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wreaths across america day | tca honors | accreditation Program
OFFICIAL PUBLICATION o f t h e Truckload Carriers Association
WINTER/SPRING 2017
We are Truckload
We Are One
7 9 T H A N N U A L C O N V E N T I O N
Ingenious: Driving advancement of safety and automation | 19
Charting the Course: Q&A with John Lyboldt | 24
Riding off into the Sunset: Chairman Stubbs’ last TLA chat | 28
IN
THIS
ISSUE

WINTER | TCA 2017
President’s Purview
Convention Time Again
It’s that time of year again. Time to gather with the leaders of truckload
and deliberate all of the critical issues confronting our industry — twin 33s,
F4A, tax reform, trade, infrastructure, etc. — so that when we take our story
to Congress in the coming months, we do so armed with the perspective of
every carrier, large and small, from every corner of the country. It’s time to
register for the 2017 TCA Annual Convention.
A lot changes in a year. When I was preparing for my first TCA convention
at this time last year, I was also speaking to members, seeking a new direction
for this organization. We have our direction now. Ask any of our amazing
staff members to detail the four legs of the stool and they are able to do so
immediately. There is an enthusiasm in this staff about where we’re heading
that I believe comes across in every phone call, e-mail, and face-to-face
interaction we have. We’re very proud of it, and I believe this energy will be
evident throughout the convention.
In my interview in this issue of Truckload Authority, I touch on a wide
range of subjects, including how far we have come in the past year, where
we are now, and how we are going to implement our new direction and effectively
shape the future of trucking. I hope that this interview gives you
more insight into TCA’s core values, the challenges facing this industry, and
myself. It’s worth the read.
John Lyboldt
President
Truckload Carriers Association
jlyboldt@truckload.org
The theme for the 2017 convention, “We are Truckload, We are One,”
represents the united front that truckload must form if we are going to overcome
our numerous challenges and create a more sustainable and profitable
industry.
I look forward to seeing each and every one of you in Nashville this March
26-29.
Safe travels,
John Lyboldt
PRESIDENT’S PICKS
Turning to a Veteran
Elaine Chao is the only cabinet member
who has served in that capacity before.
Page 8
Truck Parking
Professional truck drivers chronicle
efforts to find safe parking.
Page 21
Inside Out with Miia Rasinen
Get an inside look at TCA’s
D.C.-loving education manager.
Page 34
TCA 2017
www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority

T H E R O A D M A P
WINTER/SPRING 2017
PRESIDENT’S PURVIEW
Convention Time Again by John Lyboldt | 3
LEGISLATIVE LOOK-IN
Broken Infrastructure | 6
Turning to a Veteran | 8
Capital Recap | 10
TRACKING THE TRENDS SPONSORED BY SKYBITZ
Coasting into 2017 | 15
All Choked Up | 18
Ingenious | 19
Dear Diary | 21
Where States Stand | 22
Charting the Course with John Lyboldt | 24
A CHAT WITH THE CHAIRMAN SPONSORED BY MCLEOD SOFTWARE
Riding off into the Sunset with Russell Stubbs | 28
MEMBER MAILROOM
What Do I Need to Know About the 2017 Annual Convention? | 33
TALKING TCA
Inside Out with Miia Rasinen | 34
Wreaths Across America Day | 38
TCA Honors | 40
Small Talk | 42
Mark Your Calendar | 46
PhoFax: (703) 836-6610
PRESIDENT
John Lyboldt
jlyboldt@truckload.org
VICE PRESIDENT – DEVELOPMENT
Debbie Sparks
dsparks@truckload.org
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
Ron Goode
rgoode@truckload.org
SECOND VICE CHAIR
President
RoehlTransport - Flatbed&Specialized
VICE PRESIDENT + PUBLISHER
Ed Leader
edl@thetrucker.com
GENERAL SALES MANAGER
Brett Scott
brett.scott@thetrucker.com
PRODUCTION MGR. + ART DIRECTOR
Rob Nelson
robn@thetrucker.com
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
Russell Stubbs
Chairman, FFE Holdings Corp.
SECRETARY
Josh Kaburick
CEO
EarlL.HendersonTruckingCompany
AT-LARGE OFFICER
Daniel Doran, President
Doran Logistics, LLC.
AT-LARGE OFFICER
Aaron Tennant, President & CEO
Total Solutions, Inc.
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
William (Bill) Giroux
wgiroux@truckload.org
VICE PRESIDENT - GOV’T AFFAIRS
Dave Heller
dheller@truckload.org
FIRST VICE CHAIR
Rob Penner, President & COO
Bison Transport
TREASURER
Dennis Dellinger
President
Cargo Transporters, Inc.
IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIR
Keith Tuttle
Founder & President
Motor Carrier Service, LLC.
AT-LARGE OFFICER
John Elliott, CEO
Load One, LLC.
AT-LARGE OFFICER
James Ward, President
D.M. Bowman, Inc.
publication are not necessarily those of TCA.
In exclusive partnership with:
PhoFax: (501) 666-0700
GENERAL MGR. TRUCKING DIV.
Megan Cullingford-Hicks
meganh@targetmediapartners.com
EDITOR
Lyndon Finney
editor@thetrucker.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Dorothy Cox
dlcox@thetrucker.com
REACHING TRUCKING’S
TOP EXECUTIVES
“Truckload Authority always is WELCOME and RELEVANT in
my mailbox. Not only does it give me VALUABLE INSIGHT
into truckload but it also focuses on TCA members that are
LEADERS in our industry. It’s definitely on my READING LIST
regularly.”
— SHEPARD DUNN
VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES, CFI
2014-2015 CHAIRMAN, TRUCKLOAD CARRIERS ASSOCIATION
TRUCKING’S MOST ENTERTAINING
EXECUTIVE PUBLICATION
PRODUCTION + ART ASSISTANT
Christie McCluer
christie.mccluer@thetrucker.com
ADMINISTRATOR
Leah M. Birdsong
leahb@thetrucker.com
STAFF WRITER
Jack Whitsett
jack.whitsett@trucker.com
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Micah Jackson
micahj@thetrucker.com
NATIONAL MARKETING CONSULTANTS
Kurtis Denton
kurtisd@thetrucker.com
Raelee Toye-Jackson
raeleet@thetrucker.com
John Hicks
johnh@targetmediapartners.com
Meg Larcinese
megl@targetmediapartners.com
© 2017 Trucker Publications Inc., all rights reserved. Reproduction without written permission
prohibited.
All advertisements
and editorial materials are accepted and published by Truckload Authority and its exclusive partner,
Trucker Publications, on the representation that the advertiser, its advertising company and/
or the supplier of editorial materials are authorized to publish the entire contents and subject
matter thereof.
Such entities
and/or their agents will defend, indemnify and hold Truckload Authority, Truckload Carriers
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any claims or suits for libel, violations of privacy, plagiarism, copyright or trademark infringement
and any other claims or suits that may rise out of publication of such advertisements and/or
editorial materials.
Cover photos courtesy:
Truckload Carriers Association
Additional magazine photography:
Associated Press: P. 8, 22, 23
Driver iQ: P. 42
Fotosearch: P. 3, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21
Google Maps: P. 18
Miia Rasinen: P. 36, 37
Richard K. Dalton: P. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32
Rolling Strong: P. 44
TCA: P. 3, 24, 26, 27, 34, 38, 39, 40
Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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WINTER | TCA 2017
Legislative Look-In
By Jack Whitsett
A Trucker’s Lament — with apologies to TV’s “HeeHaw”
Gloom, despair and agony, on me …
Deep, deep dark potholes, excessive misery
If I had no toll roads, I’d have no funds at all,
Gloom, despair and misery on me
Though he began his inaugural address stating the intention to fix America’s
infrastructure, President Donald Trump more than a month into his
term has yet to tell the nation how he plans to pay for the massive, multitrillion-dollar
project.
Those in the trucking industry, like many other constituencies, have been
happy just to hear infrastructure repair and construction placed in a priority
position. But as pressure builds for solid funding proposals, impatience is
brewing.
“We’re not hearing anything new” from the administration in the way of
new funding ideas, said Dave Heller, vice president of governmental affairs
at the Truckload Carriers Association.
“We’re approaching levels [of disrepair] that our infrastructure hasn’t
seen, ever. Everyone pretty much agrees that work needs to be done,” said
Heller. But so far little of value has come from the Trump administration or
from Congress concerning funding the work.
“A couple of things that the Trump administration has alluded to is private-public
partnerships (PPPs), an infrastructure bank and repatriation,”
Heller said. Repatriation occurs when money invested overseas is brought
back into the U.S. at a favorable tax level.
No one in the trucking industry has voiced approval of PPPs because
of the overwhelming opinion that private money leads to toll roads, something
motor carriers oppose strongly.
“Tolls tend to escalate when it’s a PPP,” Heller said. “If you purchase a
road, you’re going to want your money back.”
The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA), despite
the name, represents toll operators, and the organization is one of the
very few stakeholders in the infrastructure circle that will admit to favoring
tolls. Communications Director Bill Cramer, writing in USA Today, analyzed
the “potential to mobilize private investment to support the [U.S. infrastructure]
rebuilding plan.”
Tony Dorsey, spokesman for the American Association of State and
Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO), said in January that PPPs lead
to “tolling, and high tolls.”
IBTTA Executive Director and CEO Patrick Jones agreed that PPPs
lead to tolls. “We look forward to ensuring that toll finance remains an important
component of any proposal to rebuild our nation’s transportation
infrastructure. In the highway community private investments mean tolls,”
Jones said.
Tollways do raise money. The Illinois Tollway is currently undertaking a
15-year, $12 billion capital program called Move Illinois: The Illinois Tollway
Driving the Future. The state government stated that the program will
improve mobility, relieve congestion, reduce pollution, create “as many as
120,000 jobs” and “link economies throughout the region.” The state said
the project will rebuild and widen the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway (I-90)
and open a new interchange connecting I-294, the Tri-State Tollway to I-57,
along with reconstruction of the Central Tri-State Tollway along I-294.
IBTTA sees some hope for compromise and action on the infrastructure
issue in the November election results. Cramer quoted reporter Tanya Snyder
in his analysis:
“Among President-elect Donald Trump’s top policy priorities, federal
infrastructure investment is the least important to those who voted for him,
but the most important to the general public, with about half of each group
calling it an ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ high priority,” Snyder wrote.
“The relatively high support from the constituency that elected the president
and both houses of Congress might be just the prompt the country
needs to tap private as well as public funding to begin drawing down a
persistent, vexing infrastructure deficit,” IBTTA stated. “While 85 percent
of Trump supporters were eager to repeal Obamacare, just 50 percent of
them thought ‘major new spending by the federal government on roads,
bridges, airports, and other infrastructure’ should be a high priority of the
incoming administration.” But “among the general public, 49 percent said
so,” a result that pointed to a potential consensus in the making. “The other
issues — immigration, defense spending, tax cuts and trade — showed
much wider enthusiasm gaps,” Cramer wrote.
“IBTTA and the tolling industry are excited to work to advance the new
administration’s vision to invest in restoring America’s crumbling roads,
bridges, and other critical infrastructure over the next decade.
“If the president’s supporters get the funding model they prefer, and
everyone gets the safer, more reliable highways they need and deserve,
it might just be the kind of grand bargain that can deliver results,” IBTTA
concluded.
Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Another objection often voiced about toll roads is the rather complex
collection setup. Heller pointed out that fuel tax collection is a mechanism
that’s already in place.
“It’s pay at the pump,” he said. “Money can be dispersed quickly.”
Most everyone agrees that the situation is becoming critical, Heller
added. “We’re 28 th in the world in infrastructure funding. We have an opportunity
to reinvest.”
The trucking industry favors a fuel tax increase at the federal level, said
Heller, with the tax amount indexed to inflation. “We as an industry are
more than willing to do our part.”
Again, little is being done in Washington regarding fuel taxes, he said,
but state capitols are a different matter.
“It’s being done at epic speed at the state level,” Heller said, with more
than 20 states enacting fuel tax increases in recent years.
Politicians, however, remain wary of taxes. The National Governors
Association (NGA) in conjunction with 10 other state and local groups
has issued a brief outlining the fiscal condition of state and local governments,
highlighting the role municipal bonds can play in funding
projects.
“As states and Congress look to strengthen America’s infrastructure
under the new administration, municipal bonds remain a critical tool
to financing the construction or improvement of schools, streets, highways,
hospitals, bridges, water and sewer systems, ports, airports and
other public works,” a February 13 news release from NGA stated.
“Between 2007 and 2016, states, counties and other localities invested
$3.8 trillion in infrastructure through tax-exempt municipal bonds; the federal
government provided nearly $1.5 trillion.
“Now more than ever, it remains critically important that governors have
as many tools available in the toolbox to maintain and repair America’s
infrastructure,” NGA Executive Director and CEO Scott Pattison said.
“Governors look forward to working with the president and creating a 21st
century infrastructure system that boosts the economy.”
President Trump, at least in his campaign, strongly favored PPPs as a
means of paying for his infrastructure repair program.
In a speech shortly before the election in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
Trump referred to the issue.
The plan “leverages public-private partnerships and private investments
through tax incentives to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over
10 years,” Trump said. “Our infrastructure is in such trouble … we will fix
that.” The $1 trillion figure has since been decried as inadequate by analysts
and business executives alike.
The following week, reported Scott Rodd in Stateline, Trump campaign
advisors published a white paper on the infrastructure plan,
mainly focusing on tax breaks for private investors who helped finance
projects. The term ‘public-private partnerships’ only appeared twice,”
Rodd reported.
So it’s difficult to determine how devoted Trump is to the PPP concept.
PPPs have only been responsible for a small number of infrastructure
projects in the last 30 years, the Stateline story stated. Less than 1 percent
of highway spending nationally came through PPPs in the past 25 years,
and many of the projects “hit stumbling blocks.”
With the pressure from business, state governments and a large segment
of the public, it appears that an infrastructure plan will go forward
during the Trump administration. How and to what amount it will be funded
will determine the crucial question of how effective it will be in shaping the
nation’s roads, bridges and transportation matrix.
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TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority

