Should everyone in trucking belong to TCA?

Chris Burruss, President: "While membership offers many benefits that apply to all areas of trucking, at a policy level, we really do focus on concerns of truckload carriers.

"We do offer membership to any person or entity providing motor vehicle transportation of property and associate memberships to those in the sale of goods or services to the trucking industry.

"That includes van and refrigerated carriers, flatbed carriers and even owner operators who can join as independent contractors.

"That said, however, we concentrate on the truckload segment, partly because there are other organizations to cover things like LTL, heavy hauling, specialized and tank truck operations."

What sort of benefits does TCA offer?

"We are truly a member-driven organization. In all of our meetings, we continually ask our members to help us set the agenda, and we even go so far as to hold agendas to the last possible moment, to make them as responsive as possible.

"We also believe that with everything we do, we must give each member things they can take back to their companies and implement. We must give them education and information they can use in their operations."

Can you give some examples?

"With the approval of our strategic plan at our annual meeting this year, we identified four main issues to concentrate on:

Safety, the Environment, Workforce Development and Business Efficiencies.

"Safety is clearly a moral imperative. We have to do things to help our industry, which, though I believe is one of the safest industries of all, can do even better. Injuries and accidents, while already low, can always get lower.

"As part of that, we continue to offer our 'TCA Safety 411' program. 'Safety 411' allows our members to use our Web site to post and share their safety concerns, and get feedback from safety and security professionals from other members.

"It's this kind of peer-to-peer sharing and
feedback that is key to most of our programs. Networking is vital to the success of
our members and our programs."

Aren't fleets reluctant to share
secrets with one another?

"This sort of thing might have been unheard of 15 years ago, but it no longer seems to be the problem it once was. Nobody wants to share their secret recipe book and there are certain topics we do not want to discuss.

"There's always a risk, I suppose, that when you share you might be giving away some of the secrets of your competitive edge, but I believe the bigger threat comes from what I call 'bad actors,' people who probably shouldn't be in this industry to begin with, people who undercut their competitors, thinking they'll make up the difference on volume.

"What I think our members have found is
that when we help one another, the
whole industry becomes stronger, and
everyone in it benefits from that."

How can members share in this way in areas besides safety?

"Under the category of Business Efficiencies, we have our benchmarking program, which uses a technique we borrowed from the automotive industry, called '20 Groups.'"

How does that work?

"The 20 Groups, so-called because they can have up to 20 members, share their financial statements with us privately, and we use that information to provide benchmarks for the whole group that they can use to gauge their level of performance.

"The idea is like this: If you imagine you took a sheet of paper and listed all the top performers on the left side of the page and all the low performers on the right side, what we're trying to do is use information and networking to help move all the companies that are doing less well over to the side of the page with the top performers.

"Then, once we've got everyone over on the left, we do the exercise again to achieve even more improvement. The keys are being able to compare your operation to others, and to share and learn from individuals who have ideas you can implement in your own company."

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How about the area of "Workforce Development"?

"That's a very broad area where we can offer companies lots of help. In the past, I think many of us used to think of trucking as an industry in which truckers were trying to learn to become businesspeople.

"And while there's still a lot of that, we're also seeing an evolution in which there are business people in trucking who are learning about trucking. For them, one of the services we can perform is to help them get that 'bird's-eye view of the road from the cab' that many people who grew up in trucking have."

Is this the result of younger family members coming into the business?

"To some extent, it is. And even though those younger members may have worked summers for the family firm, we find there are many things we can help them with.

"That's what our 'Young Transportation Executive' program focuses on. We help these new managers with their understanding of financial issues, including interpreting balance sheets and statements, handling insurance matters and understanding how we as an association can help through our efforts.

"For the more business-oriented who are coming into trucking, we have our 'Truckload Academy,' which can equip them to understand issues like fuel, insurance, workers' compensation, independent contractors, economic issues and benchmarking.

"And, of course, there's another whole aspect of Workforce Development that deals with making sure we have the drivers we need."

Has that problem gone away?

"Not at all. With the continuing slowdown, there's excess capacity and somewhat less need for drivers, but the underlying issues haven't changed. We simply don't have enough new drivers coming into the industry. And those we have make up an aging workforce.

"For one thing, we need to continue to work to make driving a more desirable occupation. Also, as an association, we're working with the Department of Labor and the Department of Defense to explore ways to get more people involved in trucking.

"And, we're also going to need more dispatchers, fleet managers and operations staff as recovery continues.

"All of this is also going to be affected by the fact that fuel costs will continue to battle labor costs to become a fleet's largest cost."

And that relates to your environmental goals, doesn't it?

"In many ways it does. We're working to help our members and the industry address the fuel problem. We held a fuel symposium a while back, and just this year, we sponsored three Webinars on the subject.

"One dealt with vehicle specifying and maintenance strategies, the second with driver behavior and the third addressed business strategies and technology solutions.

"Clearly, our members want to use less fuel, both to save money, and because it reduces their carbon footprint."

Are you expecting new regulations?

"We're not sure how it will end up, but part of our advocacy activities involve helping the industry receive equitable treatment. There are discussions about carbon credits and especially about 'cap and trade' arrangements where one industry can 'buy' carbon credits from another to offset its own emissions.

"That is a lot simpler when you're talking about an industry that isn't moving, like trucking. It's going to be very difficult to measure and limit the carbon footprint of a truck than it will be to do with a factory. We want to be sure our members are treated fairly.

"With ever more stringent emissions regulations, we used to joke that one day we would be putting cleaner air out of the exhaust than we were taking in. Well, that's not so much of a joke any more.

"If trucking gets to the point where it's scrubbing the air, it probably ought to be getting tax credits for its anti-emissions efforts."

Do you have a feeling when the industry will recover?

"I don't have my crystal ball warmed up, but we know we're going to have to see a turnaround in housing before we'll see the flatbed segment come back. Refrigerated has done a bit better than van and flatbed haulers. But it is still very hard to say when we're going to see a big change.

"At the same time, we're continuing our efforts because we know that when the recovery comes, we'll probably barely have time to catch our breath and move on.

"As I said, the driver shortage is not solved, environmental concerns are only going to become bigger, and we're going to be facing a new highway bill, plus the issues of tolls, privatization and taxes."

What changes do you see for TCA?

"One thing we must do is continue to work to see that we understand and are meeting the expectations of our members. There's a generational shift occuring in our membership. Younger leaders are coming in who crave information and want it in very different ways from our traditional members. My daughter, for example, amazes me in that sometimes I think she'd rather text her friends than talk to them on her phone.

"We need to stay aligned with our members and their needs. The last thing we want to happen is to wake up one day and find we're out of touch."

Editor's Note: Besides acting as an advocate for the truckload industry, the Truckload Carriers Association offers an enormous number of education, networking and professional certification opportunities. For an overview, visit their Web site: truckload.org.

Call TCA at (703) 838-1950 for an application or more information.