Up until a few months ago, I always thought the ATA was for the truck drivers. It was not until I really started paying attention to somethings that the ATA has said did I realize they are not for the drivers.
The ATA claims to be “The Voice of the Industry that Moves America’s Freight.” This must mean the voice for trucking companies and the shippers and receivers because many drivers agree they are NOT the voice for drivers.
Clayton W Boyce – Vice President of Public Affairs and Press Secretary – for the ATA, made contact with me through the online social network site Twitter. He was wanting a way to contact me by telephone to discuss somethings that were happening online. I was contacted by Clayton I must admit he had me convinced by the end of the conversation to “help them out online,” I was kinda feeling sorry for them.
I contacted Clayton by email to see if he would do an email interview, he agreed to answer all of the questions. So I set out to find some questions to get the ATA to answer. I contacted several people and asked if they had any questions for the ATA they wanted answers to. I received several replies, but I knew that the ATA would be busy, so I only sent part of the questions to Clayton for him to answer in his leisure.
That was in January of this year, I still don’t have all of the questions answered. Those must have been questions they (the ATA) did not want to answer. I will list the questions and the answers that I did receive from Clayton. These are the questions I sent Clayton in January and he answered a couple.
Q. What’s the ATA’s position on the “Dan Rather” segments about trucking school scams, and “training companies” making money off of undertrained drivers? – We are concerned about the comments. Part 3 of his report was entirely on truck driving schools, and included a lot of disturbing information. If it is true that 78 percent of new drivers will not last in the trucking industry for more than four months, as the show said, than that is a problem for the drivers and the companies as well.
If driver candidates have to spend a lot of money but only 22 percent of them recoup it salaries, that’s not right. Trucking companies should be retaining as many drivers as they can from those that they hire. This is what companies tend to do because it develops safer, more dependable drivers. As for the allegation that companies reduce new drivers’ miles so that they could replace them with trainees who would make less, I don’t have any confirmation of that. If it is true, the companies are hurting drivers but also themselves, in the long run.
My next question involved several thing’s so I will list the main question and then list each segment separately.
Q. Where does the ATA stand on this: Clayton wrote: “I’m answering as many of these as I can, but some are cryptic or wrong”
We proposed that rather than immediately forcing all trucks in the U.S. to get EOBRs, DOT should first require that only drivers and companies that have a history of violating HOS regulations be required to have them. Unfortunately, when the Obama Administration came in they sidelined that regulation. The Obama Administration now has a new EOBR regulation awaiting approval at the White House. We don’t know what that calls for, but we expect it will force a lot more trucks to have EOBRs.
Q. How does the ATA feel about the Heavier Truck bill? And why? -No answer given
Q. What is the ATA’s position on the cross border issue, with Mexican Trucks being allowed in the U.S.? -No answer given
Q. The ATA is suppose to help companies be a better place to work? What is the ATA doing to stop the “Bullying” and the “rapes” that we are all hearing about? – No answer given
Q. What position does the ATA hold on Natural gas vehicles? -No answer given
Q. What will be the position the ATA holds for the HOS restructure? -No answer given
I have given Clayton an ample amount of time to answer these few questions with no response from him. If he wishes he can come on this site and answer the questions in the comments section. I offered my help to them and they clearly didn’t want it, so I quit posting anything about them. After reading a few things about the ATA, I couldn’t care less if they ever did anything else to “help” the trucking industry. With friends like the ATA, who needs any enemies?
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This is why I could care less about ATA and other groups ,because they just don’t care or stand with us. I’m out here for myself, my family, and all my brother drivers!!!