Shannon Newton
President, ATA

If you’re the resolution-setting type, you already know the adage to celebrate the small wins. You ran that first mile. You wrote that first page. You took your first lesson. You saved that first dollar. Goals achieved and progress made is a result of a lot of small wins.

Celebrating the small stuff is great and all, but at the end of this long decade that we began in recovery from an economic crisis that closed the doors of many trucking companies, I’m ready to celebrate the big stuff. And as we roll into 2020, we have reason to celebrate some big wins for trucking.

First, the highway bill.  The Legislature passed Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s highway funding plan, the largest Arkansas history, in April. The first phase of that bill is in effect. In Oct., fuel taxes increased by 3 cents per gallon and 6 cents per gallon on diesel to fund roads and bridges. The casinos currently in construction across the state will guarantee $35 million annually for infrastructure. And when voters go to the poll in November 2020, they will be able to approve making a half cent sales tax permanent to give state highways, city streets and rural roads the money it takes to maintain and support commerce across this state.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

People ask for your opinion all the time. Sometimes we like to give it unsolicited. Public opinion is used these day’s to critique everything from movies to presidents. As another campaign cycle begins, many of you will likely be asked your opinion on a number of issues or candidates. This kind of survey dates back to George Gallup, the “Babe Ruth of the polling profession,” whose passion for measuring the world and confidence in numerical data inspired him to develop the Gallup Poll.

Gallup was profiled in TIME’s May 1948 cover story. As an editor of his college newspaper, he wanted to know who was reading and what they liked. The old method for determining readership was omitting the crossword puzzle and counting the complaints. Instead, he began surveying readers about their thoughts.

The trucking industry provides jobs for one in every twelve working Arkansans. From dispatchers to accounting, sustainability officers, compliance specialists, marketing and hundreds of others, we bring the freight and jobs for Arkansas communities.

Find out more about the career and internship opportunities available from the following companies, who proudly  support  Arkansas Trucking Association's partnership with UCA Transportation Day.

Career Opportunities

ATA would like to thank all the volunteers, sponsors, vendors, drivers, technicians, and fans that helped to make the 2019 Arkansas Trucking Championship the biggest to date!

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

It’s summertime. Time for beach vacations, pool days, theme parks and spending quality time doing things you enjoy with the people who make it enjoyable. 

In trucking, summer activities include a fast-paced produce season when those who haul fruits and vegetables have tight timelines for delivering watermelons and peaches to shelves in time for picnics and barbecues. While kids gather ‘round the campfire telling spooky stories before heading back to their bunks, bellies full of marshmallow, we are telling our own stories. It’s an essential part of what we do all year round, but the audiences vary from season to season.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

The transportation sector is the 4th biggest contributor to the American GDP. Research from the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that accelerations and decelerations of the freight Transportation Statistics Index precede the growth cycles of the economy by about four months. We sit on top of the economic fault lines, so when plates begin to shift, trucking feels it first.

Over 200 years ago, the three most powerful earthquakes shook the U.S. along the New Madrid faults, a seismic zone from Arkansas to Illinois. On Dec. 16, 1811, northeast Arkansas was the epicenter of the first quake. For over 7 weeks, more earthquakes and intense aftershocks rippled up the fault lines, and the convulsions shook awake people in Pittsburgh. Even Pres. John Madison and his wife Dolly could feel the tremors in the White House.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

Each year, one team raises their league’s distinct trophy, cup or bowl in the air in celebration of a year’s worth of hard work, dedication, success, and likely a little bit of luck. Champions secure their place in history, forever to be remembered for the collective effort to be the best.

The images remembered and stories re-told are often those final moments or decisive series of events.

Yet, if you’ve ever been so fortunate to be part of a championship team, you know there are many more less picturesque moments that contributed to the success. Often times there were years’ worth of preparation, conditioning and disappointment. But when the right team was assembled, aligned with opportunity and a little bit of good fortune, history was made.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

It feels so good to be right. Neuroscientists say we get a little rush of dopamine when we read or hear news that matches our beliefs about the world and success.  

Recently while at the gym I made a flippant comment, in attempt to make a loss sting a little less, about how boys were supposed to win a particular challenge.  I believed it to be true, but I didn’t really know with certainty.  It seemed logical to me that longer bodies with superior upper body strength would be advantageous for a row challenge measuring meters rowed in a given time.

As not to dwell on the loss, I quickly moved on to the next station and a new topic of small talk. 

