. Share with our readers what that experience
meant to you and some of the things you’ve accomplished during
that short time frame and share with us what you will be working
on in the next couple of months.
It’s a real privilege to work alongside the TCA staff and truckload’s
top leaders to help improve our industry. This industry has
provided for me, for my family and for our business and it is important
to give back. It is also important to me that I leave the
association in better condition than when I arrived here. We have
great people and we are focusing them on meaningful initiatives
and leveraging their capabilities better than ever before. It’s been
busy. The staff is working diligently on their budgets and business
plans and we are putting the final touches on the annual officers
meeting, scheduled to take place in July. At that meeting we will
work with staff on shaping the direction of TCA and approving the
2018 budget and priorities of the association. Our fiscal year end
is September, so there is urgency in getting that done. From a
TCA profitability and member benefit standpoint, past Chairman
(Russell) Stubbs asked me to chair a benchmarking task force
late last year. The task force made several recommendations that
[President] John Lyboldt and staff have taken to heart. The result
is a truly comprehensive value-driven program that will offer an
entire suite of services. We will expand our best practice groups
and we are developing full digital composite benchmarks and developing
education and training designed to support managing a
better business and relevant, timely subjects and content, carrier
consulting, certifications and more. We are looking to roll out the
new and improved program by July/August of this year. We are
in the process of finalizing the strategic task force that’s been
charged with the development of a position paper that provides
the background, color and context of what TCA is all about … what
we stand for and where we are trying to go.
The TCA Safety and Security Division annual meeting was last
month in Phoenix. As safety is priority No. 1 among TCA members,
share with us the high points of that meeting and what TCA members
learned and how that will improve safety among carriers.
One of the most important aspects that this meeting conveyed
was that our industry is at the precipice of what many believe will
be a data explosion in the coming years and whether or not we, as
an industry, are prepared to handle it. The upcoming compliance
date for ELDs will generate data like we have never seen before
in an effort to support what we have been saying anecdotally for
30 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Sponsored by Mcleod software
McLeodSoftware.com | 877.362.5363
years, that detention of drivers is an industrywide problem and we
must take appropriate actions to deal with it. Data has also become
more prevalent in the world of making our drivers safer. Just walking
the exhibit floor, one will realize that the amount of data generated
by our industry, the tools we use and the performance of our drivers
aids in painting a picture that will improve the safety outcome of
our driving force, whether it be entry-level drivers or our seasoned
veterans that require refreshment training. Transportation Secretary
Elaine Chao has said that President Donald Trump’s plan to improve
the nation’s infrastructure will be released in the very near future.
The $1 trillion program will have to be accomplished despite Department
of Transportation budget cuts. The president is not getting the
support he’d hoped for, including the American Road & Transportation
Builders Association, which conducted an analysis of the plan saying
“when all elements of the proposal are combined, it is possible that
the proposed infrastructure initiative will actually result in less, not
more, federal investment in infrastructure.”
Do you believe efforts to improve the
infrastructure will become reality
or will it remain the myth it has seemingly
become? Where does TCA stand on
the president’s plan and his willingness
to increase the federal gas and
diesel tax to help fund these improvements?
TCA supports an increase in fuel
taxes, coupled with indexing, so that
the Highway Trust Fund can become
sustainable. Our infrastructure needs
improvements so that our industry can
continue to haul the nation’s freight in
an efficient and economic manner. In
saying that, it is prudent that our Congressional
leaders explore any and
every way in which this can be done.
A national fuel tax increase represents
the easiest implementable way we
can raise funds to support such a tremendous
and dynamic initiative. You
will already find this process being put
forward at the state level, so it would
naturally make sense that it be done
federally as well. An issue with the
budget as proposed is that it calls for
increased tolling. TCA members are
not in favor of tolling as a primary way
to fund infrastructure. If toll financing
is inevitable, TCA has a policy in place
that outlines important attributes that
a toll plan should adhere to.
Now that the budget has been released, Congress will have to pass an
appropriations bill to fund the proposal. Trucking and other industries
have traditionally used the appropriations bill process to get
Congress to pass new regulations that would improve their respective
industries and to finally get Congressional mandates on regulatory
issues that have stalled at the agency level. What issues would TCA
like to see included in the FY2018 appropriations bill?
Clearly, the F4A federal preemption language represents the most
important issue that is affecting our industry today. We need ONE
national standard. That represents the simplest way our drivers can
operate in interstate commerce. Having a patchwork of state rules
that address meal and rest breaks has proven inefficient and ineffective
and it’s actually detrimental to our driving force. Having preemption
language requiring that our industry should be operating under
one federal Hours of Service rule that addresses meal and rest breaks
would be the safest avenue in which our Congressional leadership
should travel. Instituting language that addresses not only those
breaks, but also piece rate and retroactivity would be the ideal solution
and the most logical, legislative vehicle to address this issue in
the upcoming appropriations bill.
The beverage industry has joined FedEx and UPS in urging Congress
to pass legislation allowing 33-foot tandem trailers. Recently, Clifford
Lynch of C.F. Lynch and Associates said such legislation has more
chance of passing now than ever before. Do you agree with Mr. Lynch’s
statement and what will TCA need to do to make sure twin 33-foot
trailers don’t indeed wind up on the nation’s highways?