Turning to a Veteran
By Dorothy Cox
DOT’s Elaine Chao, lone Trump
appointee with cabinet experience
“Under Chao, the Department of Labor became one
of Washington’s rare enclaves of common sense.”
— The American Spectator
September 2007
President Donald Trump’s pick
of Elaine Chao, 63, as Department of
Transportation Secretary was approved
handily by the full U.S. Senate January
31 on a 93-6 vote. Chao’s acceptance was
fully expected since she was approved
by the body’s Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee January 24.
Her husband, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, her father Dr.
James S.C. Chao, her sister May Chao
with twin daughters Miranda Mei Chao
Hwang and Jessica Ruth Chao Hwang in
tow, were present for the amiable and
complimentary committee hearing, with
many senators expressing their thanks
to Chao for her past government service.
Chao was labor secretary under President
George W. Bush from 2001 through
2009 and was the first Asian American
woman to serve in a cabinet position.
She previously had served as deputy
secretary of transportation in the George
H.W. Bush administration.
“She definitely has her government
experience in place,” said David Heller,
vice president of government affairs at
the Truckload Carriers Association. “We
as an industry look forward to working
with the secretary in her new role at DOT
and in developing regulations that make
sense for our industry, that make a better
industry.”
It will be interesting to see what
trucking industry executives think six
months or a year or two into Chao’s
leadership at DOT.
She made it clear to committee
members that she is fully behind President
Trump on the issues, saying that the
challenge in rulemakings is to make
sure they are “based on sound science
and true data ... .” And she emphasized
that “overburdening regulations need to
be reviewed and will be, as part of the
incoming administration.”
in response to Republican Sen. Cory
Gardner’s statement about “onerous
regulations” creating “uncertainty” in his
home state of Colorado — the site of a
run by an autonomous beer truck last
year — she said that the larger issue
of regulations is that they sometimes
“dampen economic growth and
competitiveness.” It’s a “balancing act,”
she said, “to build consensus on both
sides of the political spectrum.”
She continued that innovation and
creativity are “hallmarks” of America
and that the federal government should
advance the development of autonomous
and smart vehicles while addressing
safety and other concerns without
“dampening” innovation.
Rules and regulations are often hard to
understand, she said, and should be more
about compliance than enforcement,
adding that state and federal governments
should make an effort to conduct public
“outreach” programs to make rules
clearly understood and create a “culture
of safety.”
Of course infrastructure fixes are on
the minds of congressmen and women,
motorists and trucking interests, but the
problem has been the lack of political will
to fund the overhaul.
“Everybody can tell you what’s wrong
[with the infrastructure] but nobody can
tell you how to pay for it; nobody wants
to have conversations on how to pay for
it,” Heller said.
At her committee hearing Chao called
U.S. infrastructure the “underpinning of
the [U.S.] economy” and a “key factor
of productivity,” adding that gains in
“unprecedented mobility, safety and
security” are being “jeopardized” by
roads and bridges in disrepair, rising
numbers of highway fatalities, growing
congestion and “by a failure to keep pace
with emerging technologies.”
At various times she mentioned the
need for private investment in fixing roads
and bridges, noting that the “government
can’t do it all.”
Funding needs to be “innovative,”
she testified, with a mix of public and
private funding mechanisms, including
public-private partnerships, known as
PPPs, of which trucking is not fond. Chao
said the Trump administration is looking
to “unleash the potential” of private
investors to boost national transportation
networks.
Chao is expected to play a major role
in Trump’s effort to fulfill his campaign
promise to generate $1 trillion in
infrastructure investment and will be
the one member of Trump’s cabinet
with previous cabinet experience. That’s
something DOT sources say will be
invaluable during the coming months as
DOT and its related agencies, including
the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, deal with 94 rulemakings
in various stages of progress in the
wake of President Trump’s freeze on
regulations.
Chao said during her Senate committee
hearing that the infrastructure problem
doesn’t stop with fixing what is crumbling
or adding new projects. She said the
process of development and delivery
of new roads and bridges shouldn’t be
bogged down in government red tape
and that the “unique needs” of rural
communities should be addressed along
with urban areas.
She also declared that intermodal
segments of transportation should work
together to move freight efficiently and
not see themselves as competitors.
Chao admitted that the federal
Highway Trust Fund is “in bad shape”
because fuel taxes are not as “lucrative”
as they had been because of more fuelefficient
vehicles and that there continues
to be a $10 billion deficit in HTF each
year. Continuing as it is now, the HTF will
go bankrupt by about 2021, she said.
Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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CapItol recap
A review of important news coming out of our nation’s capital.
By Lyndon Finney and Dorothy Cox
TWIN 33S
The numbers game is under way again on Capitol
Hill.
Just over a year since Congress spurned efforts to
allow 33-foot tandem trailers on the nation’s highways,
proponents have renewed public efforts to get the issue
back on the Congressional radar.
If there was an “official” start of the rejuvenated push
to get lawmakers to approve the longer trailers, it came
February 1 when FedEx Corp. Chairman and CEO Fred
W. Smith testified at the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee’s hearing on “Building a 21st
Century Infrastructure for America,” saying that “We
must combine infrastructure enhancements with sound
and efficient trucking policies” and that one of those enhancements
was the use of 33-foot trailers.
“The adoption of a 33-foot twin trailer standard would
allow a carrier on any given lane to grow the volume
of shipments before adding incremental trips,” he said,
noting that the use of 33-foot twin trailers was recommended
by the Transportation Research Board in its
Special Report 267, first issued in 2002.
Smith’s effort to gain Congressional approval of 33-
foot trailers is nothing new.
He first broached the idea before the Transportation
and Infrastructure panel in 2013.
But efforts by FedEx and other carriers to put 33-foot
trailers on the road have failed, including an effort to
put language in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation
Act signed into law by former President Barack
Obama in December 2015.
The Truckload Carriers Association is vehemently
opposed to 33-foot trailers, and it took less than 30
hours for TCA to respond.
It is the only association among the three major trucking
associations —TCA, the American Trucking Associations
and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association
— that has taken a stance on the issue.
Acknowledging that Congress and the nation together
face the “tremendous” challenge of undergirding the
nation’s infrastructure, lawmakers need to understand
that solutions geared toward improving conditions within
the country’s roadway network does not include gaining
productivity through increased trailer size, a move
that would only benefit a small population of the freight
industry, TCA President John Lyboldt said in a letter to
leadership of the House panel Smith addressed.
Smith told the panel studies have shown an increased
trailer length of 33 feet would be as safe, or
safer, than the existing 28-foot length in terms of handling
on the road.
“In fact, twin 33s perform equal or better than current
trailer combinations in four critical measurements: static
rollover threshold, rearward amplification, load transfer
ratio and high speed transient off-tracking,” Smith said.
“In several years of operations in Florida — which allows
33-foot tandem trailers — and elsewhere, FedEx
drivers have told us repeatedly that they find them to be
more stable. Safety will be enhanced simply by reducing
the trips and mileage driven with industry estimates
of 1.3 billion fewer miles driven, 6.6 million trips eliminated
and 900-plus accidents avoided at today’s level
of demand.”
“Lauded as an opportunity to remove trucks from our
roads, twin 33-foot trailers will actually have the opposite
effect,” Lyboldt said in his letter to the committee.
“In an effort to supplement and improve upon intermodal
operations, our nation’s railroad container cars have
been developed to accommodate the most prominent
trailer configurations that exist within trucking today, the
28- and 53-foot trailers. You will soon realize that any
change to these foundational trailer sizes will not only
render existing truck trailers obsolete, but their corresponding
railroad counterparts as well.”
Lyboldt said the truckload industry recognized the
benefits that would be bestowed upon LTL associates
by adding additional cubic feet of freight space and how
those benefits add to the productivity of LTL carriers.
“However, the truckload industry would yield little, if
any, advantage of the added cubic space that twin 33-
foot trailers would generate,” he said. “Due to the vast
differences in freight delivery models, the metric of mandating
twin 33-foot trailers almost exclusively benefits
LTL freight, thus putting the truckload segment of the
industry at a competitive disadvantage.”
Then there is the matter of purchasing the new equipment
since TCA believes truckload carriers would have
to purchase the longer trailers to be able to compete with
the increased volume the LTL carriers would enjoy.
“When the trucking industry experienced a previous
trailer conversion from 48-foot trailers to 53-foot trailers,
the financial burden was dramatic, and any change from
53-foot trailers would be no different,” Lyboldt wrote.
“Pricing models and logistics configurations would prevent
the truckload segment of the industry from regaining
any dollars invested in new 33-foot trailers. A shift
to 33-foot trailers would be considered voluntary, and
the shipping community would automatically transition
to carriers with the most cubic space for their goods,
rendering our nation’s fleet of 53-foot trailers nothing
more than antiques.”
The same day Smith appeared before the committee,
Americans for Modern Transportation, a coalition of
some of the nation’s largest shippers, carriers and retailers,
sent a letter in support of 33-foot trailers to House
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman
Bill Shuster.
The coalition includes the nation’s most vocal proponents
of 33-foot trailers — FedEx and UPS.
The coalition said underinvestment and a lack of attention
to the nation’s infrastructure has left American
families in harm’s way, spurred economic inefficiencies,
and put undue stress on the environment.
“We need to do more than maintain our existing roads,
bridges and waterways,” the coalition told Shuster. “To
fully deliver results for the long-term, reforms should also
leverage technologies and efficiencies developed by the
private sector. Let’s not invest in the infrastructure system
of the past but lay the foundation for one of the future.”
The foundation should include 33-foot trailers, the
coalition said, adding that the reduction of emissions
and improved fuel efficiency “will improve overall environmental
quality while strengthening the economic
and national security.” They further stated that advanced
trucking equipment such as twin 33 trailers are lowhanging
fruit for rapidly increasing fuel efficiency, cutting
emissions and making highways safer.
f4a
Trucking stakeholders are pushing hard for a legislative
fix to negate a 2014 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals that held FAAAA did not pre-empt California’s
meal and rest break laws.
California’s meal and rest break laws conflict with federal
Hours of Service rules, forcing carriers that operate in
the state to juggle drivers’ schedules to make sure all state
and federal rules are followed.
It’s especially tough on carriers whose drivers might
drive into and out of California on the same trip.
FAAAA (known as F4A) pre-empts state laws or regulations
or any other provision having the force and effect of
law “related to a price, route or service” of motor carriers.
The Ninth Circuit ruled, however, that the California
meal and rest break laws are not sufficiently “related to”
prices, routes or services.
In the court case, Dilts vs. Penske Logistics, the carrier
argued that California laws necessarily would force its
drivers to alter their routes daily in search of an appropriate
place to exit the highway and to locate stopping places that
safely accommodate their vehicles.
The Ninth Circuit actually reversed a district court ruling
that said “by virtue of simple mathematics,” the California
law forced drivers to take a number of breaks within specified
time windows and would “reduce the amount and level
of service [the motor carrier could] offer its customers without
increasing its workforce and investment in equipment,”
which would also have a significant impact on prices.
Finally, the district court found that “to allow California
to insist exactly when and for exactly how long carriers provide
breaks for their employees” would allow other states
to do the same, thus creating the forbidden “patchwork of
state service-determining laws.”
Which is exactly what happened.
According to David Heller, vice president of government
affairs for the Truckload Carriers Association, roughly
20 states have meal and rest break laws that are different
from federal Hours of Service.
“We have a legislative fix in position,” Heller told Truckload
Authority. “As soon as the current continuing resolution
expires, we will work to get language into whatever vehicle
we can — another continuing resolution or any type
of omnibus spending bill — so that we can hopefully get a
federal preemption that says one federal standard is what’s
best for this industry.”
10 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Heller said a legislative fix could easily wind up right back in court.
“We are hoping to get language in a bill that basically says one standard is the best and
that is true,” Heller said. “Our members are engaged in interstate commerce often in the
same work day making it virtually impossible to keep track of the meal and rest break laws
under which they might be operating that day. The federal Hours of Service regulations are
what govern us. All we are trying to achieve here is to abide by federal Hours of Service
regulations. You have a driver who is driving to California and has a meal break to attend
to, then he has a 30-minute break and he’s exempted from the 30-minute break but not
from the meal break so there are all sorts of issues here.”
Drivers are paid when the wheels are rolling, so they are not getting paid during those
required meal and rest breaks.
As only a court could say it, the Ninth Circuit offered a solution: Hire more drivers.
“California’s break laws do not actually require a cessation of service or a change in
service or the frequency of a service; instead, the laws simply require individual employees
to be given breaks and, to the extent that this impacts services, then the motor carrier
can hire more employees.”
hair testing
Six major motor carriers have filed a request with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration for an exemption from current federal regulations in order to allow hair
analysis in lieu of urine testing for pre-employment controlled substances testing of commercial
driver’s license holders.
The six are J.B. Hunt Transport, Schneider, Werner Enterprises, Knight Transportation,
Dupré Logistics and Maverick Transportation.
According to a Federal Register notice published January 19, the six carriers currently
conduct pre-employment urine testing that satisfies the Department of Transportation’s
requirements as well as hair analysis separate from the DOT controlled substances and
alcohol testing program.
According to the exemption notice, the applicants believe their data “. . . demonstrate
that hair analysis is a more reliable and comprehensive basis for ensuring detection of
controlled substance use” and that the exemption would enable these fleets to discontinue
pre-employment urine testing.
FMCSA is requesting public comments on the carriers’ application.
Under the exemption, the carriers would conduct pre-employment tests using hair
analysis only, rather than hair analysis in addition to urine testing, and individuals with
negative test results would be permitted to perform safety-sensitive functions for the
employer. Individuals testing positive would not be allowed to perform safety-sensitive
functions until the drivers completed the return-to-duty process as spelled out in FMCSA
regulations.
In addition, the applicants would share the positive hair testing results with prospective
employers in response to safety performance inquiries, according to the Federal Register
notice.
Last October, transportation companies (all of the above carriers except Werner) affiliated
with The Alliance for Driver Safety & Security, known as the Trucking Alliance,
petitioned FMCSA to allow hair testing in lieu of urinalysis to comply with pre-employment
drug testing regulations for truck drivers, but did not formally request an exemption. The
FMCSA, however, is subservient to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA) of the Department of Health and Human Services, in the area
of testing for controlled substance abuse, and likely could not grant such an exemption
without SAMHSA’s approval.
“Maverick has had 108 people apply for truck driver positions who cleared the mandatory
urine exam but failed our hair test,” Steve Williams, president of the Trucking Alliance,
and Chairman and CEO of Maverick said when the petition was filed last year. “We denied
them employment, but they likely found work at other trucking companies because we
can’t share those positive hair test results with those businesses.”
rEGULATORY DEEP FREEZE
J. J. KELLER’S ELD INSIGHTS
ELog Transition 101: The
Fundamentals of Making the Change
The transition from paper logs to an ELog system is a significant
one. Taking these fundamental steps will help ensure your
change is successful.
Preparing for the Change
The preparation phase includes several key activities:
• Auditing your Hours of Service program to assure that
drivers’ logs are compliant
• Determining the features you need in an ELog system versus
the features you want
• Selecting the right ELD system/vendor
• Identifying project leaders who will keep the transition
moving forward, and driver champions who will mentor
other drivers on the use of ELogs
• Developing ELD policies and procedures
Managing the Change
The next step requires the careful execution of your transition,
which includes:
• Scheduling the resources required to complete the
ELD installation and driver training
• Implementing the ELD system in phases in order to test the
devices, data usage, and policies and procedures
• Training drivers on day-to-day ELogging tasks
• Training supervisors on how to make corrections in the ELog
system and locate drivers’ available hours
Reinforcing the Change
Once the ELDs are in all of your vehicles, and all of your drivers
are using them, additional activities that you will need to do
include:
• Making sure the ELD system is being used as intended
• Evaluating system reports to ensure they’re providing
actionable information
• Watching for significant error rates involving drivers
forgetting to log in or out, forgetting required entries, etc.
• Reviewing calls for assistance/technical support to see if
they’re decreasing over time
By preparing for, managing and reinforcing the
transition to ELogs, you can make the change
without sacrificing operational stability.
President Donald Trump wasted no time in remodeling at least one room in the
White House.
The sign on the door reads “Regulatory Deep Freeze.”
The first neatly bundled package to be placed there was marked “Open Only
on Review.”
To download our “ELog Transition Basics” whitepaper,
and learn about J. J. Keller’s Encompass® ELog system,
visit JJKeller.com/ELogs or call 855.693.5338.
Fleet Management System
with ELogs
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 11

Then, a couple of weeks later, he put a second package there. It read “Bought
During the 2-for-1 Sale.”
Its basis was a memorandum from Reince Priebus, assistant to the president
and chief of staff, to heads of executive departments and agencies.
And, as with some Trump edicts, a lawsuit was filed.
Regulatory Freeze
The memo, sent the same day Trump was inaugurated, calls for regulations that
have been sent to the Office of the Federal Register but not published to be “immediately
withdrawn from the OFR for review and approval” by the new administration.
FMCSA rulemakings typically have an effective date and a compliance date.
The memorandum allows for an exception for “urgent circumstances relating to
the health, safety, financial or national security matters.”
With respect to regulations that have been published in the OFR but have not
taken effect as permitted by applicable law, Priebus called for departments and
agencies to “temporarily postpone their effective date for 60 days from the date of
this memorandum, subject to the exceptions previously described for the purpose
of reviewing questions of fact, law and policy they raise.”
At the outset of the freeze, it appeared that the most notable rulemakings either
issued as final or in the proposed stage — ELDs, speed limiters and the drug and
alcohol clearinghouse — would not be impacted.
The entry-level driver training rule likely would be, however, trucking industry
insiders told Truckload Authority.
Sure enough, instead of becoming effective February 6, the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration published a notice in the February 2 Federal Register
that confirmed the entry-level driver training rule had been “temporarily” delayed
until March 21 because of Trump’s regulation freeze.
The compliance date for the entry-level driving rule is not until January 6, 2020.
Its future is becoming increasingly cloudy every day as it has come under fire
from certain segments of the trucking industry and safety advocates because it
does not include a behind-the-wheel (BTW) training requirement as recommended
by the Entry Level Driver Training Advisory Committee (ELDTAC), which, after negotiations
among trucking stakeholders and safety advocates, had recommended
a minimum of 30 hours.
The final version of the rule sent to the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) contained the 30-hour minimum, but OMB ordered it removed because of
cost.
Peter Kurdock, director of regulatory affairs for Advocates for Highway and
Auto Safety, called it a “meaningless rule that disregards Congressional mandates,
federal court precedent, experts convened by the agency and common
sense.”
He said the final rule only added to the agency’s shameful legacy of failing to
issue an effective training rule to advance safety and protect the public.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has teamed up with
three safety advocacy groups to petition for reconsideration of the final rule.
OOIDA, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Truck Safety Coalition
and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways want to see a required minimum of
actual hours of behind-the-wheel training restored to the rule.
Truckload Carriers Association Vice President of Government Affairs David
Heller was a member of ELDTAC and said after the rule was published that the
association was disappointed that the minimum BTW requirement was removed,
and said the rule was ripe for litigation.
Only recently, the Professional Truck Driver Institute (PTDI) submitted a letter
urging the agency to reconsider its decision to exclude a behind-the-wheel training
requirement.
“It was very disappointing to PTDI stakeholders and others from the ELDTAC that
BTW time was cut out of the final rule,” said PTDI Executive Director Tim Blum.
Cut two old for every one new
It was on January 30 that Trump signed an executive order designed to cut
the number of federal regulations by requiring agencies to eliminate two existing
regulations for every new one they introduce.
A senior administration official told reporters in Washington that the Trump administration
believes the executive order is the “most significant administrative action
in the world of regulatory reform since President Ronald Reagan created the
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
OIRA is part of the Office of Management and Budget and reviews all federal
regulations.
Agencies and departments have been tasked to identify to OMB and the White
House two existing regulations under their authority that they would eliminate for
every one that is new, following through on a Trump campaign promise.
The key word is identify.
The order says nothing about how to go about repealing the “identified” rule,
or how soon.
A spokesman for FMCSA said the agency was reviewing the new order, which
at first glance does not clearly spell out whether the order covers (1) only proposed
rulemakings for which notices have not been published, (2) proposed rulemakings
for which a notice has been published but which have not been made final or (3)
final rules for which an effective date or compliance date have not been reached.
Among the latter are ELDs, the drug and alcohol clearinghouse and the entrylevel
driver training rulemaking.
Nor does the order make clear if Congressionally-mandated regulations are a
part of the order or if rulemakings involving public safety are exempt.
Notice of Proposed Rulemakings for all of the major rulemakings in progress
at FMCSA have been published with the exception of Evaluation of Safety-Sensitive
Personnel for Moderate-to-Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Financial
Responsibility for Motor Carriers, Freight Forwarders and Brokers, both of which
are in the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking stage.
RESTART STUDY
It was in 1592 that William Shakespeare penned that long-famous line, “O
Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”
And 425 years later, if imitation is really the sincerest form of flattery, the trucking
industry is crying out “O restart study, restart study, wherefore art thou restart
study?”
The study, a requirement of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations
Act of 2015, directed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
to conduct a commercial motor vehicle driver restart study comparing five-month
driver work schedules and assessing operator fatigue and safety-critical events in
hopes of settling once and for all which of two 34-hour restart provisions resulted
in the better safety outcomes.
When new Hours of Service rules were implemented in 2004, drivers had the
option of restarting the work week by going off-duty for 34 consecutive hours. And,
they could take as many restarts as they wished during a seven-day period.
When the Obama administration rewrote the HOS rule in 2011, the restart provision
was changed to allow a restart only once every 168 hours. The rule also
included the stipulation that any restart had to include two consecutive 1 a.m. to
5 a.m. time periods.
That provision, which became effective July 1, 2013, induced thunderous objections
from the trucking industry, which cited lost productivity and early morning
highway congestion as problems the new rule created.
The industry pleaded with the FMCSA to reissue the rule and return to the
pre-July 1, 2013, version but the pleas fell on deaf ears, and finally the industry
persuaded Congress in December 2014 to suspend the new restart provision as
part of the same appropriations act that mandated the study.
The restart issue bounced back and forth like a ping-pong ball for the next
year and a half with Congress and included a faux pas in the 2016 omnibus appropriations
bill that if left uncorrected could have eliminated the restart provision
completely.
Congress corrected the error in a Continuing Resolution (CR) passed in December,
tying the final disposition of the restart provision directly to the study.
If the study shows statistically significant improvement in the outcomes of driver
health and safety based on a review by the secretary and the inspector general of
the Department of Transportation, Congress might be faced with the decision of
whether or not to undo what was approved in the CR and reinstate the version of
the rule that allows for the restart provision to be used only once every 168 hours
and requires the two consecutive 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. time periods.
If the study does not show statistically significant improvements, the rule in
place before July 1, 2013, and the rule that is now in place after the more restrictive
rule was suspended by lawmakers in December 2014, would remain the law
of the land.
So the fate of the restart rule is somewhere in the pages of that report, which
has been in the hands of the Office of the Secretary of Transportation and the office
of the DOT Inspector General for more than a year.
Most trucking stakeholders believe FMCSA had not released the report previously
so as not to sway Congressional decisions, but that time has passed and the
trucking industry is awaiting the release of the report.
A spokesman for the FMCSA told Truckload Authority the study is still under
review and couldn’t provide a timetable for when it would be released.
12 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