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

I would love to use this column to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate all of you on a big win for the trucking industry, but maybe next time. This one's about perseverance, commitment and our willingness as an industry, as advocates, to call an audible and continue the work because there's plenty of it.

For the better part of three years, we have strongly supported the American Trucking Associations efforts to find a solution to the F4A issue of federal preemption.  State laws conflicting with federal laws have subjected interstate carriers to the impossible task of attempting to comply with multiple sets of overlapping rules and made the industry a target for greedy trial lawyers looking to catch carriers out of compliance with the duplicative requirements.

Over this time period, legislative strategies have been created, executed, scrapped and re-drawn numerous times.  Members of Congress have come and gone.  We’ve hoped for relief from the nation’s highest court.  But each time we were close to delivering a victory, language was stripped, votes were whipped, the petition for hearing by the Supreme Court was denied, and we came up short.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

Every September, we host a lunch at a local truck stop during National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. It’s not particularly fancy, but it does take a lot of volunteers, donations and ketchup packets to pull off. We welcome as many truck drivers as are able to take their lunch breaks with us as they are travelling I-40.

Serving burgers and hot dogs is not an integral part of my job. But I look forward to it every time the opportunity comes around, because I love spending time with the people in this industry.

A few weeks ago, I was in Malvern, Ark. at JM Bozeman Enterprises. Rep. Bruce Westerman had accepted our invitation to meet constituents and learn more about the trucking industry in his district. We walked through the dispatch “war room,” met the all-female safety team and toured the technicians’ shop before Rep. Westerman agreed to ride along with one of the senior drivers. They shook hands, took pictures, and told stories with the Congressman while showing him their lives.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

I am not much of a come-what-may person. Laissez faire is not part of my vocabulary, and not because I don’t speak French. It’s not part of my vocabulary because I’m just not the type of person who is comfortable when things are out of my control.  I prefer not to leave things to chance.

And yet, there are things in life you can’t control. I don’t like it, but I accept it. As often as tragedy can be prevented, it can’t.

In May, a jury in Houston, Tex., awarded a nearly $90 million judgment against Werner Enterprises after a pickup truck travelling I-20 lost control in freezing rain conditions, left the lane, crossed through the median and into the path of a Werner truck, travelling the opposite direction.

ATA would like to thank all the volunteers, sponsors, vendors, drivers, technicians, and fans that helped to make the 2018 Arkansas Trucking Championship the biggest to date!

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

Before Edison commercialized the light bulb, illumination has been a metaphor for how innovation lights up the dark. Scans of our brain show neurons literally “lighting up” the screen when we think and consider ideas.

We have this image of an isolated genius, hunched over his desk, where a glowing bulb flickers above his head in a dim, empty room as he composes, paints, or invents some masterpiece. Even Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest artists of the 21^st century said, “Without solitude, no serious work is possible.”

But science suggests that no serious work would be possible without socializing either, that our brains are made for relationships and innovation is just a by-product of what we really use our minds for—community.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

In December 1982, Pres. Ronald Reagan faced a problem that feels eerily familiar. Four thousand miles of the not-yet complete interstate system was in need of resurfacing and 23,000 bridges in need of repair. The gas tax, which had been levied to fund the interstate system, had not been increased since three years before construction began. And it no longer covered expenses.

In the Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, for the first time in 23 years, Congress more than doubled the gas tax, raising it five cents to a total of 9 cents a gallon. The bill authorized $71 billion for highway construction, road repairs and mass transit.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

This time of year, there’s a lot of pressure to spend weeks (and your whole paycheck) shopping for and wrapping holiday gifts for your family, but in the minutes after all the presents are opened, bellies full of chocolate oranges and surrounded by a small mountain of crumpled reindeer paper and ribbon, we can forget that the most expensive gift is the one we sometimes take for granted—living in a free country.

For all the reasons to love the holidays—presents, parties, your kids in matching pajamas on Christmas morning—the expectation to make merry and have an abundance of joy is not always the reality for the families who have an empty seat at the dinner table. The songs tell us to trim up the tree and deck the halls, but there’s a melancholy about the season for anyone remembering loved ones who have laid down their lives for us to freely celebrate whatever holidays we want.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

This year has been marked with reflection over the past 85 years since the Shippers and Carriers Association of Arkansas was formed in 1932. While it might be easy to talk about how the Association took tough stances on issues that improved conditions for Arkansas carriers, it’s much harder to be the association that takes those tough positions and persuades others to come along. Sometimes, we’ve gotten it right and led the change, and other times, like when the Association opposed deregulation, we followed the change and learned to adapt.