I have a message for the beverage industry: Be careful what you
ask for … . Given that twin 33s do NOT call for increased weight-carrying
capabilities, (at least not yet, but I assume that’s next), what
IF the trucking industry was forced to shift to twin 33s as the common
vehicle of conveyance? In the irregular route, general freight
business, plus or minus a few percent depending upon your own client
mix, as many loads weigh out as cube out. Some commodities
are dense and others not. For the beverage industry, without question
the vast majority of their loads weigh out first. The only benefit
twin 33s would provide would be on their empty packaging loads …
empty bottles and cans as several loads worth of packaging fit in
a single conveyance. Unless they are
contemplating twin 33s in a dedicated
operation, they would actually experience
a decrease in outbound payload
in the vast majority of their shipments,
as twin 33s weigh much more than a
single 53-foot trailer. The reality of it
is, the beverage industry would rely on
a mix of 53s and twin 33s to service
their businesses and that’s the TL issue.
On one leg of the trip, there may
be a benefit to a shipper, but the TL
carrier endures the costs on every leg.
Whether it’s extra empty miles to find
the next light load, whether it’s accepting
a lesser paying load that weighs
out first because they can’t handle the
same weight as the guy with the 53
… it’s very complicated. Let’s face it …
our industry has been discussing truck
size and weight since the 1960s and
quite honestly those same conversations
that we had back then are being
had again today. What does TCA need
to do to make sure that this configuration
doesn’t end up on our highways?
That answer is simple: Tell our story.
We are an industry that represents
the majority of freight that is moved
across the nation, and employing new
standards for truck size and weight
that will have a negative effect on the
largest portion of our industry is simply
not a sound decision. If you want
to talk improved efficiency, let’s talk about doing more with the resources
we already have and are already invested in … . The real
conversation that needs to be had is one which addresses detention.
Proven to be a truckload-specific problem, getting our drivers
to drive, rather than wait has reached epidemic proportions. Simple
changes in freight management can truly move the needle on productivity,
retention, driver pay and even safety. This is the conversation
our regulators should truly be having.
President Trump’s executive order freezing work on rulemakings and
requiring agencies to eliminate two rules for every one they create
has seemingly brought the regulatory process to a standstill. First, is
there any indication how long that freeze will last and if agencies
have to eliminate two rules for every one they create, how will the
trucking industry be impacted?
The length of the freeze continues to grow as our industry, along
with many other industries, continues to wait for the administration
to put the right people in place who can understand how we operate.
The entry-level driver training rule is one example of a rule that
kept getting delayed because of the freeze. Our industry is filled with
great training institutions for drivers, but we also have what we call
CDL mills that this rule is supposed to help eliminate. Continuing
32 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

to wait for this implementation will allow these mills an even
longer time to operate. As for the elimination of two rules for
every one rule that needs to be created, the more important
question is what rules would be eliminated. We can certainly
argue for changes that need to be made to rules, but safety-driven
companies like the members of TCA really cannot
possibly make an argument for the removal of rules. Our
safety rules have been put in place for a reason. While we
engage in discussions with our regulators to make our rules
more effective, advocating for the elimination of rules which
our industry needs to help remove unsafe carriers from our
roads is one in which we should not be part of.
A GDP report shows the U.S. economy is off to a slow start in
2017. Have you seen any impact of the slow economic growth
on the trucking industry?
YES! Read the financial reports of most public companies
and you can see less-than-desirable performance. Our costs
have outpaced our revenue because we have had weak demand.
Beyond that, there are many private companies on
the block and when you delve into their businesses you can
see that they are not performing well. Investment in those
businesses has not kept pace and typically it is because they
are undercapitalized. In my opinion, shippers do have reason
for concern. Some segments of the industry, like flats and
refrigerated, are starting to get busier now and we expect
it to continue to ratchet up, especially with the ELD mandate
on the near horizon. There are better times ahead for
most well-run organizations, but we have our hands full right
now.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 33

SUMMER | TCA 2017
Member Mailroom
How do I stay informed
a b o u t a l l o f T C A ’ s
events and programs?
This is a question that we hope our members rarely need to ask. Your Truckload Carriers Association membership
is most valuable when you are actively involved in the association, and to be involved you must know where and when
TCA’s many events are occurring.
We hold almost 20 meetings throughout the year, and in between we have webinars, calls for applications and presenters,
government affairs initiatives, and more, so we are actively taking steps to make it as clear as possible how to
take advantage of these opportunities.
We have traditionally informed our members of TCA events and programs via the TCA website, truckload.org, and
e-mail notifications, including the weekly TCA Newsletter and TCA’s twitter account, @TCANews.
While these channels have always yielded consistent results, we do not feel that they are enough. We have created a
Marketing Task Force to find new ways of providing our members with all of the information they need. If you have any
ideas or preferred methods of notification that we do not currently use, please reach out to anyone on the TCA staff and
let us know. If this association is to change and grow as we all hope it will, we must have active and informed members
— and we promise to do all in our power to foster that engagement.
34 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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SUMMER | TCA 2017
Talking TCA
h u n t e r l i v e s ay | C O N V E N T I O N S A N D M A R K E T I N G C O O R D I N AT O R
B Y d o r o t h y c o x
Ask most folks to name who they would like to invite to a fantasy dinner party and
they come up with names of famous composers and writers, pop stars, past heads of
state, actors and such. Ask Lawrence “Hunter” Livesay who he would invite and he replies,
“my friends and family.”
