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Committee Chronicles
From the front line: TCA’s most engaged members making a difference
Adam
Blanchard
By Dwain Hebda
Adam Blanchard joined the trucking industry when he
co-founded Double Diamond Trucking with a buddy in
2014. Today, he is chairman of the Truckload Carriers
Association’s Highway Policy Committee.
Many trucking company executives started their careers
behind the wheel, learning the trucking business from
the road up over many years. But this is not so with
Double Diamond Trucking’s CEO Adam Blanchard.
Everything Blanchard knows about the trucking industry came
after he agreed to join a buddy to co-found the company in
2014. To this day, the former attorney shakes his head over how
green he was.
“I met a friend of mine through Bible study and he worked for a
trucking company,” recalled Blanchard.
“He kept telling me the things he would do differently. One night
we were watching baseball at a sports bar, and I said, ‘Well, why
don’t we start a trucking company?’” he shared. “We started our
company in my kitchen two weeks later in 2014, and we got our
first truck on the road. Started with one truck and one trailer.”
You’d never guess today that the early days of Double Diamond
were a crash course in trucking for Blanchard.
Over the past seven years, the company, which has expanded
into freight services, has become an unqualified success story,
having grown to 75 trucks, 200 trailers and almost 50 employees
— not counting the owner-operators who make up the majority of
on-the-road head count.
And Blanchard has grown too, from a rank outsider to a savvy
logistics businessman who learned things the hard way, and fast.
“I didn’t have any background in trucking at all,” he chuckled.
“I was just looking for an opportunity to get into business.
And there’s not a better industry in the world to be in than trucking.
The absolute salt of the earth, (the) best people I’ve ever
met are my friends and colleagues in the trucking industry.”
For everything he didn’t know about trucking, there were
some elements that he knew all too well — namely government
encroachment, excessive taxation, and tort abuse, all of which
Blanchard says have only increased with time. Having the opportunity
to stand against such government overreach was one
of the most appealing things about his getting involved with
the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA).
“When I was growing up, my dad told me, ‘Son, to be
successful you need to be involved in your community and be
involved in your industry.’ I really live by that,” he said. “I’ve
always believed if you have the opportunity to be in business,
you need to be involved in your industry to make sure you can
make a positive impact. You want to leave things better than
when you received them.
“TCA is such a special organization,” he continued. “They
do an incredible job advocating for our specific segment of the
industry. I’m very appreciative, and very humbled by the fact
that the leadership of TCA has given me the opportunity to get
involved.”
30 TRUCKLOAD AUTHORITY | WWW.TRUCKLOAD.ORG TCA JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022