On every issue ATA tackles, we want to be on the right side of history.  The questions we always ask are these: Does this improve safety? Does this make carriers more efficient, more profitable or more risk averse? Does this protect our most valuable asset—professional drivers?

When the answers are yes, we don’t hesitate to stand out front, lead the discussion and speak to our legislators and other decision makers. Fortunately, on ELDs, we have been heard by those in Washington.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

Last week, around 1:18 pm, people gathered on the sidewalk outside the office, passing around pairs of funny cardboard glasses, to crane their necks back and look skyward for the solar eclipse.

Because Arkansas didn’t lie in the path of totality, only 90% of the sun was covered. Ninety percent sounds like a lot, but unless you had the right lenses, the day wasn’t that much different than any other day. Crescent shadows fell on the pavement, and the light was a little dimmer than any other sunny afternoon, like a storm was rolling in but without a cloud in the sky.

Even just ten percent of the sun’s light still made for a mostly bright, hot, summer day.

For our cover story this issue, I got to spend an inspiring morning with Laura Lane, the president of global public affairs at UPS.  She talked about her life and her stance on policies important to the industry, but what I walked away from that meeting with was a sense of hopefulness, that every challenge has a silver lining if you are wearing the right lenses.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

When I sit down to write this column, I usually pick up my pom-poms and megaphone, taking on the role of industry cheerleader. I let you know where we are in the game, if we are chanting “D-E-F-E-N-S-E!” or “S-C-O-R-E!”

Usually, I’ve got good news. Our bill was passed. We got through to our legislators or the public. We did a good deed. We’ve set new goals. We celebrated a new milestone. We launched a new program.

This time, instead of good news, I’ve got perspective. For all the times fighting for the industry feels like political football, it isn’t the kind of game where the buzzer sounds, the ice chest is upended and we all go home.

The work is never really over, and I am reminded of that each time highway funding gets pushed further down on the agenda or when I open my inbox to misinformation about the industry and what we contribute.

ATA would like to thank all the volunteers, sponsors, vendors, drivers, technicians, and fans that helped to make the 2017 Arkansas Trucking Championship the biggest to date!

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

I wish I could put 85 candles on a cake and pass out slices frosted with chocolate and sprinkles to all of you because this is a big deal. As we prepare to celebrate the trucking association’s milestone anniversary, I can’t help but reflect on how amazing it is that our organization has been around for eight and a half decades.

Every day, we read about another industry on the verge of extinction. Progress comes along and renders someone’s job or even an entire industry obsolete. It makes the world better, safer, faster, more inclusive, but at the cost of careers, people who built their livelihood and identity around operating switchboards, mining coal, building shopping malls, delivering milk to neighborhood porches or renting out the latest blockbuster movies.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

The Regular Session of the 91st Arkansas General Assembly convened on January 9, 2017. The following days of the legislative session are some of the busiest days of the year for Arkansas Trucking Association.

All year, we listen to our members’ challenges in the state and identify ways we can address those challenges, and while the wheels of ATA are always moving forward, we tend to swing into high gear when our elected officials come to town.

One of the biggest issues our carrier members are currently facing is the financial uncertainty stemming from litigation following an accident. You may have seen the headlines about “nuclear verdicts” bankrupting small businesses and driving up settlement and insurance costs for even the safest carriers. Right now, there is a real opportunity to improve the legal climate in the state which will enable job growth and economic improvement.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

The bad news first: We saw everyone's ugliest side over the last 18 months as candidates fought for competing solutions to problems in the economy, foreign policy, the environment, protecting human rights, but mostly with each other. It is apparent that Americans are still divided on an awful lot.

But the good news is the election and the time for talking about hypothetical policy is over.

And the better news? The list of divisive issues for Americans is long, but infrastructure is not on that list. Pres.-elect Trump has promised to invest $1 trillion into repairing and improving the highways, bridges, railways and airports and to do it ourselves: "Buy American and hire American." And everyone, no matter who you voted for, wants to see if and how he can do it.

Politico's Infrastructure Survey found that 80 percent of registered voters agreed that passing an infrastructure bill should be a "top" or "important priority for the federal government." There's more consensus for the urgency of fixing roads than there was for either candidate because a collapsing bridge doesn't care whose name is on your bumper sticker.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

We Americans love our freedom. An inalienable right, it is baked into our national identity. We are emotionally attached to making our own decisions, being our own bosses, ruling our own domains. Even when it’s not in our best interest, we cling to freedoms like eating too much or driving too fast.