Credit his friends and family for being an important reason he didn’t leave his home
town of Alexandria, Virginia, and pursue a music career in Nashville, Tennessee, or New
York City.
This guitarist who comes from a family of musicians (his grandfather R. Eugene Livesay
played the organ for 42 years at his neighborhood Methodist church) had at one time
aspired to head to Nashville or New York, as many musicians do. But, he told Truckload
Authority: “I thought about it and just saw so many people trying to do it and just sort of
giving up … . I saw a lot of my friends going down those paths and not having any success
doing it. So I was more than happy to move back home” after graduating from Clemson
University in 2014.
And although Livesay still plays the guitar “every day,” he parlayed his love of music,
the performing arts and playing live gigs into his related talent of audio engineering
and then into business administration, marketing research and coordinating logistics and
sound for live events.
Which led him to his job as conventions and marketing coordinator for the Truckload
Carriers Association.
“I never would have imagined doing what I’m doing now,” Livesay says, “but it’s funny
how much crossover there is between planning conventions and putting on a [musical]
show.”
Even as a youngster Livesay had an interest in pulling off live shows.
“I think definitely outside of school I was focused on music and playing music with my
friends trying to get gigs together and trying to see if we could get a place to play. And we
would just sort of invite everybody over to one spot and various bands would play and we
were throwing little parties like that, so I definitely wanted to do music and started to have
an interest in doing live event stuff.”
Livesay may have received the technical gene from his mother, Laura Livesay, who
was a computer teacher at the middle school he attended while his father Larry Livesay
has held various federal government positions, including with U.S. AID and the FDIC. His
mother is retired from teaching school now but does tutoring “just about every day,”
Livesay says, and his dad does security and is on contract with the Environmental Protection
Agency.
It turns out both Livesay’s middle school, Alexandria Country Day, and his high school,
T.C. Williams High, are famous. But not for the same reasons.
The middle school received fame inadvertently for serving fourth graders what the
school’s kitchen staff thought was frozen lemonade but turned out to be frozen margaritas
left over from a PTA meeting the night before.
“That was kind of a big scandal,” Livesay says. “My sister was in that fourth-grade class.
You should have seen the note they sent home. It was on Howard Stern. Everybody was
talking about it.”
T.C. Williams High School, as football fans know, was featured in the iconic 2000 movie,
“Remember the Titans.”
“Actually,” Livesay remarks, “I was in the last class to have been in the old building.
They knocked it down I guess in between my sophomore and junior year, when we moved
into a new building. I mean, every time we had a substitute teacher we would watch ‘Remember
the Titans’ for sure. I’ve seen that movie probably 150 times.”
Everything at T.C. Williams is still named after the famous football team: “We’ve got
36 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 37

the Gerry Bertier Gymnasium and all of that,” Livesay says (Bertier was named
Defensive Most Valuable Player in the 1971 season when the Titans were 13-0,
including nine shutouts, and went on to win the Virginia State Championship).
“My dad actually did play under one of those coaches from around that time
but he would have been at the rival school across town.”
“I played mostly electric guitar back in those days” he says, while in college
“it was a lot easier to get people together with the acoustic [instruments] and
play little coffee shops and stuff like that.”
In addition to music, Livesay’s growing-up years were filled with sports,
mainly baseball and basketball.
By the time he was at Clemson, Livesay was “tracking” toward audio engineering,
“definitely one of the things I was most interested in and had a knack
for.”
At Clemson he obtained a Bachelor of Arts, Production Studies, in the
Performing Arts with a concentration in audio engineering with his minor in
business administration. However, he says, although “an audio engineering
degree is certainly a great thing to do and a fun hobby, you can’t expect to do
too, too much with that [as a career], I’ve found.”
“They really worked us in college,” he notes. “We were loading any show
that was coming in. We were building sets and pulling them off the truck and
honestly that’s not too different from what I do at the exhibit hall now” with
TCA events.
After college he worked as a media intern for an Alexandria marketing company,
RedPeg Marketing, which he says “had a big focus on touring and openings,
doing product demonstrations and setting up different social events and
tours.” There, too, “it’s funny how much cross-over I found there is” with that
job and what he does at TCA, he says, “like with the logistics of it all and getting
your teams in place. Then there’s knowing who to call and who can handle
what and just setting the plan in motion.”
Since joining the TCA team in January 2015, Livesay has discovered that the
work never ends: “You pretty much start [working on the next meeting] the
minute the previous one ends.
“There are so many different things to wrangle. You’ve got the hotel and
you’ve got your decorator for the exhibit hall to deal with; you’ve got to get
signs made and the programs made. You’ve got to do all your Web stuff and
tons of things people don’t think about” such as badges and lanyards, food
options, security measures, and on and on.
How long does it take to get to a comfortable place in planning and carrying
out the next big convention or event?
“Honestly,” he says, “for
me, I don’t think that ever
comes. I’d say once I get onsite
and everything is going I
finally allow myself to relax a
little bit.”
And scouting out a meeting
place is done far in advance.