SPEED LIMITERS
Will the proposed rule requiring speed limiters get swallowed up in President
Donald Trump’s pledge to reduce the number of federal regulations imposed on the
American public?
And just how necessary is such a rule in the first place, especially one that doesn’t deal
with the differential between the speed of trucks and the speed of passenger vehicles?
“A clear majority of members have speed limiters on their vehicles,” said David Heller,
vice president of government affairs at the Truckload Carriers Association. “They are all
limited at different speeds, all the way from 58, where they are operating in urban settings,
to as high as 68 miles per hour. The inherent argument is what is the right speed and if
all the trucks are going that speed, will that create a logjam and at what point do we start
talking about differentials?”
Those differentials already exist, Heller said.
“As long as this industry has been around we’ve been dealing with cars operating in
and around trucks and doing so in an unsafe fashion,” he said. “And when you have cars
operating in a manner where they can go faster than trucks, or vice versa, the differential
is going to exist. We don’t have a limiting standard right now in this country and the differential
is there. If we did have a limiting standard in this country the differential would
still be there.”
For the record, TCA’s policy on the issue of speed limiters is that all vehicles should
be limited at 65 mph.
Meanwhile, safety advocates are concerned about the future of speed limiters in light
of the new administration’s regulation freeze.
“I am really disappointed if the rule is not done right away,” said Truck Safety Coalition
Executive Director John Lannen, who hoped for quick action because the measure
has been in the works for more than a decade. “I’m hoping that safety regulations do get
looked at differently than maybe just generic regulations because we’re trying to save
lives.”
Steve Owings, co-founder of Road Safe America and who originally proposed the rule,
said advocates will reach out to the new administration to keep the regulation going.
“This, as well as other needed changes, certainly fits the description of ‘common
sense,’ which the president-elect has spoken of recently,” said Owings, whose son was
killed by a speeding truck while returning to college in 2002.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association “vehemently” opposes the rule,
the organization said in comments filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, calling it “damaging to owner-operators’
and independents’ ability to compete in the marketplace against larger carriers.”
Independent truckers, many of whom filed comments against the rule, say the government
is actually creating conditions for more collisions by focusing on the severity of the
crash while ignoring the dynamic of trucks and cars traveling at different speeds. They
warn of traffic jams caused by slower trucks and of a potential increase in crashes caused
by fast-moving cars hitting the rear of trucks.
Owings says the rule should apply to existing trucks instead of just new ones because
speeds could be limited with an inexpensive software update.
The speed limiters also would take care of the problem of trucks traveling at faster
speeds than their tires can handle.
An investigation by The Associated Press last year found that most truck tires can’t
handle speeds above 75 mph, yet some states let trucks go 80 mph or even 85 mph.
SLEEP APNEA
There appears to be no middle ground when it comes to the prospect of a
rulemaking on sleep apnea based on a review of the comments received in response
to the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the Evaluation of Safety Sensitive
Personnel for Moderate-to-Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea issued jointly last
year by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Federal Railroad
Administration.
The following comments summarize the polarization between those for such a rule and
those against, especially in light of the recommendation of the FMCSA Medical Review
Board (MRB) that would require mandatory screening for any truck driver with a body
mass index (BMI) of 40 or more who has admitted fatigue or sleeping during wakeful periods,
or for any drivers who have been involved in sleep-related motor vehicle accidents,
and for anyone who possesses a BMI of 33 and has at least three of a number of risk
factors, two of which are being male and age 42 or older.
A primary care physician who is a certified medical examiner had this to say:
“I agree that sleep apnea is a major concern for commercial drivers. I have seen many
drivers apply for their CDLs who suffer from morbid obesity, an unfortunately common
consequence of the driver lifestyle. Some even show up to the test appointment looking fatigued.
While many work longer hours than anyone should, and some have an easily-fixed
unhealthy lifestyle that contributes as well, the rate of sleep apnea among this morbidly
obese subset is astounding. As there are [now] no definitive guidelines about sleep apnea,
drivers often become angry when I request they undergo testing. The rate of moderate
or severe apnea among these drivers in my experience has been quite high though, so I
continue to push them for evaluation. As an examiner and physician, I am not only trying to
reduce traffic accidents among these drivers, I am trying to save their lives.”
One professional driver said:
“I find the logic of using either BMI or neck size as an indication of obesity outrageous
and unscientific. For example, BMI makes no allowance for the relative proportions of
bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as
fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI.
Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves
classified as overweight or even obese. Moreover, neck size is a poor indicator
of the possibility of obstructive breathing during sleep. What sort of ‘junk science’ is the
FMCSA promoting these days? A terrible waste of money and time are spent on this illogical
reasoning. This is the most cockeyed piece of regulatory thinking ever.”
Another driver stated that:
“The presumption for requiring a test is ridiculous. When I was a junior in high school, I
weighed 120 pounds and had a 17-inch neck. I couldn’t buy clothes then and can’t now. I
have done a sleep test three times, passing each time. The fact that anyone with a badge
can condemn me to a $4,000 test and lost wages is outrageous. I will not submit to another
test without sound scientific reasoning that would indicate a test is necessary. And I am not
paying for it. It takes 10 percent of my yearly income for a test and I could be remanded to
take another the next day I am on the road. I will go flip burgers. They make more money
for less time out of their lives anyway.”
The problem is that the MRB’s recommendations — which are non-binding — are
vast, said David Heller, vice president of regulatory affairs at the Truckload Carriers Association.
“Their recommendations would affect the majority of the trucking industry,” Heller said.
“We can’t have a rule that doesn’t pass muster with the Office of Management and Budget
because of its vastness.”
“TCA takes the position that it supports the overall health and well-being of drivers
and that those health improvements will hopefully decrease the diagnoses of sleep apnea
or other fatigue-inducing conditions, restless leg syndrome being one. If you narrow the
scope to sleep apnea, we are limiting our playing field, so to speak, when we could take
steps to improve overall driver health and thus reduce sleep apnea among drivers and
probably reduce other health issues as well, including diabetes, congestive heart failure
and high blood pressure, to name a few.
“Maybe if we as an industry circumvented any regulations proposed by MRB and started
talking preventive medicine, we could turn out far better in the long run than we could
with a rule on sleep apnea.”
In support of its members who oppose mandatory screening, the Owner-Operator
Independent Drivers Association through the OOIDA Foundation recently published a
white paper pointing out that sleep apnea is a medical condition that has been common
for many years and that the FMCSA’s own statistics don’t support the “sudden” need for
increased scrutiny in the form of a new federal regulation.
The foundation said data from the FMCSA’s “Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts” in
2013 and 2014 supported its claim.
The data showed that in 2011 only 1.8 percent of fatal crashes were attributed to
impairment-related factors. In 2012, the figure was 1.7 percent, in 2013 it was 1.4 percent
and in 2014 it was 1.8 percent.
“Irrespective of the facts, FMCSA as well as others continue to disseminate misperceptions
and falsehoods concerning sleep apnea and its safety impacts on the trucking
industry,” the foundation said.
OOIDA also cited a 2004 crash risk study that said patients with sleep apnea had no
greater probability of having a crash than patients without sleep apnea, either before or
after their diagnoses.
The white paper also questioned the effectiveness of using CPAP machines to treat all
sleep apnea patients, noting that some users of CPAP machines had reported a decrease
in restful sleep.
The Department of Transportation’s report on significant rulemakings does not reflect
a date when the agencies might move to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
stage, or even if they will, especially in light of the Trump administration’s freeze on
new regulations.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 13

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Tracking The Trends
Coasting into 2017
Experts forecast only moderate increase in fuel costs in 2017
Despite increasing energy prices, the first concerted
OPEC production cuts in years and the recent
crash in U.S. energy production, trucking can look to
2017 fuel expenses without undue anxiety.
That’s the opinion of several experts in the field and
the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), whose
forecasts call for moderately higher oil prices in 2017,
which translates to $2.83 per gallon of diesel by December,
an increase of 9.3 percent for the year.
David Heller, vice president of government affairs at
the Truckload Carriers Association, agreed that the trucking
industry’s fuel price expectation for 2017 remained
stable.
“I haven’t heard anything on a fuel shortage,” he said,
“nothing overly aggressive in terms of a price rise.”
“[Price rises] can vary regionally,” said Timothy
Hess, a petroleum expert at EIA specializing in diesel.
“We’re expecting crude oil prices to get higher
this year. In 2016 crude oil averaged in the low $40-
per-barrel range. This year should be [in the $50
range], somewhere around $10 a barrel [higher].
Also, the refining margins are expected to go up a bit.
Diesel demand is expected to be higher this year. We’re
seeing crude oil and natural gas production increase.
Coal production is supposed to be a little higher. Last
year coal declined, which hurt retail prices. You basically
have more diesel fuel consumption chasing the same
amount of supply.”
A key reason for the upturn in oil prices, aside from the
pumping halts affecting many domestic wells, is the decision
by Saudi Arabia, followed by other members of the
Oil Producing Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, to reduce
oil production. At a meeting of OPEC countries November
30, 2016, members agreed to reduce production by approximately
1.2 million barrels per day from an October
baseline and to lower OPEC’s production ceiling to 32.5
million barrels per day beginning January 1 and lasting six
months. The agreement contains an option to extend the
production cuts for an additional six months.
In EIA’s December Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO),
both the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude
oil 2017 price forecasts increased by about $1 per barrel
from the November STEO. The forecast includes consideration
of the OPEC cuts, but the lowered production targets
only resulted in small changes to the STEO forecast, EIA
stated.
The oil price increase that followed the OPEC supply
reduction has already eased somewhat, according to Jim
Patterson of Kiplinger.com.
“Benchmark West Texas Intermediate is right
around the level we expect it to trade at in coming
months,” Patterson wrote this past December
20, “aside from some inevitable
dips and spikes that probably
won’t last long.”
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 15

