Arkansas Trucking Association

Up Front- Response Team

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

The Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June 1 until Nov. 30, and as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted, this year's season produced an above average number of storms. The devastation in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina resulted in washed away highways, disrupted businesses and halted supply chains of critical products the entire nation depends on.

Before the clouds had cleared, volunteers were loading trailers to haul hope back to communities where everything was lost. Arkansas-based companies joined the efforts.

Stallion Transportation delivered a truckload of 28 pallets of meals-ready-to-eat or MREs into Georgia, while PAM Transport collected and transported employee and community donations including water, food, clothing, pet supplies, toiletries, paper products and cleaning supplies into North Carolina.

And now as hurricane season ends, winter is coming.

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The Last Word

Nuclear verdicts and legal reform - why should you care?

By Nathan Meisgeier

Raise your hand if your trucking liability insurance premiums have been plummeting to record lows over the last few years? Looks around for any raised hands

OK. Raise your hand if it’s easy for you to find liability insurers beating down your door and competing for the opportunity to insure your trucks and drivers? Still looking for a single hand

One more try. Raise your hand if you believe that any accident claim or lawsuit against your company would be resolved quickly, reasonably and at a fair settlement? OK, fine. On that one, I’m not even going to look around the room

As all truckers know, skyrocketing insurance premiums, a lack of insurers willing to write for our industry and climbing claim costs are adding financial stress to an already elongated freight recession.

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Up Front- Issues with Impact

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

I'm sure you’ve noticed, it’s election season again.

Even if you don’t own a calendar, incessant commercials signal it. Candidates smile up at us from postcards in mailboxes or stand with their families in front of flags on television screens to make the case for how they will bring us progress or retrieve something lost. Do we like them, trust them, align with their ideals?

In addition to names, titles and political parties on the ballot, there are also issues. They’re numbered and nameless, making them harder to connect the choice we make to the future consequences. It’s not always apparent from ballot title language how each is relevant to our lives or livelihood.

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The Last Word

To strengthen careers, start at the cradle: Childcare as an economic engine

Collaborating and problem solving with business leaders are among the chief responsibilities of my job as chancellor at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College. It should come as no surprise that the issue that keeps rising to the top of those conversations is addressing the skilled labor shortage across industries and looking at the far-reaching effects that worker scarcity can have on the national supply chain.

Driving that employee shortage? There are a myriad of causes such as population shifts and technological changes, but one issue that resurfaces repeatedly is a lack of reliable, affordable childcare options.

According to recent data, 85% of Arkansas parents struggle to find high-quality care for their infants and toddlers. This statistic underscores a significant and often overlooked factor: a childcare shortage often forces many individuals to reconsider their employment status and/or educational goals, leading to labor shortages across industries. For trucking, where turnover is already more than 100% in some sectors, putting an emphasis on childcare could translate into maintaining a more stable workforce.

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