“We usually try to get a
good idea of what the next
two or three years look like,”
he says. “You’re not necessarily
booking [the site]
but certainly you’re looking
at your options and taking
into account places where
we haven’t been recently or
maybe there are some renovations
happening” at a site
that might mean choosing a
different location. “You’ve
got to anticipate all that.”
The choice of meeting
location also has to do with
giving all members “the opportunity
to get out to a
Hunter Livesay and his sister
Lauren are shown as youngsters.
meeting,” Livesay explains. “I think Nashville was great. We hadn’t been there
in a really long time. There’s lots of tourism [opportunities] there and certainly
it’s easier for people to get excited about a place like that. We’ll also do the
[Gaylord] Palms and the Wynn [Las Vegas Resort] and I certainly think people
look forward to those types of places, as well.”
At the meetings he focuses on the exhibit hall and the location of the meeting
space and how it relates to “how far you need to walk from the general
sessions to the breakout session or going from there to get a meal. It’s all
factored in. Some of these things can certainly be a workout.”
And he really homes in on “the relationship we have with our associate
members, our sponsors and our exhibitors. I’m more the liaison with those
types of people, bringing in new sponsorship opportunities and evaluating
Q & A With Hunter Livesay
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: May 7, 1991. Alexandria,
Virginia
MY TRADEMARK EXPRESSION IS: Who’s making coffee?
MOST HUMBLING EXPERIENCE: Volunteering and
helping families in coastal Mississippi rebuild after
Hurricane Katrina
PEOPLE SAY I REMIND THEM OF: My dad
I HAVE A PHOBIA OF: Spiders
MY GUILTY PLEASURE: Cartoons
THE PEOPLE I’D INVITE TO MY FANTASY DINNER
PARTY: My friends and family
MY GREATEST PROBLEM AS A PROFESSIONAL IS:
Wanting to do everything
I WOULD NEVER WEAR: Anything with a Gamecock
A GOAL I HAVE YET TO ACHIEVE: Buying a house
THE LAST BOOK I READ: “The Mysticism of Sound &
Music” by Hazrat Inayat Kahn
LAST MOVIE I SAW: “In Defense of Food” – Michael Pollan
MY FAVORITE SONG: “This Must Be the Place” by Talking Heads
IF I’VE LEARNED ONE THING IN LIFE, IT WOULD BE:
Make it happen
MY PET PEEVE: Texting in the middle of a conversation
THE THING ABOUT MY OFFICE IS: It’s next to the front
door, making me the de-facto TCA mail delivery person
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Dedicated
38 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Hunter Livesay’s grandfather, R. Eugene Livesay, plays the organ
with one hand while holding grandson Hunter in his other.
what can add something to the attendee experience. We want to give sponsors
some exposure and the opportunity to market something to the members
while also providing the membership some benefits they wouldn’t have
had otherwise.”
The meeting, itself, has to be promoted, as well, Livesay says, from “the e-
mail blasts all the way down to the graphics. We definitely wear a lot of hats.”
Like many others who have been welcomed into the TCA staff family, Livesay
didn’t know a lot about the trucking industry beforehand.
He wasn’t exactly looking for a job, but learned of the TCA opening through
a former business contact.
“I did an internship in college at Voice of America and one of my boss’s
sisters [there] happened to be close friends with [TCA Executive Vice President]
Bill [Giroux]. I called Bill up and got the interview and that’s pretty much
how it happened,” he says. “I never applied for anything; I never saw it posted
online or anything like that but I just came in and liked everything about the
association and it was in the perfect location for me and [had] great people
to work with.”
He familiarized himself with the “big issues at the time such as size and
weight stuff, you know, touching on it with very broad strokes.”
Now, however, “I can’t drive down the road without seeing 10 member
companies and 10 products from our associates.” Working at TCA, he says,
“has definitely changed my perspective. Everything we have in today’s world
is delivered on a truck. I didn’t know too much about trucking before I came
but I’ve definitely heard the story that truckload is telling.”
He’s especially keyed into logistics and customer relations “and the relationship
we have with our members … .”
And he’s always looking for ways to benefit members and help them interact
and start conversations with each other at the conventions, annual meetings
and trade shows. That can range from new industry apps to small breakout
sessions that bring people closer together.
Perhaps the thing that surprises him most about the industry, he says, is
that there’s “more of a community than I would have imagined. It seems that
our members, through benchmarking programs and sessions at our meetings
… it really does seem like people recognize the importance of working together
as an industry. There’s a collaborative nature that I’ve seen. I would not
have expected that.”
As for the music, “it’s always been my big hobby,” says Livesay. “As I get
older I just appreciate doing it with friends.”
So this collaborative young man has fit right in at a collaborative organization
within a collaborative industry.
That should be music to everyone’s ears.
The Truckload Carriers Association
welcomes companies that
joined our association in
April and May.
April 2017
Synter Resource Group LDP Services
Pulsar Informatics, Inc.
May 2017
Integrity Transportation Insurance
Stoneridge Inc. WorkHound
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 39

By Klint Lowry
For trucking company recruiters, today’s job
market can feel like last call at a singles bar. The
crowd has thinned out and time is short. The lights
come up, you look around and — wow — slim
pickin’s. It’s discouraging. It’s been like this for
weeks, months, years. You start to wonder: “Why
is it so hard to find someone? Are all the good ones
taken?”