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As in the past, there is doubt whether the oil-producing nations
can stick to the production cutbacks.
There are “already questions about whether the cartel can stick to
its plan to take about 1.3 million barrels of daily production off the
market,” Patterson wrote. “Several OPEC members that were granted
exemptions from the lower output quota will be trying to pump more,
even as their colleagues cut back.” Indonesia, Libya and Nigeria are
non-participants in the agreement, EIA reported.
Crude oil prices ended 2016 above $50 per barrel, and the West
Texas Intermediate (WTI) price ended 2016 at $53 per barrel, $16
per barrel higher than at the end of 2015. Similarly, Brent, a benchmark
light sweet crude oil, ended the year up $17 from the end of
2015, at $54 per barrel, but the 2016 annual average of $44 per barrel
was $8 below the 2015 average.
“Despite robust demand for petroleum products, relatively high
production and inventory levels provided downward pressure on crude
oil prices throughout most of 2016,” according to EIA. “However, recent
agreements to curb production over the next six months within
… OPEC and additional pledges by some key non-OPEC producers put
upward pressure on prices at the end of 2016 as markets appear to
be anticipating tighter balances than previously forecast.”
Though fuel prices will be higher in 2017, the news is far from all
bad for motor carriers, said Kenny Vieth, president and senior analyst
at ACT Research.
“I think the good news is that there should be enough supply out
there,” Vieth said. “There are no expectations of a surge in prices.”
Vieth also speculated that the OPEC cutbacks would not last.
“The OPEC deal is likely to fade away over the next month or so,”
he said, adding that U.S. production capacity is once again on the
rise.
“The two biggest guys in OPEC (Iran and Saudi Arabia) hate each
other,” Vieth said. Because of financial and religious issues, some
OPEC nations will increase production, taking advantage of higher
prices and cutting rivals out of potential sales, he added.
Heller agreed that the worst of the current production cut has
probably been felt.
“The [OPEC] cutback has already reared its ugly head,” Heller said.
“We’ve seen the uptick. I think that is behind us.”
However, EIA’s Hess said the effects of the move should not be
underestimated.
“We see the effects of that cut having already been incorporated
into the market,” he said. “We don’t see a lot of upward price pressure.
It’s more that the market incorporated it. The crude oil market
is forward-looking. We definitely saw OPEC production decline from
December to January.
Oddly, the production cutbacks and resulting higher prices are
partly responsible for the resurgence of U.S. production, according
to Vieth.
“Because the prices are higher, you’ve now made more oil fields in
the U.S. more viable,” he said. Similarly, he added, the OPEC decision
a decade ago to let oil prices rise to $100 a barrel produced huge
profits throughout the oil industry, financing more oil exploration and
new technology, which now contributes to greater, more efficient oil
production.
Finally, history adds some helpful perspective. A diesel price increase
at this point would have to be massive to approach the U.S.
average price per gallon in recent years, as the oil industry has experienced
steady reductions in price every year since 2012.
The U.S. annual price per gallon of ultra-low sulfur diesel in 2012
averaged $3.968, up slightly from 2011’s $3.840. The following year,
the diesel average edged down to $3.922 per gallon, a 1.2 percent
decrease. 2014 brought the average down to $3.825 per gallon, a
2.5 percent drop.
Dramatic decreases followed in 2015 as the diesel average fell to
$2.707 per gallon, down 29.2 percent. Last year’s average per-gallon
diesel price dropped to $2.304, another 14.9 percent drop, according
to the EIA.
An unpleasant factor necessary for motor carriers’ budgets is the
fact that since 2004, the retail price of diesel fuel has gone higher
than that of gasoline, a reversal of traditional positions, EIA reported.
Demand for diesel fuel, along with other distillate fuel oils, has been
high. This is especially true in the U.S., Europe, China and India. In
addition, environmental protections such as the transition to lowersulfur
diesel fuels in the U.S., have made diesel production and distribution
more expensive. Finally, the federal excise tax for on-highway
diesel fuel is 24.4 cents per gallon, six cents per gallon higher than
the gasoline tax.
“On average you have higher taxes on diesel,” Hess said. “From
2005 to 2015 you really saw diesel demand globally much stronger
than gasoline. It was a supply-and-demand question.”
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16 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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T
By Dorothy Cox
ruckers and all other motorists dread
having to drive through congestion,
but traffic bottlenecks have an especially negative
impact on America’s freight movement, and
consequently, the economy. As Congress and
President Donald Trump face the task of funding
fixes to the country’s crumbling infrastructure,
the American Transportation Research Institute’s
2017 list of the nation’s top 100 bottlenecks and
their impediment of truck-borne freight is of
particular interest.
“With President Trump expected to press for
significant long-term infrastructure spending,
this ATRI analysis should be a key guide for deciding
what projects are worthy of funding,” said
American Trucking Associations President Chris
Spear (ATRI is the research arm of ATA).
“Trucks move 70 percent of the nation’s
goods, so knowing where there are kinks and
slowdowns in the system is important for motor
carriers and our professional drivers, making
this analysis a key tool for identifying where and
when to route our trucks to avoid congestion,”
said Prime, Inc. President and CEO Robert Low,
a former TCA chairman.
In the top 10 most congested areas, it was
no surprise that Atlanta’s “Spaghetti Junction”
which is at the intersection of Interstates 285
and 85 North, is the most-congested freight
bottleneck for the second straight year.
In fact, roadways in Atlanta were mentioned
six more times in ATRI’s top 100 list, including
a second time in the top 10. At the No. 9 spot
was Interstate 75 at Interstate 285 North in
Atlanta, the site of a new ballpark being built
for the Atlanta Braves. ATRI President and COO
All Choked Up
Rebecca Brewster told reporters in a media
conference on the survey January 25 that the
ballpark is to be finished this summer. It will
be interesting to see what traffic does on game
days, she said.
No. 2 was a surprise of sorts — Interstate
95 at State Route 4 in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It
was No. 1 three years ago but moved down in
the rankings.
Why? Analysts are not exactly sure, said Brewster,
with ATRI Vice President Dan Murray noting
that the Fort Lee location sees lots of truck traffic
and was congested before because of reconstruction
work on the George Washington Bridge. The
last several years it has become worse, perhaps
because of a “perfect storm” of business activity
due to an improved economy and rush hour traffic;
“we can’t say definitively,” he said.
Murray also stressed that it’s important to
know that just because a location goes down on
the list doesn’t mean it’s necessarily less congested.
It may mean that other sites are growing
more congested at a faster rate. And as
construction projects begin and end, that also
changes the traffic pattern.
Fort Lee was followed in the survey’s top 10
sites by Interstate 290 at Interstates 90/94 in
Chicago; Interstate 65 at Interstates 64/71 in
Louisville, Kentucky; Interstate 71 at Interstate
75 in Cincinnati; State Road 60 at State Road 57
in Los Angeles; State Road 18 at State Road 167
in Auburn, Washington; Interstate 45 at U.S. 59
in Houston; and Interstate 5 at Interstate 90 in
Seattle.
The “bottleneck” analysis “incorporates and
synthesizes several unique components,” stated
an ATRI news release, “including a massive database
of truck GPS data at freight-significant
locations throughout the United States, and an
algorithm that quantifies the impact of congestion
on truck-based freight.”
Since its inception in 2010, the continuously
monitored list has grown to 250 “freight-significant”
locations, according to ATRI, allowing
transportation analysts and planners to conduct
performance benchmarking and identification of
the factors contributing to the congestion and its
impact on freight movement.
The list not only includes the top 100 traffic
choke-points but also includes such data as the
average speed of traffic at peak and off-peak
times.
Brewster said both drivers and carriers are
using the ATRI survey information to navigate
through and around bottlenecks and to choose
travel times when roads will be less congested.
ATRI is hearing from carriers that having that
kind of information can strengthen a carrier’s
argument that their driver can’t live up to, say,
an expectation of a 3 p.m. delivery on the north
end of Atlanta, because they have the data in
hand to back up the decision.
“They tell us, ‘this [information] is really
making a difference in our business model,’”
said Brewster.
She and Murray both said they hope the survey
will be used going forward by transportation
planners, carriers — and hopefully — politicians
in deciding which infrastructure projects
to fund.
It’s a “quick blueprint to act on whatever
funds are generated,” Brewster said.
18 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Ingenious
Good old American knowhow
driving advancement of safety
technology, autonomous trucks.
By Dorothy Cox
We’ve all heard the conundrum, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
How about this one? Are autonomous trucks driving the technology boom in
trucking or are video cams, radar, adaptive cruise control and other technological
advances paving the way for autonomous trucks?
It depends on who’s answering.
Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems’ Fred Andersky says “really what’s driving
it is the good old American or global ingenuity of inventing more things.”
But he also leans on the side of safety technology creating the advances necessary
for autonomous vehicles down the road.
“If you think about the [autonomous] truck that went on the Budweiser run
[last October in Colorado], it’s really about a fancy adaptive cruise control with
steering … to me, that’s a safety technology,” says Andersky, director of government
affairs, and director of customer solutions-controls for Bendix, which
means he’s been involved with Bendix’s Wingman Active Cruise with braking,
the Bendix Wingman Fusion, the Wingman Advanced with collision mitigation
technology and so on. In other words, safety technologies.
He said it’s a case of having technology that is able to gather information or
“intelligence” about the road, other vehicles, speed etc. and providing it to the
driver so he or she can make the right decision.
And the technology becomes a self-perpetuating thing.
“ABS sensors gather information and intelligence and as you add more sensors
you get more intelligence. In 2009 we added the radar sensor, Wingman
Active Cruise with braking, beefing up intelligence, and in 2015 added the
camera into the system, delivering more intelligence and allowing more applications.
What we did along with the radar for the Wingman Advanced was we
added a camera so they work together,” says Andersky.
So far, this has consisted of adding driver aids, not trying to replace the
driver, he points out.
“When you need to make a decision,” he explains, it’s better to have “more
than one source of information. What we’re doing with the Wingman Fusion
camera and the radar is we can cross-check information, figure out the situation
earlier, alert the driver earlier and start intervention sooner and because
we’re cross-checking information, there are less false alerts and interventions.
… We always mention that our technology won’t make a bad driver a good
driver, but it will help a good driver avoid a bad situation.”
Alan Korn, director of advanced brake systems integration for Meritor Wabco,
says that ABS, ESC and lane departure warning are important base technologies
of what’s to come, with the trend now being using active safety systems
that utilize algorithms to take raw data and provide “actionable information” to
fleets and owner-operators to keep the driver and freight safely moving.
“You hear a lot about replacing the driver,” says Korn, “that’s not what I’m
talking about here. The whole goal is driving with a level of safety … it’s high
levels of analytics to determine exactly how the vehicles are being driven.”
According to the ZF magazine, drive, ZF and project partner Wabco have been
testing Evasive Maneuver Assist (EMA), one of three new safety technologies
that ZF is hoping will further its “Zero vision” of bringing zero road fatalities
closer to reality.
On a test track last year in Germany driver Andreas Arnegger steered ZF’s
“Innovation Truck” with EMA and other safety technology toward a line of stationary
vehicles simulating a traffic jam. He was going about 50 mph and deliberately
ignored the first audible and visual warning signals in his cab. Only after
the truck started to brake by itself and the situation escalated did he pull on
the steering wheel to activate the EMA feature. Then he took his hands off the
wheel and let the truck’s environmental sensors, braking system and electrohydraulic
ReAX power steering move the truck into an empty adjacent lane while
the rollover protection feature kept the trailer upright. At the same time the
truck rapidly decelerated and came to a complete standstill about one-and-ahalf
car lengths behind the end of the last vehicle in the traffic jam. Without this
combined “intelligence,” the truck would have hit the last vehicle at 10 mph,
which according to ZF is like an average-sized sedan going 50 mph.
Later on the same track a driver was operating a truck with Highway Driving
Assist or HDA. A camera at the top of the windshield was detecting the lane
while a radar system in the radiator grille was measuring distances and speeds
relative to all objects in front. In the future, says a ZF spokesman, HDA will use
its automated driving functions to actively prevent the vehicle from leaving its
lane if necessary.
Andersky points out that there is a lot of difference between demonstration
runs on a test track and real-world operation, however. “You can control a lot in
a demonstration; you can’t do that on the road. … A truck going down the road
with nobody behind the wheel is still a long, long way off.” And Andersky predicts
that autonomous trucks operating in urban settings is even further down
the road.
But whether in town or country, autonomous trucks will require smooth roads
and vehicle-to-infrastructure sensors, all of which cost big bucks.
Speaking of which Dave Heller, vice president of government affairs for the
Truckload Carriers Association, says he can’t imagine a road-worthy autonomous
vehicle being operated on today’s far from vehicle-worthy roads.
Autonomous vehicles will need infrastructure without potholes, not only in
terms of physical cracks in the road but road funding mechanisms without
“potholes” — sustainable funding such as fuel taxes indexed to inflation, Heller
says.
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And he adds, the industry must “step up to the plate” as it’s done before and be
“solution providers,” thus paving the way for autonomous vehicles driven by “sound
data.”
If a pilot from thousands of miles away flies a drone in the Middle East and it
crashes in the desert, probably no loss of life. But “these [autonomous] trucks share
the road with vehicles driven by the general public,” adds Heller. “Our conversations
now must be who operates them and where? Then there’s the issue of cyber security.
Can these trucks be hacked and driven into a crowded county fair?
“We once believed we had time to address these things. The answers aren’t
there, yet, but the right questions ARE being asked.”
Meanwhile OEMs, makers of safety technology and others continue to work with
and around these problems, and some are further along than others.
Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) in May 2015 introduced its autonomous
“Inspiration” truck with safety, fuel economy and other technological advancements
and hasn’t slowed since.
“The [Inspiration] truck continues to be in testing,” says Derek Rotz, director,
advanced engineering, for DTNA. “It is a test bed for level 3 autonomous testing
at DTNA … For a level 3 autonomous system, the driver must be in the position to
regain manual control of the vehicle when prompted [and] a driver is integral to the
system — DTNA has never presented the Freightliner Inspiration truck as a replacement
for a driver.”
“The biggest challenge,” Rotz continued, “is to design a system that responds
to a large number of use cases or driving situations the vehicle will encounter on a
wide variety of roads. DTNA has intentionally designed the system for use on limited
access highways. Driving conditions on [such] highways are relatively well controlled,
predictable and less complex. Lanes are typically well marked, access is generally
not allowed for pedestrians or bicyclists, intersections are rare and there are
seldom traffic signals, all of which make automating the driving task easier.”
When autonomous trucks will be a common sight on roadways and the costs
involved are hard to predict. “Estimates of cost and timing are difficult, since the
autonomous truck is still in the research and development phase. However, several
years of development are needed before production,” says Rotz.
In the recent past, autonomous vehicles’ sensors have had trouble tracking the
yellow line and lane location during bad weather.
“The [DTNA] autonomous system has safeguards built in to handle inclement
weather conditions or faded lane markings,” says Rotz. “Firstly, the camera system
continually monitors the road conditions as soon as the vehicle is started. Only after
the system can reliably detect the lane markings will it be possible for the driver
to activate autonomous driving.
“If during the drive, the lane marking cannot be detected, the
system prompts the driver to take manual control of the vehicle.
The autonomous system operates in a similar fashion to
cruise control, in that it is designed to stay in its lane and
maintain a safe following distance to the vehicle in front.
If the vehicle ahead brakes or another vehicle cuts in
from a neighboring lane, the autonomous system will
brake accordingly to give way. Lane change maneuvers,
overtaking other vehicles or exiting the highway are still
performed manually.”
According to Rotz, the primary benefits of autonomous
systems are “to improve safety, efficiency and
productivity.” He noted a report from February 2015
by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) that found 94 percent of accidents on highways
are attributed to a human cause.
“Autonomous systems have the potential to mitigate
or prevent human-caused accidents. Additionally, internal
studies within Daimler have shown relieving the driver
from the monotonous and fatiguing task of driving a truck
— even temporarily — can leave the driver feeling more
refreshed and less drowsy.
“Efficiency benefits through automation are two-fold. First,
automation promotes efficient and predictable driving behavior
which smooths traffic flows by minimizing excessive braking
and accelerating. Secondly, congestion caused by traffic accidents will reduce as
the number of accidents falls. The Federal Highway Administration estimates approximately
25 percent of road congestion is caused by accidents.”
He says driver productivity “will be enhanced by freeing up his or her time to conduct
other operational tasks while the vehicle drives itself and to perform logistics
tasks such as scheduling future load assignments and coordinating with shippers.”
As far as saving fuel, he says “platooning is an additional fuel-savings enhancement
of autonomous systems, in which two or more tractors can drive with closer
following distance to lower aerodynamic drag and achieve additional fuel saving.
“The key technology to maintain safe driving at closer following distances is vehicle-to-vehicle
(V2V) communications. V2V is used to coordinate braking across both
vehicles in a platoon to significantly reduce the reaction time of the following vehicle
— down to approximately 0.2-0.3 seconds, much faster than a human can respond.
The platooning system being developed at DTNA is based on Level 3 … .”
There are several options under investigation to detect and ensure driver alertness,
adds Rotz. A more cautious approach is to periodically prompt the driver to
place their hands on the steering wheel for a short time. Other approaches involve
additional sensors that monitor the driver’s head position, open eyes or “other physiological
markers for alertness.”
Effective concepts for human-machine interaction “are also a critical aspect
to the design,” he says, “particularly with respect to handing control back to the
driver. An escalation scheme involving visual, audible and haptic (by touch or feel)
feedback mechanism is used to alert the driver to overtake control involving a
countdown sequence. The countdown time is still under evaluation, however, [and]
is based in part on suitable reaction time for the driver and in part based on the
distance the radars and cameras see ahead, currently at 250 meters and 100 meters
respectively.”
The population of drivers is aging rapidly, they’re nearing retirement “and new
recruits have not filled the void,” he points out.
“As a result, the industry suffers from an acute shortage of approximately 48,000
drivers in 2015 according to the American Trucking Associations. Current trends
show the shortage increasing in the coming years. Technology including safety
systems, autonomous systems and connectivity would make trucks and truck driving
as a profession more attractive to the next generation of drivers.”
He DID say there would be drivers.
In reference to truck drivers being needed for a long time into the future Andersky
quipped, “I’m not giving up my CDL any time soon.”
20 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Dear Diary
Truckers use pen and paper to express
frustration over (lack of) parking.
By Lyndon Finney
Dear Diary:
Those of us who’ve chosen to become professional truck drivers have a problem.
It’s called parking, or more accurately, the lack thereof.
Not exactly a new problem, either.
But it doesn’t seem to matter how vocal I and my fellow drivers are about expressing
our frustration; nothing seems to help.
There’s Jason’s Law, a truck parking panel here, a truck parking panel there, a truck
parking panel everywhere, parking apps here, parking apps there, parking apps everywhere.
Everybody’s talking parking, but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.
It hits me directly in the pocketbook, too, because I’m spending more time looking
these days than I used to so I’m getting fewer miles.
Electronic logging devices are just adding to the problem.
The bell rings after 11 hours and if my vehicle’s still moving, woe is me.
So, I start looking earlier in my day than I used to, which means I’m occupying that
valuable pavement longer than I used to, making it harder for my friends to find a
place to park.
Then there are those non-commercial vehicles that park in spaces designed for commercial
vehicles, and that problem is not just limited to public rest areas.
Ah, those public rest areas.
Sometimes I don’t see those signs that say the limit is two hours, and someone tells me
to move on, or else.
Why, sometimes I’m even forced to park in an unauthorized place such as a highway
entrance or exit ramp.
Sometimes the men and women in blue realize the plight I’m in and have mercy on me.
Other times, they give me a ticket.
Can someone help, please, before I decide I need to move on and take a job in a different
occupation?
Signed,
A Professional Truck Driver
While it may seem farfetched, this diary entry is not make-believe.
It’s a composite of what the American Transportation Research Institute
(ATRI) learned when it asked a group of volunteer professional truck drivers
to provide detailed documentation of their challenges in looking for safe,
available truck parking.
Participating drivers recorded their parking experiences and issues over
14 days of driving, representing more than 4,700 unique parking stops documented
in the diaries.
“I appreciate so much that the drivers took the time to fill out these diary
pages,” said Rebecca Brewster, ATRI president and COO. “I recognize how
much we were asking for across these 14 days, but we really felt that there had
not been this level of detail brought to this issue before.”
ATRI’s report on the diary study says the parking situation is now “reaching
a critical junction.”
To wit:
• Truck parking ranked No. 8 in ARTI’s 2012 list of the 10 most critical
issues facing the trucking industry. In 2016, it was No. 4 overall, but was
ranked No. 3 by drivers.
• 59 percent of states have a shortage of truck parking in public areas; 31
percent have truck parking shortages in private rest stops.
• Drivers prefer private truck stops where amenities are available.
• The most acute shortage is between 4 p.m. and midnight.
• With an average of 56 minutes of revenue-producing drive time sacrificed
by drivers who wrote a diary, the parking shortage effectively reduces an
individual driver’s productivity by 9,300 revenue-earning miles a year, which
equates to lost wages of $4,600 annually.
• Drivers operating with electronic logging devices were more likely to
spend over 30 minutes longer looking for available parking than did drivers
without an ELD, and
• Almost 10 percent of the drivers in the survey said they daily had to park in
unauthorized/undesignated locations; 12.2 percent said they did it five to seven
times a week and 36.5 percent three to four times a week.
Brewster said on a recent early morning trip from Atlanta to Chattanooga,
Tennessee, along Interstate 75, there were at least five trucks parked on every
entrance and exit ramp.
“One of the real issues is that it takes pavement to solve the parking problem,”
Brewster said. “And it takes pavement in the right places. In total, across
the country there might be enough spaces, but they are not necessarily where
drivers need them at those critical times. One of the things we recommend in
the study is looking at where there is pavement already so that we might be
able to expand the use for drivers.”
For instance, she said, at public rest areas there has to be an acknowledgement
among law enforcement that drivers are required by Hours of Service rules to get
a 10-hour break and thus shouldn’t force them to leave after two hours.
And there has to be better cooperation between motor carriers and their
customers so that drivers are allowed to park on the customer’s property if
they have been delayed and are out of hours.
“A lot of drivers commented, ‘I’m held up at a customer’s facility. I wait and
finally get loaded or unloaded and I’m told that I have to leave right away and
get off the property and there’s nowhere close for me to park, but I’m close to
running out of hours or I’ve run out of hours,’” Brewster said.
She called the problem that often occurs at shippers and receivers where
a driver arrives early “a big issue because there are so many components beyond
the driver’s control.”
One is congestion or other incidents on the highway.
Or if there’s less congestion than normal, the driver gets there too early.
There are also cases when drivers are not unloaded or loaded at the appointed
time.
“In many cases those are facilities where there is space to park. We need
to have more dialogue between carriers and their customers,” Brewster said.
“Study after study documents the fact that this is a real serious issue for the
industry. We believe it will only get worse once everyone is using an electronic
logging device so we need to continue this dialogue and figure out how we
solve this issue when my drivers are servicing your facility.”
ATRI’s report offers recommendations for a number of industry stakeholders,
including public sector providers of parking at rest areas, private truck
stop operators and motor carriers — all designed to reduce the challenges
faced by commercial drivers when looking for available parking.
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WHERE
STATES
STAND
An inside look at key
transportation
legislation in
statehouses across
America.
By Lyndon Finney
In the State Spotlight:
Tennessee
The introduction of several rival transportation funding proposals could end up sinking efforts to tackle a $10 billion backlog of road and bridge projects in Tennessee, legislators
have warned.
The counterproposals are being offered by opponents of a gas tax hike, which is a key to the plan put forward by Republican Gov. Bill Haslam. The governor likens gas and diesel
taxes to “user fees” that he calls the fairest approach to paying for infrastructure projects because up to half of the vehicles on Tennessee roads are from out of state. “I don’t like the
idea [that] somebody [elderly] that barely drives has ... to subsidize a road for somebody that’s from California driving down I-40,” Haslam said. “That just doesn’t seem fair.”
Colorado
Colorado lawmakers hope to refer a transportation funding measure to voters
this November. That’s according to Crisanta Duran, the Democratic House
speaker, who said that Democrats and Republicans are discussing a bipartisan
approach to fixing the state’s decaying roads.
How to pay for it remains to be seen. Republicans prefer issuing bonds in order
to launch construction of long-delayed roads projects. To back those bonds
— which could total $3.5 billion — lawmakers have discussed asking voters
for possible sales or gas tax increases.
Michigan
Michigan motorists will be able to legally drive 75 mph on stretches of rural highways as long as studies
show the higher speed limit is safe under bills signed into law last month by Gov. Rick Snyder.
The limits will rise from 70 mph to 75 mph and from 55 mph to 65 mph on at least 1,500 miles, or
15 percent, of the state’s I-, U.S.- and M-numbered roads. The new limits will be allowed only if an
engineering and safety study indicates it is OK and if 85 percent of traffic surveyed already is traveling
at those speeds on the affected highways.
The legislation, which was narrowly approved by the House last month, also raises the maximum
speed limit for trucks from 60 mph to 65 mph and reduces some speeding penalties that can affect
drivers’ licenses and their insurance premiums.
22 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

