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As officers of American Trucking Associations, we are tasked with guiding the professional management of ATA and representing ATA at our federation partners’ meetings and industry events. In recent years, we also have assigned an officer as steward of ATA’s most prominent and important programs. For example, First Vice Chairman Kevin Burch has overseen our industry image movement, Trucking Moves America Forward, while Second Vice Chairman Dave Manning is our officer contact for LEAD ATA, our emerging leaders program. As part of this effort, I have the honor to be the officer serving as liaison to the ATA Technology & Maintenance Council, or TMC.

Idaho’s Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle program, or GARVEE, recently wrapped up, after a decade of investment in the state’s roads and bridges. Along the way, the GARVEE program transformed the state’s infrastructure in a way we haven’t seen since the interstate system was built through Idaho in the 1960s.

Intermodal drivers are the essential link in the global and domestic supply chains, providing the first- and last-mile service for every load. A healthy intermodal network depends upon an adequate and ready supply of drayage drivers. This, in turn, is dependent on the ability of these drivers to operate in the most productive environment, be treated as professionals and with respect and earn a reasonable living for their efforts.

The logistics industry in the United States is rapidly evolving. Thirty or 40 years ago, we worked within our own borders to manufacture and produce many of our own goods. In the 1980s and 1990s, this quickly shifted to China and India, because production costs and labor were much cheaper overseas. Even with the costs of transportation, the United States could manufacture goods much easier in China than in our own homeland.

Truck drivers, for the most part, don’t stay with one company for long. They go elsewhere quicker than they can be replaced.

Many years ago, when I was new to transportation safety, our team crafted five tenets for safety success:

As chairman of the American Truck Dealers, the challenge for all of us — truck manufacturers, trucking companies and dealers — is to build relationships with members of Congress and federal regulators so that we have a voice in shaping the environment in which our businesses operate.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration finally released the long-awaited electronic logging device mandate’s final rule in December. The rule states that motor carriers without a current solution in place now have until December 2017 to implement ELDs for any vehicle or combination of vehicles with an actual weight and/or Gross Vehicle Weight Rating of 10,001 pounds or more. The rule is meant to improve compliance with hours-of-service safety rules.

The people who constitute the trucking industry are among the best examples of the American work ethic — they come to work every day focused on being a driver for the North American economy. Meeting them has been one of the great joys I’ve experienced while traveling across the United States.