Maybe it’s more accurate to compare a recruiter
to a matchmaker, whose job isn’t just to find “the
one” for your company, but to do it over and over
again. With a chronic shortage of viable candidates
and an industry noted for its turnover, the task can
feel like a never-ending last call. Striking out isn’t
an option, and it’s easy to get discouraged, a little
desperate even, and fall into that familiar trap:
“Am I being too picky? Maybe my
standards are just too high.”
In the last-call scenario, that whatever-getsyou-through-the-night
kind of thinking can lead
to some serious regrets come the dawn.
As hard as it is to hire and retain enough
qualified drivers nowadays, companies may
be tempted to settle, to skirt their own hiring
standards and bring in people who aren’t quite
up to snuff.
At the Truckload Carriers Association’s
36th annual Safety and Security Division
meeting, held May 21-23 in Phoenix, the general
session featured a panel discussion titled “Are
Drivers Worth the Risk?”
Moderating the discussion was John
Simmons, vice president of HNI Truck Group.
The scheduled panelists were Clayton Fisk,
vice president of risk management, insurance
and safety for Warren Transport, Inc.; trucking
industry advocate and defense attorney Ted
Perryman; and Jeffrey K. Davis, vice president
of safety for the Hudson Insurance Group.
TCA’s Safety & Security Division Chair Scott
Manthey was a last-minute addition to the group
fresh off his acceptance of the Clare C. Casey
Award as TCA’s Safety Professional of the Year.
The central question of the discussion was
whether taking a gamble and setting aside
standards was worth it in order to get enough
drivers behind the wheel. The panel’s consensus:
No.
When you compromise quality, you sacrifice
safety. Just as you wouldn’t tell a lovelorn friend
to stop being so picky and take what they can
get, the same holds true for trucking companies
seeking drivers. The aim of the discussion was
to look at how companies can avoid getting
into a mindset in which they give up on finding
someone who’s right in favor of getting someone
right now and regretting it later.
“We wanted to talk about the influences
40 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

on driver hiring and all the things everyone
has to go through to hire that most important
asset of our companies,” Simmons said as he
opened the discussion. The term “asset” can
make personnel sound like a commodity. But
as the discussion moved along, there was an
underlying theme this panel of industry experts
kept coming back to: It’s important to remember
that at some level, business is always personal
and employer-employee relationships are just
that — relationships.
As an insurer, Davis said early in the
discussion that he assesses between 100 and 150
carriers a year. “We look for that ‘driver-centric’
culture,” Davis said. “The difference between a
decent company and a really great company is
finding that organization that treats that driver
with respect, and also isn’t just looking for
‘where do we get the next body.’”
One of the things he considers “vitally
important” in a company’s structure is how
the recruiting and safety departments work
together.
Fisk said Warren Transport has taken the
relationship between recruitment and safety a
step further than most, making them part of the
same department.
“I meet with the recruiting people every
week to discuss what we’re doing to bring new
operators on and I also have the opportunity
to reinforce the importance of maintaining the
company’s safety record, to go over problem
areas. They’re continually on board in regard to
safety and not just recruiting. In our company
the safety director himself actually OKs every
driver in the fleet.”
Manthey, who is senior vice president of
safety and compliance at Interstate Distributor
Co. in Tacoma, Washington, explained his
company uses a tiered system to review
candidates. “We have minimum standards,”
Manthey said, “and then we’ve set a bar
significantly higher.” Candidates who clear that
higher bar can be greenlighted by the recruiting
department supervisor. All others need to be
cleared by the director of safety. Those who
tiptoe the line of acceptability as a candidate or
who are looking to get rehired will be reviewed
by a committee, who then sends their decision
to the chief operating officer. If it’s still a close
call, the senior leader of safety and operations
will make the final decision.
Simmons added he knows of one company
where every employee is signed off on by the
vice president of operations, the vice president
of recruiting, the vice president of training and
the vice president of safety.
The more people who have a hand in the
hiring process, the more likely the company’s
hiring standards will be followed. But this
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 41

approach has the added value of starting the process of
opening lines of communication between that new hire and
his coworkers at every level.
“People don’t quit companies; people quit people,”
Fisk said. “It’s important as much as possible for upper
management to get to know new drivers right off the bat.”
The panel agreed that the best way to avoid a driver
shortage is to hold on to the ones you have, and that creating
a friendly, comfortable working relationship goes a long
way toward that end.
“It all comes down to a guy behind the wheel,” Fisk said.
“Even when we have autonomous vehicles, there’s still
going to be somebody there. And these folks are people.
Every once in a while I’ll hear some fleet manager refer
to someone and they give me their truck number, and I
don’t go for that. That’s a big no-no at our company. These
people have names, they have lives, they have families and
interests.”
Establishing those lines of communication early is
important, Davis said. A driver may not remember what
you said to him yesterday, but he’ll remember every word
of what was laid out to him when he was hired. Let a new
driver know right off the top what’s expected of him. “And I
want to know what the new driver expects from us.”
One thing a driver likes to know is that his company
stands behind him, Perryman said. As an attorney, he
usually meets drivers after they’ve had an accident.
“In how many professions can you have a lapse, one that
can end your career?” he said. “It’s important to assure that
driver after an accident that you have his back. And that
driver feels like part of the team again.”