CHEERING FOR THE ORANGE AND WHITE
The late legendary Chris Schenkel, who called hundreds of college football games for ABC Sports in the 1960s and 1970s, had this signature lead-in to commercial breaks:
“College football — what better way to spend an autumn afternoon.” Nothing could be closer to that truth than a Saturday afternoon in Neyland Stadium in Knoxville,
Tennessee, home of the Tennessee Volunteers, who compete in the Southeastern Conference. When the Vols are playing at home, over 100,000 fans come by car, bus, foot
and boat (the Tennessee River runs within walking distance of the stadium). Other than being the home of one of college football’s elite programs, the stadium is also famous
for its orange and white checkerboard end zones.
Montana
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock says that suspended road construction projects worth $144
million can go forward after the state received a $10 million Medicaid reimbursement
from the federal government.
The news came as a relief to contractors who had worried the delayed projects would
lead to highway worker layoffs across the state.
Bullock, speaking at the Montana Contractors Association’s annual convention, said a
permanent fix to the shortfall in the state’s special account that funds road projects is
still needed, according to a transcript of his remarks.
wisconsin
Gov. Scott Walker reiterated his opposition to raising the gas tax to pay for roads last
month in the face of Republican legislative leaders who were looking for alternatives to
key parts of his budget, including the proposal to cut University of Wisconsin tuition by
5 percent. Walker previously had said he would consider gas tax increases if there were
corresponding cuts elsewhere, but he appeared to back away from that approach in his
budget address.
“Now is not the time to raise taxes,” Walker told reporters in Milwaukee. “It’s not the
time to raise gas taxes, it’s not the time to raise income taxes, it’s not the time to raise
taxes on farmers and manufacturers as some have proposed in each of those categories.”
Georgia
As Gov. Nathan Deal touted progress in improving Georgia highways, House Speaker
David Ralston has said he wants to take a serious look at a statewide plan to invest tax
dollars in mass transit. Deal said that work to widen portions of Interstate 85 in Gwinnett
County and I-16 in Savannah is slated to begin in the 2018 fiscal year that starts July 1.
The projects will add lanes along 6- to 7-mile stretches of each interstate, which Deal
said would significantly reduce traffic delays. The road projects are part of a 10-year,
$10 billion plan for transportation improvements Deal announced last year. Construction
on thousands of resurfacing, repair and expansion projects is being funded by increases
in gas taxes and fees lawmakers approved in 2015.
Washington
Washington lawmakers heard emotional testimony from people who lost friends and
family members in car accidents caused by drivers distracted by their phones. They are
among those who want to make it illegal to hold any hand-held device while driving and
ensure offenders receive harsher penalties.
Measures in the House and the Senate would ban the use of any handheld devices while
driving including phones, tablets and other electronic devices that could impair a person’s
attention while on the road. The proposal would also double the fine; it is currently
$136 if caught texting or holding a phone to the ear while driving but can be difficult to
prove, according to the Washington State Patrol.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 23

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Charting the Course
Foreword and Interview by Lyndon Finney
goes back 75-plus years and we have to look at those people and say: “You know
the reasons why we are where we are today; we have to remember those people.”
In November 2015, the Truckload Carriers Association board of directors, acting
upon the recommendation of a special task force that had reviewed more
than 70 applications, elected John Lyboldt as president with a charge to lead the
organization to become the “Voice of Truckload.” “After all the interviews were
completed, it was our unanimous decision to recommend John as the next leader
of TCA,” said then Chairman Keith Tuttle. “He brings broad experience in leading
both profit and nonprofit corporations. He has experience in motivating large
and small teams and possesses strong financial oversight skills. We’re very glad
John has agreed to join our trucking family.” Having just completed his first year,
John sat down with Truckload Authority to discuss how he, the officers, board,
association members and staff all worked together to develop a new direction for
the future and how they will continue to work together in 2017 to make sure the
organization stays on the course.
A year ago in your Purview, you wrote that “we find ourselves at the dawn of a
new era in which we need to respect the past, embrace the present and shape the
future.” How has that played out this year?
It’s played out exactly as it was stated in the fact that we really had to work hard on
getting some things done here to put us in a position to be able to go out and fulfill
our promise to the membership. In respecting the past, you have to look at the efforts
of all the previous chairmen, the executive committee, the efforts of the officers
and the board and look at things with the idea that we didn’t get here in 2017 based
on who’s leading this organization, meaning me, and who’s working here. This
I was talking about this last week with a number of past chairmen and I said, “with
all of you around this room, I am thankful I have the opportunity to serve this association
knowing of the efforts all of you have put into it and continue to put into it.
A good case point here would be the by-laws. You look at the people who worked
on the by-laws for years, sometimes until 1 o’clock in the morning, trying to get the
by-laws correct, that they work well for what we’re here to do. We have a by-laws
committee right now that has been looking at our by-laws for almost a year, and
when you use the phrase “respect the past,” you have to look at those by-laws and
say what was the intention, what is sovereign, what are the things we do not want
to change and what’s important for us in regard to the association and the membership.
We are working through several drafts, and the final draft of the new by-laws
will be disseminated and discussed for final approval by the board of directors at
the annual convention. That’s just an example of “respecting the past.” It’s important
that we do.
Looking back over the years, what are some of the things that have been accomplished
by the association, its officers and staff, that have brought the organization
to the point it can be the “Voice of Truckload” today?
It was very apparent in 2015 when the issue of twin 33s came up when the leadership
of TCA decided to support a policy against twin 33s that changed what happened
on the Hill. I think twin 33s woke up a sleeping giant. We are a very strong
voice. We are a quiet majority and we are going to become very vocal with our government
affairs operation. Over the years, Dave Heller has been working on regulations,
working closely with regulators and lawmakers, acting as a liaison between
TCA and agencies and lawmakers, and communicating the needs of trucking. I saw
that and I promoted Dave to be our vice president of government affairs. In our
officers’ planning meeting in August of last year, the officers gave me the approval
24 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

to form a government affairs operation here, something we haven’t had in many, many
years. Before that promotion, I asked Dave for a plan. It included hiring a manager of
legislative and regulatory affairs to help Dave and myself and whoever else comes in
to exercise their First Amendment right to lobby and to address our grievances with
our government offices. That person will be doing a lot of support work. Communication
to the membership is key and that person will be helping in that regard. I think the
“Voice of Truckload” emerged over the years.
What does “embracing the present” mean to you?
We have some wonderful opportunities because we have programs here that work. We
have a plan in place for a very specific education program to help the different roles
and responsibilities within trucking operations and helping those people with the education
they need to run profitable companies. We have a great foundation from which
to work on our accreditation programs. When you look at the things we are doing in
image programs and our public outreach programs, we want to be the best we can
possibly be for those organizations with which we work. We want to take a sharp look
at everything to make sure we can deliver on our promises and at the same time represent
truckload at a very high level in our local communities and across the country.
When you look at the relationships we have with our different partners, I think it is important
there be a tremendous amount of embrace. No longer is it acceptable for us not
to be in coordination with these organizations. For example, the American Trucking
Associations. Our relationship with ATA has never been better. We are working together
on a number of issues. We are tied at the hip and we’re very proud of that. Communications
between the two organizations has quadrupled. We are working closely
and communicating with them on F4A, tax reform, trade, and infrastructure, which is
huge. When you line these up, F4A is No. 1, no question. If you look at the history behind
F4A and deregulation, there were some pretty strong statements made, especially
in 1994, with regard to cutting out $9 billion in expenses and inefficiencies by going
with a model that trucks can move across different states with one federal regulation
to abide by. F4A is about that Ninth Circuit court decision in California that turned it
all upside down. One judge, about one month after the Supreme Court weighed in on
the federal decision to reregulate trucking, said California can have its own regulation.
Of course, it’s grown state by state and there are many millions of dollars in lawsuits
occurring. It’s a travesty, because you want to embrace regulation—our guys are all
about embracing safety. We are using the public highways to conduct our business, so
we have to respect safety issues. If you think about F4A, we are following the federal
guidelines, yet we are being sued because states feel they have the ability to put their
own regulations in place. It’s not right and it’s costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
What are the top two or three accomplishments of 2016?
The biggest accomplishment is putting in place our direction. Without direction, without
focus, an organization flounders. On December 22, the day after I started at TCA, I
sent a letter to the membership introducing myself but also asking for their communication.
About 300 e-mails and conversations later, by about mid-February 2016, I started
putting on paper what I’d heard. They thought that TCA had lost its direction, that
we needed to be doing more in regard to shaping the industry, but also that TCA was
very sound in education and image programs. There was a lot of positive comments
made about TCA, but at the same time I could sense in their voice and their writing a
fear of where the industry was heading and more regulation and more legislation.
I’m a very systematic, process-oriented, fact-driven thinker. As I put it on paper, I saw
a very clear direction. So I tested it. In all of my subsequent conversations from February
2016 onward, with owners, truckers, associates, staff, and other organizations, I
started to test the direction. I worked very closely with the executive committee, the
officers, and the board and kept on messaging.
You said in the June issue you were creating an unrivaled membership experience.
Share a little bit about that experience.
Creating that unrivaled experience is something that takes time. I’ve done it in two
other organizations over 30-plus years, and what that means is we need to live up to
our promise: to look at the Truckload Carriers Association and to do the very best we
possibly can in our communications and our outreach, so that when a member gets off
the phone with us, or we’ve responded to them in an e-mail, or they’ve experienced an
event, or if they’ve been involved with us face-to-face, whether it be a divisional meeting
or annual convention, that they feel something. We’re very proud of it.
We’ve made a huge turn in this last year. There’s an enthusiasm in this staff and an
excitement within this staff about where we’re heading. When you create the unrivaled
membership experience you have to have an unrivaled employee experience, and once
those two come together, look out! We’re heading in that direction pretty quickly. I’ve
got a great crew here and I’ve learned a lot. A key factor with me is that I’m a vulnerable
leader. You’re going to hear a lot more about this in the coming years because I’ve
studied it and been working hard on it personally. The vulnerable leader is a person
who is approachable, a person who can listen, a person who knows that he isn’t always
right, and who takes people and conversations with people very seriously. Everyone
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to be able to reinvest in their equipment and their people, to pay their drivers so
they are excited about being in the trucking business. That’s a big task. If you take
a look at that leg, there’s a number of buckets around that leg, such as supply-anddemand
and commodity pricing. As an association we can’t talk about pricing,
but what we can do is educate on the fact that when you’re a commodity pricing
model, you’ve got to know what we need to do not to have overcapacity, what
individual trucking companies can do to promote a better supply-and-demand, to
have a little more control over capacity, and so forth.
feel I work for them. They are the ones on the front lines. They’re the people handling
the daily calls. They’re the people taking care of business. I work for them.
They need to have the resources, the direction. They have to know what the deal is.
Creation takes place only when you get good at the fundamental side. Here’s one
of the things that we’re doing. I made a decision to change from a job description
to a Position Results Description, a PRD. A PRD includes an employee’s personal
mission statement. It also includes no more than six key result areas. For example,
a key result area might be communication. What that means is I will have satisfactorily
achieved the goals and responsibilities and duties of communication in
my position when I’ve done the following 1-2-3-4-5-6 tasks. Then we’re moving
to quarterly reviews. Every quarter beginning the first of April we’re going to be
doing quarterly reviews. The PRDs are going to be kept in each employee’s top
drawer, so when I walk in their office they should be able to open a file and immediately
pull it out.
If you want to walk the talk, this is the detail work, the process—which I call
change management—that an association has to go through to deliver on our
promise to deliver that unrivaled membership experience. All those things are tied
to our team. If they have mission statements like this, the personal business objectives,
and they’ve got their key result areas with supporting goals, there’s nothing
that should get in their way. My job is to see that the roadblocks are knocked down
and if there’s something that’s not working, then we fix it so people can do their
jobs.
Let’s start toward 2017 but as we do, talk to me about the trucking industry and
the importance of the trucking industry. You wrote in October that trucking is
the most important economic engine of the North American economies and this
needs to be respected by many and it will be. You were in the Automobile Dealers
Association and trucks are automotive. As you have been at TCA, share with
us your view of the importance of trucking to the economy and to the United
States.
I did so much research on TCA even before I interviewed here. I called two global
economists that I’ve worked with throughout the years. One was Dr. Timothy
Nash. I called him up and I said, “Tim, tell about global economics, tell me about
North American economics, and tell me about what you look at when you look
at the health of our economy.” He said, “John, the number one thing I look at
is freight, then I look at new housing starts, and I look at automobile sales and
production.” I said, “OK. So tell me more about the freight.” He said, “If manufacturing
and retail and the different segments of those economies are vibrant and
healthy, that’s when you see freight, because it’s shipped to the end-users. If you
want to know the health of the economy and you want to see something early,
watch the tonnage, watch the freight, then you’ll know very quickly where we’re
heading. Then you can start to look at the indices and why we are in the position
we’re in.” I started getting very excited about it.
We have so many challenges in this industry that we need to really look at, more so
than we have been, to help the trucking industry be able to invest in the future. In
2017 we’re going to be laser-focusing on building out the four legs of our stool, to
begin to foster and to improve on how we’re going to move the industry forward.
Let me give you an example. One of the legs of the stool is to build our member
companies’ value. We want them to have stronger balance sheets. We want them
The second leg is profitability. We’ve had a benchmarking program here for years.
It is a program that I truly believe in and has so much room for improvement.
Even the guys that are doing really well can do even better. We are building out
the benchmarking program so it is second to none. That will involve consultation
work; it will involve very strong, accurate aggregated data; it will include an opportunity
for peer-to-peer learning; it will include an opportunity for people to take
a litmus test of their business as often as they want. If they want to do it monthly,
if they want to do it weekly, if they want to do it quarterly, if they want to do it
semi-annually; we’re building out that program as we speak right now to make it
bigger and better and to make it scalable. We believe that the value of TCA’s membership
can be exponential if we are able to provide to the member things that will
help them manage their business and be more profitable. The Voice of Truckload
is the next leg, and then the fourth leg is retaining a skilled workforce. If you think
about building value in a company, about being more profitable, being the voice of
truckload in all the legal, regulatory or legislative capacities, what we’re building is
an opportunity to have a better career in trucking—safety-minded, health-minded,
progressive thinking, and continuously improving that business model for efficiencies.
All those legs are held together by the membership, so we are working very diligently
on our membership outreach. We’ve had some good growth since October 1.
We feel that we’re going to have some really good results with our membership this
year. 2017 is really about building out those four legs. We’ve got active trucking
companies and their owners working with us to build out these programs. At the
same time, we’ve got to make sure that we maintain the mission of TCA as we go
along. It’s an all-out effort right now.
You mentioned several questions ago about the awakening in 2015 with the twin
33s that kind of made the association realize it needed to do more in terms of
advocacy and governmental affairs. You just made 15 visits to Capitol Hill. What
did you tell them and what did you hear back from them?
It’s kind of an interesting conversation, because we met with many Democrats;
I would say more Democrats than Republicans. We talked about F4A and how
we almost had it over the top last year. We have to have the right vehicle in order
for us to get the F4A over the top. We talked to senators and we talked to House
members and the feedback we got was, “Listen, we get it. You have a federal statute
and you are all going by the federal statute. You’re being sued for hundreds of millions
of dollars, and it’s not right. Patchwork legislation state-by-state is inefficient.
It increases fuel costs because of the way they’ve set things up, and the $9 billion
in savings that our forefathers fought for in 1994 has all been reversed based on
the Ninth Circuit decision in California. We had so much support on the Hill, and
we went to see some individuals that were still undecided, but overall I felt very
positive in the fact that they are telling us to keep on talking about this. Let’s find a
vehicle, whether it be the omnibus bill, the CR, the F4A. Let’s get this thing going
and we’ll push it over the hill this time.
Are you optimistic that something will be done in one of those vehicles?
Well, here is the conundrum with the new administration: We don’t know what
the timing on all this looks like. Is the omnibus bill going to be pushed later in the
year? We just don’t know. The Continuing Resolution is probably going to come
out first. The F4A may take until August or September. Once we start to get a bit
of the lay of the land and things are moving we’ll know more about where we are
going to go with it. I am optimistic that people understood the issue, and I think we
would have the votes if we have the right vehicle.
Let’s talk about the new administration. We are going from a Democratic administration
with a Republican Congress to a Republican administration with
a Republican Congress. [House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
Chairman] Bill Shuster said at the 2015 American Trucking Associations Management
Conference and Exhibition that “this [Obama] administration is no
friend of trucking.” Do you anticipate that the all-GOP Trump administration
will be friendlier to trucking?
I’ll say this about my personal opinion. I don’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat,
or Independent Conservative. If we can get Congress moving and making
decisions, moving our economy forward, providing employment, and getting this
infrastructure deal done, that’s all good for trucking. I’ve seen a lot of administrations
come in saying, “Hey, it’s all great,” and it turns out to be not so. We’ve seen
how many bills have been held back on the Senate side. Hundreds of bills just
26 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

