“Some of that can be good,” Spear “I’M VERY MUCH LOOKING FORWARD TO PUTTING
SOME WINS ON THE BOARD AND SHOWING MEMBERS THAT THEIR HARD-EARNED DUES ARE PAYING OFF.”
—ATA PRESIDENT CHRIS SPEAR
says, “but we have also seen instances where that can be really damaging to our industry. We are interstate com- merce. We would like to maintain one standard just for the flow of commerce. . . So we need to go where the battles are and fight them at that level. If the state associations want our help, we are going to be that resource.” One state issue is at the top of
Asia and Latin America. In 2001, he was nominated by
President George W. Bush and was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy. Before his nomination, Spear worked as legislative director for U.S. Senator Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.). Elisabeth Barna, recently appointed
COO at ATA, says, “[Chris is] well- rounded. He brings both Capitol Hill experience, the agency experience and the corporate experience. He has been on the front lines in Iraq, and he has had to put teams together there.”
TEAMWORK A new team at the American
Trucking Associations is already under- way. Spear has named four executives to the senior leadership team. “We decentralized the leadership
structure here,” he says. “The type of people that I’m bringing in are folks that have not only depth and under- standing of the industry like Elizabeth Barna, who will be my new COO, but we have brought in Jennifer Hall from the House Transportation Committee, where she served as deputy staff direc- tor and general counsel, and had worked prior in the Department of Homeland Security. She has the legisla- tive and regulatory experience and is a great attorney.” Spear also recruited Bill Sullivan to
lead advocacy efforts. Sullivan comes from working with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) on appropriations, prior to working at the Department of Justice with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)
20 The executive vice president of
communications and public affairs role will be filled by Sue Hensley. “Sue has basically checked every
box you could want for this role. She comes to the table with a tremendous rolodex,” Spear says of Hensley. She will be strategizing with Hall and Sullivan about how the ATA tells its story in Washington publications, in social media and in national media. “She has worked in all of those venues extensive- ly. I’m tired of conceding message points to anti-truck groups that basically give a one-line soundbite, and it gets picked up by all these media outlets. “We need someone like Sue that
can make certain our side of that story is also being told equally. Our media relations is going to really up its game going forward,” Spear continues. Spear expects the advocacy and
communications strategy of the Association to change, to be more aggressive with the new team. First, the approach to telling trucking’s story is going to go beyond the national- level, Spear says. Recent decisions by California and Rhode Island have made it necessary to take the message of trucking’s economic impact to states that may be making regulations that interfere with the industry’s ability to grow. “We will add support of state asso-
ciations . . . if they have an issue that has national implications, we will come in and help advocate. We are seeing a lot more states step up and do things in the absence of the federal government taking role.
ATA’s priorities this year. Language in the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 stated that individual states could not institute rules governing the trucking industry because the whole industry should oper- ate under a single federal system, rather than a patchwork of state laws. Recent lawsuits over meal and rest break state laws that contradict the federal laws are threatening to create that patchwork regulation that the FAAAA should pre- vent.
Spear says the ATA is advocating
for one standard—a federal standard to supersede state labor laws. To ensure the efficiency of inter-
state commerce is protected in the trucking industry, ATA is most focused on the spending bill that funds the Department of Transportation. “In that bill, we have a permanent fix to the hours of service rulemaking, as well as the FAAAA issues,” Spear says. The hours of service and FAAAA are
the two big victories Spear says truck- ing should expect this year, “probably around the time frame of December is when we’ll see that bill get wrapped up and sent to the President.”
LONG TERM LEADERSHIP Beyond that, the American
Trucking Associations will be going into their annual meeting in October to set the tenor for what to look for going forward. According to Spear, the longer term
concerns are the driver shortage and autonomous technology. “Autonomous technology is a
five-to-ten-year-out issue that is being Issue 4 2016 | ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT
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