That is the preferred method of dealing with accidents,
Manthey added. “It used to be if they had an event, it was:
‘You know what? They don’t work here anymore.’ That’s
what safety would say. Today, we do a full vetting.” And
if it is at all possible, a timetable is set for the driver to get
retrained so they can get past that incident and back on the
road.
“The reason we do that is very simple,” Manthey said.
“We know what we have in that driver. What we don’t
know is what we’re going to get coming in the door.”
Being able to stand behind a hiring decision is one of the
most important reasons for a company not to compromise
its standards, Perryman said, and it’s surprising how often
he finds companies hire drivers who don’t meet their
standards and it comes back to bite them.
“From the legal side, you look at the company’s hiring
criteria,” he said. And it isn’t to assess that criteria. After all,
he said, a company sets its own criteria.
“Obviously, there’s the criteria where drivers are
disqualified under 383.51,” Perryman said, referring to the
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations
section that lists the types of moving violations for which a
driver can be temporarily or even permanently disqualified
from getting behind the wheel of a CMV.
Other than that, and as far as the law allows, carriers
can pretty much set their own standards, Perryman said.
“In an actual litigation, the focus more often is less on
the driver’s past and more on the company’s standards
and hiring practices. What I find pretty important is that
whatever your hiring criteria might be that you follow that
criteria.”
“Yeah, it isn’t the standard that gets questioned, it’s the
exception to the standard,” Davis added. “Imagine being in
court in a claims case, and the plaintiff’s attorney asks: ‘So,
your standards used to be here, but then you lowered your
standards and hired this driver. Why?’ and the answer is,
‘Well, we just weren’t getting enough drivers.’ Those are the
kinds of things that we say add zeroes to claims.”
Davis said about every two weeks he’ll get a call from
a safety director who’ll say something along the lines of,
“Look, we’re just not getting the recruits, we’ve got to do
something about the standards.”
“The first thing I will say is, ‘what are you doing to keep
the people we have?’ This is the only industry I know where
100 percent turnover is acceptable. If I went to my boss and
said, ‘Wow, we had 100 percent turnover this year,’ I’d
probably wind up being part of that turnover.
“When I look at getting calls from a company saying,
‘hey, we’ve got to make this exception and that exception,’
then it’s time for us to go in and say, ‘are these standards
working?’”
The companies that have been successful have been
those that carefully consider what they need in a driver, set
appropriate standards, and then go after that kind of driver,
period, panelists said. Sure, maybe once a year a carrier may
want to review its standards, adapting as the company’s
needs or maybe even the trucking industry changes. But
whatever the hiring standards are at a given time, stick to
them.
Despite the perpetual driver shortage, Davis said,
he hasn’t seen many carriers dramatically lower their
standards — some may have edged down their minimum
age or years of experience. And for any company that may
be considering it, he added, there’s one last good reason not
to do it: It doesn’t work.
“The one thing I’ve always seen, the companies that do
make large changes to their policies wind up with rapid
turnover,” he said. “They draw in a lot of people, but they
lose them fast, too.”
That last-call lovelorn friend might be satisfied getting
by with a string of meaningless one-night stands. But
eventually that scene gets old, usually after a few nasty
surprises along the way. Most companies tend to try to
avoid nasty surprises.
“I’ve always been a firm believer a company brings in its
problems from the outside, so we try not to do that,” Fisk
said.
It might take a little more time and effort, but in the long
run it’s better to take the matchmaker approach and hold
out for a real keeper.
42 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

PHOENIX
More than 150 representatives
from some of the Truckload Carriers
Association’s safest member
companies attended the 36th annual
Safety & Security Division meeting
at the Renaissance Phoenix Glendale
Hotel in May. Attendees learned about
current issues related to truck safety
and security and networked with safety
directors from all across North America.
1
2
3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10
11
(1) Lori Borgan, safety director for Convoy Systems, accepts the first-place plaque
for Division II in the 2016 National Fleet Safety Awards presented by Jim Barber, assistant
vice president of safety for Great West Casualty Co. (2) Chris Zondlo, safety
coordinator for Smokey Point Distributing, accepts the first-place plaque for Division
III in the 2016 National Fleet Safety Awards, presented by Barber. (3) Benton Elliott,
director of safety for Big M Transportation, accepts the first-place plaque for Division
IV in the 2016 National Fleet Safety Awards from Barber. (4) Stephanie Fensom,
manager of safety and compliance for Bison Transport, accepts the 2016 National
Fleet Safety Grand Prize Award from Barber. (5) TCA Chairman Rob Penner, president
and CEO of Bison Transport, updated attendees on issues facing TCA. (6) Dave
Heller, TCA’s vice president of government affairs, updated attendees on regulatory
issues facing the industry. (7) Exhibits allowed attendees to learn about new products
designed to make their fleets safer. (8) Jeremy Stickling, director of human
resources and safety at Nussbaum Transportation, presents a session of Trucking
Then vs. Now in a general session. (9) The warm climate in Arizona provided an opportunity
for attendees to relax and network outdoors at the Renaissance Phoenix
Glendale Hotel. (10) The Exhibit Hall provided a perfect setting for a cup of coffee
and chat with peers about safety and security issues. (11) TCA President John Lyboldt
welcomed attendees to the meting.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 43

A QUICK LOOK AT IMPORTANT TCA NEWS
SMALL
A QUICK LOOK AT
IMPORTANT TCA NEWS
TALK
Clare C. Casey Safety Awards
Carriers for which Manthey was the company safety leader have earned Safe Carrier of the
Year honors from Washington, Oregon, California and Indiana.