sitting there that no one’s acted on because of the paralyzing fact of partisanship.
If Congress can get things together to where we can move some things through, I
think we’ll be in a good place.
What are some of the things that need to be moved through?
Tax reform is a huge one. The F4A has to be number one, but I think infrastructure
and tax reform are big. There’s talk about repatriating funds from oversees
to offset the expense of building out the trillion-dollar infrastructure project. Look
at the United States and where we are ranked with other countries—we’re way
down at the bottom as far as our infrastructure is concerned. Shame on us for
that. We also have to look at trade. When it comes to trucking Hours of Service,
we finally pushed that one over the hill. But there is a lot to HOS and there is
more we need to talk about—one is detention. When you look at a truck driver
and how many hours they actually drive in a day, about 50 percent of the time
they spend is not driving. It’s sitting at the dock, it’s sitting in traffic, and when
you start to look at the roughly 6.8 hours that they can drive because of all those
things, including the patchwork rules that are the result of the court decision in
California, it’s ridiculous. Then there’s truck parking. We have to get real on this
one. Truck parking is a huge issue.
We all want the economy to be vibrant, we all want good employment numbers,
we all want to have a very healthy look at building our future infrastructure, but
at the same time we have some fundamental things that are just broken. I think
health and wellness is a huge part of our trucking environment that we need to
work on. I think that driver compensation has to be looked at seriously. We have
to look at how we hire, how we recruit. More and more veterans are moving into
our business. I know of five or six companies that have hired ex-military recruiting
and training officers to head up their hiring of veterans. It is incredible how well
they are doing and how good those veterans are. The best way to say it is there is
no rock we can leave unturned. Every rock needs to be turned over in all these segments
we’ve been talking about. We’re turning the rocks over, but here’s the key
phrase that I use: Let’s go as fast as we can, but as slow as we have to, because I
believe in building sustainability. I’ve only been at two organizations in the last 33
years, and those organizations are thriving and I’m proud of that. We are going to
build sustainability at TCA.
So you are saying that some of the issues that need to be resolved are regulatory,
but there are internal industry issues that need to be addressed, also?
Absolutely.
I understand you are opening an office in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to help grow the
membership.
I’m very proud of that. We made the decision to have a full membership operation
in Tuscaloosa led by a great man, Dan Tidwell. Dan’s principles, his work
ethic, his dedication, his emotional contributions, his communication style, his
ethics, his moral values, he’s our man. I’m very proud of Dan. We hired Tomora
Brown, who is working with Dan. Debbie Sparks went down there, and the
week before her, I went down there. Here’s the plan. It’s simple and it’s always
simple. We are going to connect with prospects one on one and do whatever we
need to do, whether it be facetime, whether it be on the phone or whether it be
special events. Our plan is connecting and we have specific numbers of people
with whom we want to connect—how many a month, who they are, what our
approach is going to be—and we’re going to lay it out for them and say, “If you
want this industry to be good for your business, you have to get on board. If TCA
needs to come to you to help push a Congressman over on an issue, and we go
into a state and there are only seven members versus 35 members, how successful
do you think we’ll be? We need you to be at the table.” We’re not asking for a lot.
All we are asking for is their engagement. I think we are going to be very successful
as we move forward.
Do you have specific membership goals set for 2017?
We want to bring in 75 new members.
How would that compare with previous years?
Double.
Are you looking for a mix of for-hire, private and associate members or do you
have a target number for those groups?
We do. We want to grow our associates, but we know that the for-hire carriers are
important to the associates, so we want to have a lot of growth on the for-hire side
and we’ll grow the associates as best we can. If you have the for-hires, the associates
will come along. They get more exposure, they get more at the events that we host.
I like the way our mix is setting up because it is going toward the for-hire.
What about getting current membership more engaged?
When you start to talk about issues such as the twin 33 issue—let’s just lay it out to
you. We started to look at the number of power units in relation to trailers. I think
2-to-1 is pretty much the standard. If twin 33s were to pass, the suppliers are going
to want the 24 percent more volume in capacity. They are going to do business
with people who are going to bring twin 33s because they are going to try to get the
same price for 24 percent more volume. That would force the truckload members
to go out and buy twin 33s, mind you, at double the cost. So if I have 30, or 3,000,
or 30,000 53-foot trailers, and I have them financed, now they are really not worth
much. So if I owe 20 grand on a trailer, and the market bottoms out and that trailer
is now only worth 10 grand, you are upside down 10 grand times however many
trailers you have financed. So I’m going to go to the bank and say, “Hey, thanks for
the loan on the 53s, now I need a loan on the 33s and I need twice the money.” They
are going to say, “You’re upside down on the loan you have now.”
When I talk about engaging the membership, these are the types of things TCA can
do and shape with the help of membership. If they are not a member or they are not
at the table, shaping the issues becomes more difficult. Our membership dues are
only $2,600 a year. For $2,600 on average to be at the table, isn’t that worth the investment
compared to what it is going to cost you to buy all new twin 33s? It’s going
to be a very direct conversation. This is the type of thing that can absolutely shape
an industry. Look at 1980, a great example. In 1980, that’s exactly what happened.
Deregulation fell back on the favor of truckload, and suddenly truckload became
the preferred freight shipping option. Now it’s threatening to go back the other way,
which will put small, mid-size, and large companies out of business. Now is that
worth $2,600 a year? Once someone joins TCA, retention becomes very important.
My goal is to retain well into the 90 percent range of our current members.
So what action steps is TCA taking to get more people engaged? Is it communication,
is it one-on-one visits?
We have six regional meetings planned this year. We are going to pull prospects
together into groups. I’ve been on the road and I’m going to be on the road more,
visiting prospects and talking to them more about all this. There are some things
that I’ve not put in place yet on a communications platform. I’d love to talk now
about those but I still have work to do. I can tell you it’s going to be a straight-on
communication that will be planned and shared with members and prospects. We
are going to announce the schedule for these regional meetings in the near future.
These regional meetings will be an opportunity for engagement and conversation
and probably will last less than a day. We will be looking for impactful communication
without taking a lot of time out of a person’s schedule.
How have you developed the program for the annual convention to strategically
support the direction you are taking the organization using the four-legged stool?
The whole thing that holds the four-legged stool together is membership. We are
currently in the design phase in regard to how we are going to bring prospects
together and have them talk to officers and previous chairmen. Secondly, in the
general sessions, my message along with that of Russell Stubbs and Rob Penner
will be put together on a glide path, so that when people experience it they are
going to say, “Wow, we get this.” As far as profitability, we are going to have a
benchmarking roundtable, which I think is going to be very important for people
to understand. Building the value proposition, through our committee meetings
and divisional meetings that we have at the convention, I believe you will see that
it’s the beginning of taking that next step of understanding who we are and what
we want to accomplish. Skilled workforce. We are all over it. We’ll have a number
of educational opportunities at the convention to learn from the very best. The convention
is definitely aligned to where we are heading.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 27

WINTER | TCA 2017
A Chat With The Chairman
Riding off into
the Sunset
If anyone truly understands the remarkable honor of serving as Truckload Carriers Association chairman it is Russell Stubbs. As his historic
chairmanship is drawing to a close, the first third generation TCA chairman sits down for his final chat during his achievement-filled one year
term. Chairman Stubbs displayed the relentless work ethic of a cowboy and a heart the size of Texas this year. Now, as he rides off into the sunset
like the cowboys who enjoy a job well done do, we thank him for his meaningful contribution. On behalf of Truckload Authority we salute Mr.
Stubbs for his devotion to our great association.
Please enjoy our farewell “Chat.”
Foreword and Interview by Micah Jackson
Chairman Stubbs, thanks for joining us for the last of your Chat with
the Chairman interviews. I can’t believe it’s the last one. The year has
gone by rather quickly.
It has. My predecessors told me it was going to go by quickly
and they told me the truth. You look up and we’re on the verge
of the convention to complete my term. I’ve really enjoyed every
minute of it. I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of neat things
working with our new president John Lyboldt and the staff, many
of whom have been around a long time. I developed relationships
with all of them. I’ve known them for a number of years, but I’ve
gotten to know them more intimately this year being chairman.
It has been a lot of fun.
Let’s talk about something that’s not so fun and that’s the twin-33
iSSue that is back with a vengeance. TCA is fighting back with President
Lyboldt sending a letter to Congress. Where are we headed on this?
The policy of TCA is known. We support 80,000 pounds on
five axles that is the law of the land and that was reaffirmed
last year in March at our convention in Las Vegas. That’s our
policy and that’s how our members feel. If they feel any differ-
28 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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ently in the future, we’ll address it then. Our big issue here is
on the equipment and the fact that if twin 33s are approved,
the shippers are going to want truckload carriers to buy them.
What will happen to the used trailer market? What will happen
to all these investment dollars that will have to go into
a new system on top of having to train the drivers on how to
pull doubles, how to hook and unhook them? So it would be
costly and a big stress and strain on the drivers and on the
industry.
The twin-33 advocates are led by a very powerful lobby led by FedEx
and a group of carriers. The American Trucking Associations is not actively
lobbying for this configuration, leaving TCA to do the heavy
lifting on it. Are you confident that TCA will be able to beat back this
issue again like it was able to do last year?
I think we already are because we have several carrier members
who are compassionate about it and that know the industry
and the ins and outs of how things work. Obviously, ATA has
taken the stance it has because they represent both truckload
and LTL carriers. TCA is primarily a truckload carrier association.
We represent our members and that’s how we feel about this
issue. We have some contacts with John and his past experience
on the Hill. Dave Heller’s done a lot of good work with our
members and building relationships on the Hill as well. I feel
confident we are going to have our message heard and that we
will be successful.
I think it’s fair to say that with the Trump administration, we have
a completely different outlook on regulatory reform, an almost
anti-regulation type of viewpoint. Are you encouraged by what
you’ve seen from the Trump administration in regard to new regulations
and just the regulatory environment in general?
I’m encouraged with what I hear. Almost any business leader
is going to be encouraged about less regulation. Obviously,
there’s a tipping point to that and you can’t go too far in the
other direction and let everything turn into a free-for-all. Our
industry is all about safety, which is our No. 1 priority. We don’t
want to do anything that would make us less safe and compromise
safety on the roads. We would not be for anything like
that, but loosening things on regulations about how you run
your business, how you pay your people and a lot of things like
that, most companies know how to take care of their people and
do the right thing without the government telling them what
to do. We don’t know a lot of what Trump is planning. As each
issue comes up, we’ll look at it and decide if it’s something we
can support.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 29

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What are you most proud of during this past year?
The opportunity to lead this association has been great.
But I think I’m most proud of having been on the selection
committee that found John Lyboldt and brought him in and
got him indoctrinated into this association and the leadership
and the stability he has brought to this association. We’ve
never had a better relationship with ATA than we have now
and that’s attributable to John and Chris Spear at ATA. We’re
communicating daily. I’m really proud of Dave Heller and the
role that he’s taken on as vice president of government affairs
and the visibility he has on the Hill. He’s always been an
industry expert and he’s been kind of a diamond in the rough,
but we really hadn’t gotten him out there. The officers’ advice
to make him a more important part of this association has really
helped us. Bill (Giroux) and Debbie (Sparks) and the rest
of the staff continue to do a great job and are thriving under
John. He’s changed some things up and revised some responsibilities.
That’s really what I’m most proud of, the stability
and leadership of the association.
Being the first third-generation chairman, take a minute and reflect
on your personal thoughts about your chairmanship.
One thing we do know is that he has talked at great length about a $1
trillion infrastructure spending plan and funding it primarily using
public-private partnerships. Are you hopeful we will be able to address
the Highway Trust Fund deficit under the Trump administration and
begin to rebuild our infrastructure in the manner in which it needs
to be done?
I’m as hopeful as I’ve ever been. However, I will believe it
when I see it. It’s encouraging to hear the comments and the
direction in which he seems to be going. The infrastructure is our
workplace. We have to have solid roads and bridges. We have
to address the congestion points that are hurting our industry.
I’m excited about what I hear. We’ll just have to wait and see if
it comes to fruition and who’s going to pay for it and how that is
going to happen.
Believe it or not, the annual convention is upon us. Tell readers of
Truckload Authority what you are most looking forward to.
We’re going to Nashville where we haven’t gone since 1991.
Nashville is one of the hottest cities in the country. It’s a place
that I visit frequently just because I like the city. It’s at the Gaylord
Opryland, which is a great venue. We have a lot of good
content. We have some great speakers coming in. Rich Kaarlgard,
an editor at Forbes, will talk about economics; we have Erik
Starks, a commercial vehicle expert who will talk about autonomous
vehicles; and we have our normal trucking-in-the-round
sessions that will focus on industry issues. I’m excited about our
Scholarship Gala on Monday night where brothers Howard and
David Bellamy will entertain, and I’m especially looking forward
to that event because they are personal friends of mine. Pilot
Flying J and Freightliner stepped up to help us provide that. I’m
looking forward to seeing all my friends at the convention and
obviously not the last time, but for my time as chairman. It’s the
one event where we get to showcase who we are as we come together.
The theme is “We Are Truckload, We Are One” and that’s
what we’ve built and will continue to build under Chairman Rob
Penner’s leadership.
It’s been very humbling and an honor to represent this
association and that membership saw something in me to
elect me as their leader for this year. The long-term relationships
and friendships I have built prior to my chairmanship
will continue. The relationships I’ve made over this year are
important. I’ve had the opportunity to go to more events and
more conferences as chairman and speak at all of them. This
industry has been so good to me and my family for a number
of years as it has for a number of our members. It’s just been
an honor to be part of it and I will continue to be part of it as
past chairman.
As is our tradition, we always ask the outgoing chairman to give advice
to the incoming chairman, who is Rob Penner. What would be your
best advice to him?
I think continuing to stay the course and being the voice of
truckload for our association. We have new leadership, the staff
is rowing in the same direction and it’s opportune this interview
is occurring today because Rob and I are actually in D.C. right
now having transition meetings. We’re interviewing each staff
person and spending a lot of time with John just going through
what we accomplished this year and what our goals are for next
year. Rob is going to be a great chairman. He’s well respected.
He’s president and CEO of a well-run company — Bison Transport.
He knows the staff and he knows the people. It’s been
a pleasure working with him and I will continue to work with
him.
A lot of members don’t realize how much time TCA officers give. They
are not compensated. Talk about the sacrifices they make and the time
away from their own businesses to serve the Truckload Carriers Association
and its members.
It does take time but it’s a labor of love and you get a lot
out of it. Being in the room with 10 of your peers who are running
successful businesses, we build strong relationships and
our wives build relationships too. You get to make personal
friends with them and you always have that relationship to
reach back on if you have an issue with your company. With
anything going on in the industry you can call someone you
know who will give you a straight answer. The retreat that
happens in August is a time for the officers to bond together.
And you are able to get away from the office for a few days
and get a lot of work done. We lock the doors and meet for
several hours each day and have a lot of good discussions.
It’s well worth it.
30 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Sponsored by Mcleod software
McLeodSoftware.com | 877.362.5363
As we look forward, what are the top couple of issues trucking
needs to build consensus on and find solutions to in the coming
weeks, months and years?
We’ve touched on one, the infrastructure. We have a consensus
on the fact that we need to refresh and rebuild the
infrastructure. How to pay for it is something we need to have
consensus on. Another big issue out there is F4A. How do
we get that message across and how do we make sure the
government understands what a burden it’s putting on our
industry and drivers? You talked about the Trump administration
and one of the things I’m excited about is adjusting the
corporate tax rate. That would be huge for businesses in this
country to have a little relief from corporate taxes and be able
to hire and grow their businesses.
In the recent job numbers, the Department of Labor said that we
grew jobs by 227,000, but trucking actually shed 1,400 jobs. Interestingly
enough, construction added 36,000 jobs. Does it concern you
at all that industries such as construction with new housing
starts getting better would begin to pull labor away from trucking?
Yes it does, but you have to look at how it benefits the
overall economy because as the economy thrives and gets
stronger, trucking gets stronger. We just have to do a better
job of recruiting and retaining our workforce and making
it an interesting and viable option to come into our industry.
We like to see growth in every industry, but trucking is
what we represent and who we are. Other industries growing,
even though it creates competition for labor, is better
for all of us.
32 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

What do I need to know
about the 2017 annual
convention?
WINTER | TCA 2017
Member Mailroom
Great question.
This year’s convention theme is “We are Truckload, We are One,” which
highlights the importance of our industry coming together under shared
goals of improving profitability, retaining a skilled workforce and voicing
industry concerns to a new administration and Congress.
An array of educational sessions will help attendees stay informed on
industry issues and give best practices for improving business operations.
Open discussion with industry peers along with dynamic and entertaining
speakers will provide a wealth of knowledge for the coming year.
Want to take a bigger part in shaping the future of our industry? Attend
the Committee Meetings on Sunday, March 26 to collaborate with fellow TCA
members on important policies and get your voice heard.
Be sure to check out the exhibit hall during the convention to find out
about the latest products and services being offered from 100-plus industry
top suppliers.
The annual Convention App provides an opportunity to further research
your favorite exhibitors and is a convenient platform for connecting
with other attendees while receiving updates on all Convention
events including our hosted receptions and exhibition. These events are
an invaluable opportunity to connect with old friends and ask new associates
questions about the information you discovered on the app. Thus
enabled, you can navigate and prepare for both the Convention and the
future of the trucking industry.
Saddle up to support future leaders of the trucking industry by attending
the 4th Annual Scholarship Gala. With the help of generous donors like you,
the TCA Scholarship Trustees are able to award college scholarships to a
growing number of current and incoming trucking industry professionals.
These scholarships help provide the winners with an opportunity to learn
skills which will help strengthen the trucking industry for generations.
For more details see Page 43. See you in Nashville March 26-29.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 33