“Scott represents the best of the best in the safety world,” said David Heller, vice president
of government affairs at TCA. “He knows his stuff, and is always willing to share his
vast knowledge. Everyone in safety can agree, Scott Manthey is incredibly deserving of this
award.”
Nominees for TCA’s award must exemplify leadership and demonstrate the goals of protecting
lives and property in the motor transportation industry while serving their company,
industry, and the motoring public. The award is named after Clare Casey, a safety professional
who actively served TCA from 1979 until 1989.
He was devoted to ensuring that all truckload safety professionals build a strong safety
network, and was instrumental in forming the first annual Safety & Security Division meeting
in 1982.
The first Clare C. Casey Award was presented in 1990, one year after Casey’s death.
Name the Mascot
Trucking Moves America Forward introduced an industry mascot last month to continue
its quest in telling the story of trucking’s essentiality to the American economy.
TMAF executive committee leaders Kevin Burch, president of Jet Express and American
Scott Manthey, left, accepts the 2017 Clare C. Casey Safety Professional of
the Year Award from John Lyboldt, TCA president.
Scott Manthey, senior vice president of safety and compliance for Interstate Distributor
Co. of Tacoma, Washington, was presented the Truckload Carriers Association’s 2017 Clare
C. Casey Safety Professional of the Year Award during TCA’s 36th Annual Safety & Security
Division Meeting in Phoenix May 21-23.
This honor is bestowed upon a trucking industry professional whose actions and
achievements have made a profound contribution to enhancing safety on North America’s
highways.
After serving in the U.S. Coast Guard for 10 years, Manthey has worked in the transportation
industry for more than 20 years, including the past 3½ years at Interstate Distributor
Co.
There, he helped usher in a 45 percent reduction in preventable DOT accidents, a 40
percent reduction in total incurred exposure, and a 17 percent reduction in lost time from
injuries, displaying his ability not only to teach professional truck drivers how to drive more
safely, but to instill the values of safety into a company’s culture.
“In his first year with Interstate we would rarely find Scott in his office,” said Marc
Rodgers, president and CEO of Interstate Distributor Co. “He was out in the yard talking to
our drivers, teaching a class to our new operations staff, or in the driver lounge building
relationships of trust with our associates. This was a testament to the loyalty Scott builds
in his professional relationships and the responsibility he feels to build the future safety
leaders in our industry.”
Manthey’s dedication to safety is never limited to his work with the company he works
for — he also volunteers his time with other organizations to help spread safety to the
industry as a whole.
He has been an active member of the Washington Trucking Association (WTA) for more
than 10 years, serving on the board of the Safety Management Council for eight years,
including as the council’s chairman from 2013-2015. He was named chairman of TCA’s
Regulatory Policy Committee in 2015, and has been actively involved in TCA’s Safety &
Security Division since 2012.
In addition to the 2017 Clare C. Casey Award, Manthey has earned numerous awards
honoring his dedication to safety, including the 2010 Safety Professional of the Year from
WTA and the 2012 Safety Professional of the Year from the Oregon Trucking Association.
Kevin Burch, chairman of the American Trucking Associations and 2009-2010
TCA chairman, poses with the Trucking Moves America Forward image
campaign’s yet-unnamed mascot.
44 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Trucking Associations chairman; Wendy Hamilton, senior
manager, sales marketing at Pilot Flying J; and Elisabeth
Barna, COO and EVP of Industry Affairs at the American
Trucking Associations, made the announcement at the
Knoxville Pilot Travel Center, unveiling the truck mascot
complete with headlights, a windshield, tires, and the TMAF
cap.
Since TMAF’s inception over three years ago, the movement’s
goal has been to shift the image of the industry
by sharing important facts — including the fact that 80
percent of U.S. communities rely solely on trucking for
the delivery of their goods by an industry of more than 7
million people — and to be visible throughout the country
all year through its digital presence, the media and live
events coast to coast. The mascot is an extension of the
movement’s goal to broaden the reach and visibility of the
trucking industry.
“Over the past three years, we’ve attempted to be visible
throughout the country, and this newest member of our
team will do just that, in a new, exciting way,” Burch said.
“Just like our 3.5 million drivers, the mascot is ready
to hit the road and visit as many of you as possible in the
coming months and years,” Barna said.
TMAF has called on the industry to help name the mascot
through a digital campaign.
Well over 600 names have been submitted.
TMAF will take submissions through e-mail at mascot@
truckingmovesamerica.com and its Facebook page until
July 1.
Then, voting will commence, and a name will be unveiled
at the Great American Trucking Show taking place
August 24-26 in Dallas.
TCA’s partner newspaper The Trucker polled its website
readers to submit their choices for the mascot’s name.
Among the submissions were Steers, Tommy the Trucker,
Shelf Stocker, Petey Mack, Coffee Drinking Gear Jammer,
Miles, and Truckie.