WINTER | TCA 2017
Talking TCA
M I I A R A S I N E N | E D U C AT I O N M A N A G E R
B Y d o r o t h y c o x
Every day when she drives into Washington, D.C., to her job as education
manager for the Truckload Carriers Association, Miia Rasinen
revels in her great fortune of being able to work in an education-related
job at a place with such a “welcoming crew” — and — in a city
she’s had a love affair with since high school.
“Every morning when I drive into the Lincoln Memorial and over
the Memorial Bridge, it hits me that I’m here in D.C. — it’s an amazing
feeling. Each time, I look in my rear view mirror and I say, ‘OK,
we got this. It’s all good, Lincoln. We’re going to do this today.’ And
then hopefully most days we do.” She has her best friends from high
school and college who live in D.C. that help make it “home,” and “I
would definitely say the people [at TCA] I’ve gotten a chance to work
with coming in” are part of the enjoyment. “Everyone is just so easy
to talk to, so accepting of my input,” she says.
Rasinen’s father is a soon-to-be-retired comptroller, having worked
the past 27 years for a small commercial blacktop company back in
her home state of Minnesota. “I knew nothing about the industry
coming in besides my dad’s job, but they obviously deal more with
dump trucks — I didn’t know much about the truckload segment.
Thus, I would say the things I’ve most enjoyed are getting to meet
people and to learn. It’s such a great experience to get to dive into
something and it has really opened my eyes to just what tough work
trucking is and how fortunate we are that everyone in the industry
does what they do.”
Rasinen enjoys sharing this message with everyone she can. “I
talk all the time to my friends who don’t know much about trucking
— about the industry’s importance. They say, ‘Oh they’re huge and
they stay in the left lane.’ That’s all they know.”
Rasinen first came to Washington while in high school as part of
the Minnesota Delegation for the YMCA Youth Conference on National
Affairs or CONA for short. Over three years, after the conference concluded
in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Rasinen, along with other
delegates from Minnesota and Wisconsin, got to go on side trips to
visit Williamsburg, New York, Boston and D.C. — “which I absolutely
adored.”
It was a long way from her hometown of Burnsville, Minnesota,
a southern suburb of Minneapolis where her parents had moved because
“it was a nice place to raise a family with its strong public
school systems, beautiful parks, and kind people. That was much to
my mother’s chagrin as she’s from Florida and still complains about
the cold.”
Her parents, Don and Diana Rasinen, met at Florida State. Her
dad was originally from Detroit and on a nudge from a frat brother to
“check out this cutie,” he went to talk to the girl behind the counter at
the campus Dunkin’ Donuts shop and that was that. Rasinen is quick
to add that she has never liked donuts, but is eternally grateful to
Dunkin Donuts for her existence.
Rasinen was born in Galesburg, Illinois, home of noted poet and
author Carl Sandburg.
“I am the baby and the only girl,” Rasinen admits. She has two
older brothers: Chris, six years older and Don, who is nine years
older. “Their families are both within 20 minutes from my parents, so
I’m the only one missing. I’ve known both of my sisters-in-law since
I was 14, so it’s definitely very hard being away from them all, especially
my niece and my nephews.”
“We’re 40 percent Finnish,” says Rasinen, hence the names (last
name Raz-uh-nen, first name pronounced my-ah not me-ah). At least
that was the way her family had pronounced her first name. While
attending Burnsville High School, a Finnish foreign exchange student
told her it was really pronounced Me-ah.
“So I’m misnamed. Yeah, that was a revelation,” she says. Regardless,
the name gave her trouble. “Every first day of school I would get
called Mia Raisin.”
Since both brothers were into sports when they were young, so
was Rasinen.
“We were very active kids. My whole life was very sports-driven.”
She played basketball, hockey, and softball and started her love of
figure skating at age three, which she still does today.
“It was basketball and skating every day, hours upon hours upon
hours of basketball and skating growing up. I also wrote for the
34 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 35

school newspaper, was on the Academic Knowledge Bowl team, did
the state science fair, French club, and devoted a great deal of time in
student leadership for the Youth in Government program. It was a lot
of structured activity; I kept busy for sure. I wanted to do everything.
Not much has changed.”
She learned a healthy work ethic from her mom and dad: “Both
my parents are very, very hard workers, but family was first before
anything. I don’t remember having a babysitter my entire life.”
Her mom recently retired from being a para-professional, special
education assistant and “for 26 years was in the building where I
went to elementary school so she had her thumb on me for sure.”
“It was a good childhood,” she continues, “a happy, normal childhood
because they did whatever it took to make sure everything was
taken care of. My mom babysat so I could skate. We would work
fundraisers at the Metrodome [Stadium] so I could skate. My parents
have always been two of the most selfless people that I know.”
Chris and Don, she says, fought as brothers growing up. “They
are opposites. Don is the analytical one; he’s the lawyer, and Chris [a
top IT salesman for CA Technologies] is everyone’s best friend, gregarious,
so I tried to be in between the two depending on what the
scenario was. But mostly I was just giving my mom hugs when they
were driving her crazy.”
“They’re very nice brothers,” Rasinen adds, but “they were hard on
me” and her parents took the attitude of “no excuses.”
“I remember my dad only missing one day of work my entire childhood.
You don’t miss work; you go to work, you work hard, you don’t
complain about work and when you come home, you spend time with
your family. That was our life, mostly.”
Rasinen credits her dad with being “the smartest person” she
knows, having instilled an insatiable love of knowledge in her. And
her mother ingrained in her that the sky was the limit as to what she
wanted to do with her life. “She told me every day that I was loved
and that, ‘you can do whatever you want to do.’ She is a very headstrong
woman — we never did damsel-in-distress at our house.”
She credits her nearest brother Chris with being “very influential”
in her life. He taught her to read and write when she was 3, and
would bring home treats to her whenever he was out.
When it came time for her to decide on what college to attend, it
was Chris who took her on her
“college tour.”
“My senior year in high
school I wanted to go to
Northwestern [University in
Evanston, Illinois] as it was
a good distance from home.
We visited the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and
Northwestern, where I took
the tour. But Chris seriously
said something like, ‘let’s go
and see the cool stuff at Notre
Miia Rasinen is shown with her “superfriends,”
chums in D.C. who attended Notre Dame.
Dame,’ and since we’d never been, and South Bend is only about
two hours east of Chicago, we hopped over there and on a whim
took a tour.”
The campus was empty, as students were on fall break and it was
“pouring rain,” Rasinen remembers. “I just kind of fell in love” with
the university, she says. “It was a magical feeling.”
She applied to those three colleges, got accepted by all three and
was offered equivalent financial aid, “so I went with my gut” and
picked Notre Dame, where “I made wonderful friends.”
It was at Notre Dame that she started synchronized skating (think
Rockettes on Ice) and became heavily involved in “political science,
history and social issues, so I thought I would go into the nonprofit
realm.”
As such, Rasinen again returned briefly to D.C. while at Notre
Dame as part of the Hesburgh Program in Public Service, named after
Father Theodore Hesburgh, a famous president of Notre Dame and
champion of the Civil Rights movement.
The job was at the Child Welfare League of America, and after a
summer in the nation’s capital, “I was reminded again that I wanted
to get back here one day.”
In the first semester of her senior year, she applied to Teach
For America, a two-year, post-graduation program that sends college
graduates to some of the poorest, educationally disadvantaged
schools in the country in trying to help all children have the opportunity
to attain an excellent education.
Q & A With MIIA RASINEN
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: December 12, 1983, in
Galesburg, Illinois
MY TRADEMARK EXPRESSION IS: Sounds good
MOST HUMBLING EXPERIENCE: Standing in front of a
classroom of 8th graders as their math teacher
PEOPLE SAY I REMIND THEM OF: In college, it was
“that girl from my one class”
I HAVE A PHOBIA OF: Up escalators
MY GUILTY PLEASURE: Desserts, candy and going out to
eat more than I should
THE PEOPLE I’D INVITE TO MY FANTASY DINNER
PARTY: FDR, Alice Paul, Justin Timberlake, René Descartes,
Michelle Kwan, Frederick Douglass
MY GREATEST PROBLEM AS A PROFESSIONAL IS:
Getting too fired up about things that don’t make sense to me
I WOULD NEVER WEAR: A Yankees’ hat
A GOAL I HAVE YET TO ACHIEVE: Earning my Master’s
Degree, visiting all 50 state capitol buildings, being on a
gameshow
THE LAST BOOK I READ: “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in
the American City” by Matthew Desmond
LAST MOVIE I SAW: “Rogue One”
IF I’VE LEARNED ONE THING IN LIFE, IT WOULD
BE: that I only have one shot at this, so I have to make the
most of it
MY PET PEEVE: Obnoxiousness
THE THING ABOUT MY OFFICE IS: It’s by the
microwave and fridge, so I always know what everyone’s
having for lunch on our floor
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Reliable
36 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Rasinen, third from left, poses with her family at Christmas last year.
There was only about an 11-percent acceptance rate for the program,
but Rasinen was accepted and after graduation, headed to the
University of Houston for a five-week training program.
Then she was off to Greenville, the heart of the Mississippi Delta
and “the blues highway, Highway 61.”
From 2006 to 2008 she lived in nearby Leland, and taught eighthgrade
algebra at Coleman Middle School in Greenville.
And her work didn’t stop when the bell rang.
“I taught eighth grade and most of the kids were two years over
age because they had been held back or failed twice,” she says. “I
was teaching 16-year-olds in the eighth grade operating at mostly
fourth-grade reading and math levels. With such abject poverty everywhere
in the Delta, there were few activities for children to do,
and opportunities weren’t available that kids should be afforded.” Opportunities
like she was afforded.
“It was sad, frustrating and upsetting to see what my kids had to
go through every day — the situations they were in, and the kind of
responsibilities and pressures that fell on them. That broke my heart,”
she says.
And it was hard work. “We had regular school hours but … basically
I made our curriculum every single day, planning what we would
teach each class.”
The school was not meeting its progress goals and was in danger
of being taken over by the state “so it was a lot of lesson-planning, a
lot of grading, a lot of hours and tutoring kiddos after class and making
sure whatever needed to get done got done.”
After completing her two-year commitment, Rasinen went to teach
at an urban charter prep school for boys in Wilmington, Delaware,
where most of the students were also behind academically. “It was
the same idea of trying to do whatever it took and long hours spent
on designing instruction, the area of the profession that I became
quite enthralled with and would use later in my current position at
TCA and studies in grad school,” she says.
Again, the work was “labor intensive” and after a year, it was finally
the extraneous paperwork and management issues that got to
her. “I just wanted to help kids … It just didn’t feel like I was having
as much of an impact and doing as much as I could’ve. That’s when I
decided, no more teaching.”
After a two-year stint in Philadelphia as a nanny, Rasinen was finally
able to make it back to where she had wanted to be: D.C. She
took a job, again as a nanny working for a family with school-aged
children, just so she could be in the city. And although she cared
deeply about the children she took care of and the family she worked
for, “I knew that’s not what I was supposed to be doing in life,” she
says. “I ended up there because of my love of kids, but that’s not
what I had worked my whole school career to do.”
But she did want to stay in education “in some capacity but I
wasn’t sure in exactly what, so I thought about the nonprofit world
again” and ended up at TCA.
“I was on indeed.com, right? And I typed in education, no joke,
and I applied and got a first interview and a call-back. I was on my
way to Chicago to a college friend’s wedding and Ron (Goode, director
of education) called me looking for writing samples by the end of the
day and I, of course, told him ‘no problem! Got it!’ So I was in the
security line frantically searching for writing samples in my e-mail on
my phone. That’s how it all came about.”
Much to the delight of this Minnesota girl who has found her niche
doing a job she loves in a city she adores.
The Truckload Carriers Association
welcomes companies that
joined our association in
December and January.
December 2016
Big Freight Systems, Inc.
BKD, LLP
Netradyne
Canal Insurance
CarrierWeb LLC
Cold Carriers
Del Mar College
January 2017
Gantt Trucking LLC
Hermann Transportation
Magellan
Microdea, Inc.
Silver Arrow Express
uFollowit, Inc.
Whiteline Express, Ltd.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 37

WREATHS
ACROSS
AMERICA
DAY 2016
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The Truckload Carriers Association,
along with its membership and
hundreds of volunteer professional
truck drivers from across the country,
once again played a key role in
the success of the 2016 Wreaths
Across America Day December 17.
Over 44,000 people turned out at
Arlington National Cemetery to place
a wreath on all of the 245,000 graves
there and an additional 1.2 million
wreaths were placed at 1,300 veterans’
cemeteries across the country.
The evening of December 16
TCA and Wreaths Across America
hosted a reception and dinner for
volunteers.
TCA and the trucking industry
have donated an estimated $1 million
in funds, manpower, fuel and
equipment since September 2016
to support WAA’s efforts, including
some 400 trucks.
1. This is a panoramic view of Arlington
National Cemetery. 2. TCA and Wreaths
Across America hosted the 2016 WAA Reception
and Dinner at the Hilton Crystal City. 3.
TCA thanks the more than 150 trucking companies
who donated their drivers, fuel and
equipment for National Wreaths Across America
Day. The trucking industry is essential to
the delivery of wreaths. 4. American Gold
Star Mothers of Tampa Bay, Florida, Melanie
Adams and Toni and Craig Gross, thanked the
professional truck drivers at Friday evening’s
event, distributing driver appreciation bags
as a token of their appreciation. 5. Sleet and
freezing rain on December 17, didn’t deter the
44,000 volunteers who forged the elements
to lay remembrance wreaths at Arlington National
Cemetery.
6. Volunteers came from far and near to
honor the 245,000 veterans that are laid to
rest at Arlington. 7. TCA’s Highway Angel
Spokesperson Lindsay Lawler, accompanied
by Chris Roberts, sang Saturday, December
17, in Arlington National Cemetery. An ice
storm crippled the DC-metro area, causing
the ANC opening ceremony to be canceled.
8. Walmart Transportation drivers Mike Arlaud
and Dave Esterby drove one of the 55
trucks that were loaded in on Friday.
38 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

1
9. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel B. Allyn spoke at the reception
and dinner. 10. Pilot Flying J hosted the TCA and Wreaths Across
America reception and dinner at the Hilton Crystal City. Signage
directed attendees. 11. Some 500 volunteers consisting of professional
truck drivers, members of the trucking industry, and those who
traveled with the convoy, were at the reception and dinner Friday
night. 12. Volunteers prepare to lay wreaths at Maple Grove Cemetery
in Findlay, Ohio, on December 17. These types of ceremonies occurred
at the approximately 1,300 cemeteries nationwide. Photo courtesy
of Sherri Garner Brumbaugh. 13. Carriers wrapped their power
units and trailers to show their appreciation for veterans and the
Wreaths Across America program. 14. TCA’s Highway Angel Spokesperson
Lindsay Lawler, right, received two remembrance wreaths
from a volunteer at the event. 15. Each truck that made the trek from
Columbia Falls, Maine, to Arlington National Cemetery was adorned
with a WAA wreath. 16. A team of truck crew volunteers prepare to
distribute wreaths to the 44,000 volunteers who came to the wreath
laying at Arlington. 17. This year, a wreath was laid at the base of
every mausoleum at Arlington National Cemetery. 18. The Arlington
County police escorted the 55 trucks that arrived on Friday. 19. TCA’s
Debbie Sparks and Marli Hall at Arlington National Cemetery on cleanup
day January 28.
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TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 39

2016 Driver of the year
Presented by:
The Truckload Carriers Association, Overdrive magazine
and TruckersNews.com have revealed the names of the
six finalists for the 2016 Driver of the Year competition.
The following three owner-operators and three company
drivers will now compete for the prestigious grand prize
in their respective categories:
Company Driver of the year Nominees
MURRAY MANULIAK
Bison Transport
Brandon, Manitoba,
Canada
DaviD MCGOWAN
WEL Companies
Marinette, Wisconsin
WILLIAM POTEET
Saddle Creek
Transportation
Lakeland, Florida
owner-operator of the year Nominees
The Truckload Carriers Association and CarriersEdge of
Markham, Ontario, Canada, have selected 20 trucking
companies from across North America as the 2016
Best Fleets to Drive For. The annual survey and contest
identify for-hire trucking companies that provide the
best workplace experiences for their drivers.
BISON TRANSPORT
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
BOYLE TRANSPORTATION
Billerica, Massachusetts
CENTRAL OREGON TRUCK
COMPANY, INC.
Redmond, Oregon
CHALLENGER MOTOR
FREIGHT, INC.
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
FREMONT CONTRACT
CARRIERS, INC.
Fremont, Nebraska
FTC TRANSPORTATION, INC.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
GARNER TRUCKING, INC.
Findlay, Ohio
GRAND ISLAND EXPRESS, INC.
Grand Island, Nebraska
TCA honors
I
GARY BUCHS
Landstar System, Inc.
Colfax, Illinois
PHILIP KEITH
WEL Companies
Long Beach,
Mississippi
KEVIN KOCMICH
Diamond Transportation
System, Inc.
Litchfield, Minnesota
“Far too often [professional drivers’] hard work and
dedication to safety and professionalism goes unnoticed.
We know that to sustain growth we need the
continued support of our trucking customers and professional
drivers, and we could not be more proud to
support [the] Driver of the Year award.”
— Jon Archard, vice president of sales at Love’s Travel Stops
The Truckload Carriers Association’s Driver of the Year contests,
sponsored by Love’s Travel Stops and Cummins, Inc., recognize the
company and owner-operator professional truck drivers who provide
reliable transportation of North America’s goods. The finalists and
grand prize winners are selected based on their ability to operate safely
on public highways, their efforts to enhance the public image of the
trucking industry, and their positive contributions to the communities
in which they live. To be eligible for the contests, driver applicants were
required to meet strict standards, such as a million consecutive accidentfree
miles. Judges examined each driver’s operating information,
work history, and safety record, and each finalist was asked to write a
300-word essay explaining why he or she is a good “trucking citizen”
and should be considered for the grand prize. For the owner-operator
candidates, judges also reviewed equipment specifications, business
plans and financial statements.The names of the grand prize winners will
be announced March 28 during TCA’s Annual Convention banquet to be
held at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee.
39 th annual national
fleet safety awards
Presented by:
Honors will abound for Truckload Carriers Association members
at the annual awards ceremony to be held during our
Annual Convention March 26-29 at the Gaylord Opryland
Resort in Nashville, Tennessee, as the association recognizes the
Best Fleets to Drive For, National Safety Award winners, Company
Driver of the Year and Owner-Operator of the Year.
The awards ceremony will take place on the evening of March
28 and is among the highlights of the meeting as we take time
to recognize the accomplishments of those among us who have
excelled during the past year.
On the following page are the names of the 2016 top divisional
winners for Safest Fleets based on low accident frequency ratios
per million miles.
Companies are listed according to the order that they placed
within each category.
40 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

The 2016 winners, which
are true innovators when
it comes to providing outstanding
workplace experience
for their drivers, are:
® Presented by:
“These companies represent the best of the best in truckload. As industry
innovators, they bring fresh ideas that not only create a desirable workplace for
employees, but also propel trucking to exciting new terrains.”
— John Lyboldt, TCA president
HALVOR LINES, INC.
Superior, Wisconsin
INTERSTATE DISTRIBUTOR CO.
Tacoma, Washington
KRISKA HOLDINGS, LTD.
Prescott, Ontario, Canada
LANDSTAR SYSTEM, INC.
Jacksonville, Florida
MAVERICK TRANSPORTATION,
LLC
North Little Rock, Arkansas
MOTOR CARRIER SERVICE, LLC
Northwood, Ohio
NUSSBAUM TRANSPORTATION
Hudson, Illinois
ONE FOR FREIGHT
Milton, Ontario, Canada
PRIME, INC.
Springfield, Missouri
SMOKEY POINT DISTRIBUTING
Arlington, Washington
TLD LOGISTICS SERVICES, INC.
Knoxville, Tennessee
TRANSPRO FREIGHT SYSTEMS,
LTD.
Milton, Ontario, Canada
In addition, five companies have been
identified as “Fleets to Watch” (honorable
mentions) for demonstrating
innovation in their driver programs:
CRETE CARRIER CORP.
Lincoln, Nebraska
HIRSCHBACK MOTOR LINES, INC.
Dubuque, Iowa
KROON BROTHERS
TRANSPORT, LLC
Hanover, Pennsylvania
PAPER TRANSPORT, INC.
De Pere, Wisconsin
TRANSPORT CORPORATION OF
AMERICA, INC.
Eagan, Minnesota
industry excellence
Division I Winners
(under 5 million miles)
1. SPECIALTY TRANSPORT, INC.
Knoxville, Tennessee
2. CARBON EXPRESS, INC.
Wharton, New Jersey
3. HI-TECH EXPRESS, INC.
Roseville, Minnesota
Division II Winners
(5-14.99 million miles)
1. CONVOY SYSTEMS, LLC
Kansas City, Kansas
2. M&W TRANSPORTATION CO., INC.
Nashville, Tennessee
3. BULLDOG HIWAY EXPRESS
Charleston, South Carolina
Division III Winners
(15-24.99 million miles)
1. SMOKEY POINT DISTRIBUTING, INC.
Arlington, Washington
2. HIGH COUNTRY
TRANSPORTATION, INC.
Midlothian, Texas
3. BIG FREIGHT SYSTEMS, INC.
Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada
Division IV Winners
(25-49.99 million miles)
1. BIG M TRANSPORTATION, INC.
Blue Mountain, Mississippi
2. TRANS-WEST LOGISTICS, INC.
Lachine, Quebec, Canada
3. HALVOR LINES, INC.
Superior, Wisconsin
Division V Winners
(50-99.99 million miles)
1. GROUPE ROBERT, INC.
Rougemont, Québec, Canada
2. WILSON LOGISTICS, INC.
Springfield, Missouri
3. J & R SCHUGEL TRUCKING, INC.
New Ulm, Minnesota
Division VI Winners
(100+ million miles)
1. BISON TRANSPORT, INC.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
2. MAY TRUCKING CO., INC.
Salem, Oregon
3. ROEHL TRANSPORT, INC.
Marshfield, Wisconsin
For the next step of the competition, the division winners will compete for two grand prizes, one in the
“less than 25 million annual miles” category and one in the “25 million or more annual miles” category.
To stay informed of further developments related to TCA’s National Fleet Safety Awards, visit www.
truckload.org and follow the organization on Facebook—www.truckload.org/Facebook — and
Twitter — www.truckload.org/Twitter.
TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 41

A QUICK LOOK AT IMPORTANT TCA NEWS
SMALL
A QUICK LOOK AT
IMPORTANT TCA NEWS
TALK
Accreditation Program
The Truckload Carriers Association has launched an accreditation initiative for the truckload
segment of the motor carrier industry to help create a community of individuals who are dedicated
to professional development and that will help truckload carriers attract new employees
and create career paths as a retention tool.
TCA accreditation is composed of its certification and certificate programs. The certification
is for employees who wish to be certified in their particular line of work. Currently this
is the Fleet Manager Certification Program but will soon include the Motor Carrier Insurance
Risk Management Program which is scheduled to be completed in June. The Fleet Manager
Certification Program is intended for fleet managers, driver managers, dispatchers, operations
managers, customer service representatives, planners, front-line managers, or for people with
similar job functions who have at least two years of experience in those roles. The program covers
business, leadership and communication skills, how to set expectations for drivers, how to
use structured coaching to improve performance, how to develop best practices and processes
for running a high-performance operations department, and more.
To maintain certification, the employee must participate in continuing education programs.
The certificate programs are for industry employees earning a certificate in a specified area
of expertise. There are three certificates being offered, according to Ron Goode, TCA’s director
of education.
The Human Resources Certificate provides learners with training in three key subject areas:
1. Operations; 2. Recruitment and Retention; and 3. Legal.
The Recruitment Certificate focuses on the key subject areas of driver recruitment, workforce
recruitment, and legal challenges in hiring.
The Retention Certificate provides training related to increasing driver retention and employee
engagement.
To earn a certificate, participants must earn 40 continuing education credits, which can
come from a wide variety of opportunities offered by TCA (webinars, on-demand training, faceto-face
meetings, etc.).
While the certificate track requires continuing education credits, the certification program
requires initial training followed by an examination on which the employee must score 80 or
better to receive certification in a particular area of expertise, Goode said.
Driver iQ, providers of comprehensive and reliable background screening and driver monitoring
services to the trucking industry, will be the exclusive sponsor of the certificate and
certification programs.
Lana Batts, Driver iQ’s co-president and a former president of TCA, will serve as the official
spokesperson.
“As spokesperson, Lana is going to talk about the importance of professional development in
terms of how it can help carriers not only operate their business more efficiently and effectively
because they have a skilled workforce, but also how it can create this community of trucking professionals
who are dedicated to career advancement and professional development,” Goode said.
“Lana is a natural choice to speak on behalf of this program, as she has worked for more than
40 years in the trucking industry,” said TCA Chairman Russell Stubbs. “She is highly respected
and knows the industry inside and out. She also understands the value of providing professional
development opportunities for non-driving staff. She will bring significant credibility and exposure
to this program.”
“From the viewpoint of my 40-plus years in the trucking industry, it’s kind of been one of
those, ‘Well you were born into it’ because you were born on a farm and learned to drive a truck,
or maybe you were in the military so you understood a little management as you worked your
way up,” Batts said. “But as the industry has become more and more complex, the pieces have
become more like playing three-dimensional chess. You must have professional knowledge not
only within your specific functions within your company, but you must be able to see what other
people are doing and how they are doing it and bring new ideas back to your company.”
For years, trucking employees at all levels have been attending meetings on topics such as
safety, recruiting and retention to find out what was occurring in the industry.
The TCA professional development program “is really the first attempt to bring some continuity
and consistency so that at the end of the day that trucking employee has something in
his or her hand to say ‘I’ve done this.’ So it is more than just ‘I went to this meeting,’ it’s ‘I did
something,’” said Batts. “And what that does is bring professionalism back into the industry. If
that individual changes jobs, there is a benchmark that says this individual has done something.
As a company that is hiring, it provides credibility as to the professionalism.”
Someone can’t go out and get a degree from some university in recruiting, but it is probably
the most important job in the industry, Batts said.
“If you don’t have drivers, it doesn’t make any difference how many trucks you have,” she
said. “And if that recruiter discourages a potentially good employee, if that recruiter over-promises
that potential employee, all those things mean you may well cost not only the company, but
the industry could well lose a potential driver.”
In the case of fleet managers, professional development will teach those individuals how to
manage a cross section of drivers.
“From the viewpoint of my 40-plus years in the trucking industry, it’s kind
of been one of those, ‘Well you were born into it’ because you were born
on a farm and learned to drive a truck, or maybe you were in the military
so you understood a little management as you worked your way up. But …
the industry has become more and more complex … .”
— Lana Batts, Driver iQ co-president
42 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

“As we all know, handling a 22-year-old is quite different from handling a 50-year-old,” Batts
said. “That’s what TCA’s program brings to the table — professionalism within the people who
touch the people who make this industry tick and that is the driver. So it’s interesting to see where
TCA started. We didn’t start with the CEOs and the accounting department. It’s with the recruiters,
it’s with the fleet managers, with the risk managers.
“It’s been said you can always become a driver, and that’s not true and never has been. Or you
can just become a dispatcher. That’s not true, either. Dispatching shouldn’t be the job of last resort,
it ought to be the job somebody wants to have. And you only get that when you bring professionalism
to it. The dispatchers will get better, which means the companies will get better.”
As part of its sponsorship agreement, Driver iQ will serve as the only non-carrier member associated
with the certificate and certification offerings. It will sponsor five webinars to support the
programs and will also serve as one of the host sponsors of TCA’s 2017 WorkForce Builders Conference
(WFBCON).
For more information, visit http://truckload.org/Truckload-Academy-Certificates.
Profitability
Truckload Carriers Association members should note the opportunity to attend the Trucking Profitability
Strategies Conference April 23-25 at the Georgia Center in Athens, Georgia.
Trucking Profitability Strategies brings together senior trucking professionals to discuss best practices
and emerging trends that can immediately improve performance and profitability and prepare
participants for future opportunities and challenges.
This 30-year-old program continues to feature leaders in trucking as presenters and panelists.
Attendance is restricted to asset-based companies to maximize the learning and networking
experience.
Unlike other programs, no suppliers or vendors will attend this conference.
The keynote speaker will be 6-foot, 11-inch Bill Walton who played on two National Basketball Association
championship teams and will bring his outsized passion to the stage to inspire attendees with his
tales from an improbable life in sports and beyond.
Following his playing career, Walton turned to broadcasting, where he won an Emmy Award and other
accolades for broadcasting and was recognized as a leading media pundit.
Last year, Walton published a book titled “Back from the Dead” that details his recovery from a 2008
catastrophic spinal collapse —the culmination of a lifetime of injuries — that left him unable to move.
The excruciating pain and slow recovery from the spinal collapse tested Walton to the fullest. But with
extraordinary patience, fortitude, determination, sacrifice — and pioneering surgery — he recovered, and
now shares his life story in his memoir.
Walton’s appearance is set for a dinner banquet at 6 p.m. April 23.
TCA President John Lyboldt will take part in a panel discussion at 9:30 a.m. on April 24 about current
events impacting the trucking industry that will include a discussion of challenges and opportunities
that lie ahead. Also on the panel will be Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations and
Stephen Laskowski, senior vice president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance.
At 10:45 a.m. on April 24, Brad Pinchuk, president of Hirschbach Transportation Services, and
Garth Pitzel, director of safety and driver development at Bison Transport, will participate in a safety
presentation.
Chris Henry, president of inGuage, will take part in a benchmarking panel at 3 p.m. April 24. Shepard
Dunn, former TCA chairman and vice president, sales, CFI, will moderate a panel discussion on employee
engagement at 8 a.m. April 25. At 9 a.m. April 25, Josh England, president of C.R. England, will moderate
a panel on the future of trucking, which will include Robert Low, former TCA chairman and CEO and
Founder of Prime, Inc., and Randy Marten, president and CEO of Marten Transport.
To get more information on the conference and to register, visit http://executive.terry.uga.edu/
trucking-profitability-strategies.
Convention Preview
The 79th Annual Truckload Carriers Association Convention set for March 26-29 at the Gaylord Opryland
Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, should be on your calendar by now, and hopefully
you’ve registered and have your hotel room reserved.
We are excited about the theme for this year’s convention: “We are Truckload, We are One.”
But here’s a warning:
You best get up early on Monday, March 27, get down to breakfast and then get a front row seat
because the topic at the opening general session is about the question that every executive from every
business discipline has had on his or her mind since the election last November: What can we expect
from the Trump administration over the next four years?
Our keynote speaker is someone who can give us answers, regardless of whether you like or agree
with what he says.
Rich Karlgaard is publisher, editor-at-large and global futurist at Forbes. He’s also respected as an
economic leader, an entrepreneur and author.
Karlgaard will offer his unique perspective and vantage point on global affairs from the 2016 elections
to Brexit, the very issues that drive business and investment climates and impact every member of TCA.
On Tuesday the speaker will be Eric Starks, chairman and CEO of FTR, the industry leaders in freight
transportation forecasting, including equipment demand for rail cars, commercial trucks and trailers.
He has a unique ability to communicate to his audiences about how the economy, logistics, freight
www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 43

and equipment demand impact their respective businesses.
Also during the general session Tuesday there will be a panel
discussion on “Autonomous and Assisted Vehicles — A Fast
Changing Horizon.”
We know that after three fast-paced days, our members are
anxious to get home and get back to business, but if you miss our
last general session Wednesday, you won’t be taking home some
key tools for besting your competition.
On Wednesday morning the general session speaker will
be Dr. Kaihan Krippendorff, business strategist and best-selling
author of “Outthinking the Competition.”
It has been said that Dr. Krippendorff “shows that with a
compelling idea anyone can change the world.”
With a mother from Bangladesh and a father from Germany,
Dr. Krippendorff brings a holistic, global perspective to his
speeches.
Book your flight home on Wednesday afternoon and don’t
miss the insights of one of America’s best business strategists.
During the convention, there will also be opportunities to
hear and interact with industry leaders, including our own Russell
Stubbs, who will preside at the meeting as TCA chairman;
TCA President John Lyboldt; and American Trucking Associations
President and CEO Chris Spear, who will be making his first visit
to a TCA convention as head of ATA.
In the afternoons, attendees will want to avail themselves
of numerous educational opportunities in Trucking in the Round
sessions.
Among the topics will be “Following the Trail of Breadcrumbs
— How to Manage FSMA,” “Escaping the Eruption of Class-Action
Suits,” “Affordable Care Act — Will It Stay or Will It Go?” “Millennials
… Attracting, Educating and Keeping Them,” “Benchmarking:
Turning Data into Action,” and “We Are the World — Getting Our
Voices Heard.”
There will be three opportunities to visit the more than 110
exhibitors who will be at the convention — 5 p.m.-7:15 p.m.
Sunday, March 26; 10:15 a.m.-12 noon on Monday, March 27, and
10:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28.
The convention begins with officers’ meetings and committee
and board meetings on Sunday, March 26.
And, of course, there will be opportunities to relax, mingle and
network with fellow attendees at social events.
There is a member reception at 6 p.m. Sunday, the annual
TCA Country and Western-Themed Scholarship Dinner and Fundraiser
on Monday, and the annual awards banquet on Tuesday,
which includes naming winners of Drivers of the Year, Best Fleets
to Drive For and Safest Fleets competitions.
If you haven’t yet registered, you are encouraged to do so and
help us make this year’s convention the largest and best yet.
And just in case you are curious, the convention hasn’t been
held in Nashville since 1991, so if you attended that year, there
are plenty of new attractions, and if you’ve never been to Nashville,
you are in for a treat.
Executive Wellness
Ten executives from the Truckload Carriers Association
members have signed up to take part in the first annual Fitness
Executive Challenge that will take place at the annual
convention next month and training is under way.
The participants are Joey Hogan, president, Covenant
Transport Group; Chris Hummer, president, Don Hummer
Trucking; Scott Randall, vice president of risk management,
Hogan Transport, Inc.; John Spiros, vice president of safety
and claims management, Roehl Transport, Inc.; Michael Eggleton
Jr., vice president, Raider Express, Inc.; Mike Cobb, vice
president of safety and compliance, Landstar System, Inc.;
Jeff Ford, information technology, Bennett International Group;
Susan Hilgenkamp, director of human resources, Fremont
Contract Carriers, Inc.; Randy Luckow, vice president, safety,
“This event will bring awareness to driver health
initiatives and that investing in driver health
saves skilled drivers and improves retention.
The real winners will be all the professional
drivers who will benefit from efforts of the 10
competitors to empower more fleets to invest in
driver health programs.”
— Bob Perry, Rolling Strong president
Dart Transit Co.; and Andrew Boyle, executive vice president,
Boyle Transportation.
Bob Perry, the president of Rolling Strong who is overseeing
the challenge and who is TCA Health and Wellness
Program manager, said the 10 participants are being given the
opportunity to improve their health with weekly support by
highly-trained and experienced CDL wellness coaches.
The winner will be crowned Fittest Fleet Executive and will
receive the Trucker Trainer Silver and Gold Belt Buckle. The
winner will retain his or her title and trophy until next year’s
contest.
During the eight-week training period leading up to the
convention, participants are receiving one phone call per week
with a dedicated Rolling Strong wellness coach, and three
bio screenings taken at a partner retail pharmacist, including
blood pressure, weight, body mass index, heart rate and blood
sugar. They will also be afforded the opportunity for exercise
training on the Fit System and Stepper.
On Challenge Day at the convention, participants will be
subjected to eight fitness stations set up as a circuit — five Fit
System stations for upper/lower body exercises and three Fit
Stepper cardio stations.
Participants will be scored based on the number of repetitions,
the number of steps taken on the Fit Stepper, improvements
in baseline biometric readings, completion of coaching
sessions and completed biometric screenings.
Competition at the convention will be held during exhibit
hours and the results will be posted in real time on the convention
app.
inGauge Composite
Based on feedback from Best Practices Group (BPG)
members, the inGauge team recently launched the beta
version of a new interactive (and fully customizable) online
composite.
And, based on feedback from members after the initial
beta release, more features will be added.
The functionality of the new inGauge dashboard allows
BPG members:
• The ability to customize (metrics, order, categories,
companies, averages)
• Monthly, year-to-date, Rolling 12 and year-over-year
performance
• Custom settings for each primary user and sub-user
• Error/exception catching will remove error/exception
values until verified based on a pre-determined “normal”
performance range
• Tool tip “?” icon to explain the metric, performance
range and actual formula for each metric
• Export to Excel and PDF
• Unlimited number of metrics (subject to the availability
of data), and
• Quick keyword search/filter.
Here are some additional features under development
based on that initial feedback:
• Color coding will exist for first, second, third for each
metric for better visual comparison.
• Exception Reporting/Error Catching. Based on feedback,
distinct “normal ranges” for each calculated metric
will be added. This will determine which companies’ results
are included and which ones are excluded (until corrected)
in the composite.
• Categories. For each view within the composite (current
month, year to date, year-over-year and Rolling 12),
members will be able to select categories for displayed
results — operational, financial, fuel management, maintenance,
safety/HR, and environmental.
• 12 Month Results. For members’ results, there will be
a new tab called “Internal Results” on the composite. This
will display members’ own metrics for each month in the
last 12 months as separate columns, and will display your
specific goals for each of those months.
• Line Graph. Beside each metric, there will be a line
graph icon similar to the external/internal dashboard. Clicking
on this icon will open a line graph providing a visual
representation of a member’s performance for the metric
via goals over the last 12 months.
• Multi-Company Results Tab. For members with separate
operating entities, those members will be able to add
these separate profiles into inGauge and compare performance
in a similar fashion to the current table format.
For more information, please contact inGauge Program
Manager Chris Henry at chris@tcaingauge.com or (888)
504-6428.
44 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

Mark Your
Calendar
MARCH 2017
>> March 26-29 — Truckload Carriers Association Annual Convention,
Gaylord Opryland, Nashville, Tennessee. Find more information at
Truckload.org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
MAY 2017
>> May 21-23 — 36th Annual Safety and Security Division Meeting,
Phoenix. Find more information at Truckload.org or contact TCA at (703)
838-1950.
JUNE 2017
>> June 12 — Independent Contractor and Open Deck Division Meeting,
Argosy Hotel, Kansas City, Missouri. Find more information at Truckload.
org or contact TCA at (703) 838-1950.
>> June 13-14 — 2nd Annual WorkForce Builders Conference, Argosy
Hotel, Kansas City, Missouri. 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.”
46 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017

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