Public Company Results
The TCA inGauge team has uploaded the latest public
company results for the first quarter of 2017 online.
The team tracks the results of predominantly publicly
traded truckload companies throughout North America,
and as of the first quarter there were 12 companies being
tracked.
The new additions to the database include Schneider
National (IPO in April); Daseke (began trading on the NAS-
DAQ in February - first Flatbed/Specialized company in the
group); TFI (formerly Transforce), and Titanium, a smaller
Canadian publicly-traded company.
Here are the operating ratios, excluding FSC, for the
quarter that ended March 31:
• Heartland Express: 83.17 percent
• Knight: 90.76 percent
• Marten: 91.41 percent
• Werner: 94.27 percent
• Schneider: 95.25 percent
• PAM: 97.16 percent
• TFI (TransForce): 97.27 percent
• Titanium: 99.16 percent
• Covenant: 99.78 percent
• Daseke: 100.58 percent, and
• USA Truck: 107.12 percent.
Celadon results have been delayed.
On average, the operating ratios for all the companies
the inGauge team tracks have deteriorated by 2.99 percentage
points, compared to fourth-quarter 2016.
Although many companies have company-specific factors
related to this deterioration, many have commonly
pointed to: (1) excess capacity and (2) a soft used truck
market, as contributing factors to the subpar results.
On the bright side, many are banking on the new ELD
mandate solving the capacity issue. However, it may further
erode the used truck market.
Heartland, Knight, Marten and Werner continue to be the
industry leaders from an operating ratio perspective.
The inGauge team highly encourages everyone to read
their quarterly and annual results for insight and inspiration.
The entrance of Daseke into the public market provides
a great way to gain some further insight into the flatbed/
specialized segment. Daseke, comprising 11 distinct operating
entities — all well-known and respected companies
in their own right— now boasts 2,928 tractors, and annualized
revenues of $642 million prior to the Schilli and Big
Freight acquisitions.
Scholarship Gala
The Monday night Scholarship Gala is always a
fun part of the annual TCA convention and raises
thousands of dollars to support the Scholarship
Fund. In this photo, TCA Chairman Rob Penner,
center, banters with Shepard Dunn, left, 2014-
2015 chairman, and Russell Stubbs, immediate
past chairman.
The Truckload Carriers Association on July 31 will reveal
recipients of the 2017-18 TCA Scholarships.
Judges are in the process of analyzing the submitted
applications to confirm that each applicant meets the
necessary eligibility requirements and determine the exact
amount for each scholarship.
The Scholarship Fund awards its scholarships without
regard to sex, race, color, national origin, or religion.
Scholarship recipients must be associated with a TCA
member company as an employee, independent contractor,
or be the child, grandchild, or spouse of an employee
or independent contractor. A recipient must be a student
in good standing who will be attending a four-year college
or university; show financial need and scholastic achievement;
maintain full-time student status; and demonstrate
high character and integrity.
TCA’s Scholarship Fund has been providing assistance to
students associated with the truckload industry since 1973.
The 2016-17 TCA Scholarship program awarded 45
students with scholarships ranging from $2,275 to $6,250
from a total pool of approximately $130,000.
Anyone interested in making a donation to a scholarship
in the name of one of TCA’s past chairmen should contact
TCA’s Sean Townsend at stownsend@truckload.org.
Scholarship recipients will be announced at truckload.
org/Scholarship-Recipients.
Debbie Sparks goes to WAA
Debbie Sparks and Ron Goode, director of
education at TCA, enjoy a light moment during
registration for the 2017 annual convention in
Nashville, Tennessee.
Debbie Sparks, vice president of development for the
Truckload Carriers Association, left the organization May 31
to oversee strategic development and logistics for Wreaths
Across America.
Sparks, who has been with TCA since December 2006,
helped foster TCA’s partnership with the nonprofit organization
that strives to “remember, honor, and teach” about the sacrifices
veterans have made for their country.
She has served on the Arlington National Cemetery strategic
development team, which made history two years in a row
by placing a wreath on every marker at the cemetery.
She and her team at TCA, working closely with the
transportation group at WAA, have been responsible for recruiting
and dispatching hundreds of trucks that transport
remembrance wreaths to nearly 1,300 veterans’ cemeteries
nationwide.
“Though we will miss Debbie at TCA, she is the right person
for this position,” said John Lyboldt, TCA’s president. “This
is a great opportunity for both Debbie and TCA, as we are
committed to our partnership with Wreaths Across America
and look forward to continuing to share the mission within the
trucking community.”
In her newly-created position with WAA, Sparks will continue
to be involved with the trucking industry by working to
grow the involvement and contributions of carriers and the
larger trucking industry throughout the country.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 45

Mark Your
Calendar
JULY 2017
>> July 12-14 — 2017 Refrigerated Division Meeting, Hotel Talisa, Vail,
Colorado. Find more information at Truckload.org or contact TCA at (703)
838-1950.
OCTOBER 2017
>> October 11— Wreaths Across America Charitable Gala, Gaylord
National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland. Find
more information at Truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
DECEMBER 2017
>> December 16 — Arlington Wreath Reception and Dinner, Hilton
Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia. Find more information at Truckload.org or
contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
Visit TCA’s Event Calendar Page
online at Truckload.org and click “Events.”
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46 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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