So it should come as no surprise that many in the trucking industry are squirming after reading the recent proposal from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to equip heavy-duty vehicles with devices that limit their speeds on U.S. roadways and require those devices be set to a maximum speed.

Safety is the cornerstone that allows our industry to prosper. Unsafe behaviors or policies raise the risks on the roads that our families travel, they cost our industry time and money, and they endanger our most scarce, costly and valuable resource—our employees. So the notion that the trucking industry is anything other than an advocate for safe driving and roadways is baseless.

However, that notion is one we must be constantly vigilant against when opposing regulations that make us uncomfortable. Anti-trucking groups masquerading as safety advocates are always looking for ways to paint our legislative and regulatory agenda as anything but beneficial for public safety.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

Finally! It’s almost over. And I can hardly contain my excitement. Like so many of you, with the end in sight, I found myself asking, “Is it over yet?”

Oh wait, did you think I was referring to the never-ending presidential election campaign?

I’m talking about something much more pleasant... football.

After 7 months without anything more than spring football, media days and those surely meaningless preseason polls, the anticipation is over.

I forgive you for thinking I was writing about the presidential campaign though. I feel your pain. I suspect—whether right, left or somewhere in between—it is wearing on us all.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways turns 60 this summer. It has been called the most ambitious public works project since the age of the Roman Empire and is literally the backbone of America’s economy.

The construction of the interstate system has had a profound effect upon the American economy and contributed significantly to improved economic efficiency and productivity. The completion of the interstate system by the 1980s, coinciding with deregulation of the trucking industry, resulted in significant gains in the competitiveness of U.S. businesses.

Continuous improvement and innovation have today made "just in time" delivery widespread, mobile inventories the norm, resulting in the nation’s trucks literally becoming rolling warehouses. Growing demand has driven logistics to become increasingly efficient, including just-in-time delivery, increased small package delivery, demand-side inventory management and e-commerce.

Shannon Newton
President, ATA

Hi, my name is Shannon, and I am a Type A, competitive strategist. I like to win, a lot. Others might say I’m driven, ambitious or determined. But really, I just want to win.

I’m hardly alone. Many of my peers, in business and politics, share this trait.

Usually this characteristic is beneficial in our professional world, focusing individuals, pushing them to attain desired results.

At times however, we all stumble over our will to win. We lose sight of the war, for the battle right in front of us. We bicker over strategy and tactics. It’s not enough to simply win; we want our approach to deliver the victory.

Truckers Against Trafficking enlists the trucking industry to the effort to end human trafficking

By Jennifer Barnett Reed, Contributing Writer

Kevin Kimmel could have just minded his own business that cold January morning. He could have looked the other way, told himself the men knocking on the door of the RV parked two slots down from him behind the truck stop was none of his business. He could have explained away the scared face of the girl who peeked briefly out from behind the RV’s closed curtains before someone jerked them closed again. He could have just closed his own truck cab’s curtains and gotten some sleep after a long night of driving and deliveries.

Instead, he listened to his gut and made a phone call. A few minutes later, he watched as police knocked on the door of the RV parked two slots down from him at the rural Virginia truck stop where he’d stopped to rest. He watched as the scared, emaciated young woman came out and talked to the officers. Watched as they called an ambulance to take her away and as they handcuffed the other two people in the RV, a man and woman. 

Kimmel, then a driver for Con-way Freight, learned later that the young woman was a victim of human trafficking. The couple police arrested had kidnapped her in another state, and for two weeks they had tortured her, starved her, raped her, and sold her for sex as they traveled from truck stop to truck stop.

Kimmel’s phone call most likely saved her life. Because of his decision to get involved, the young woman is now back home with her family, and her kidnappers are in federal prison. 

Back in January 2015, Kimmel had never heard of Truckers Against Trafficking, a nationwide organization that works to leverage the eyes and ears of truck drivers and other industry employees in the fight against human trafficking. He hadn’t been taught what signs to look for, and he didn’t know about the national hotline he could have called to make an anonymous report. He might not have even thought to use the phrase “human trafficking” to describe what he was seeing. But he did exactly what Truckers Against Trafficking’s founders hope to empower all truck drivers and truck stop employees to do: He kept his eyes open, and he told someone what he saw.

“That’s the power of the trucking industry recognizing [trafficking] and doing something about it,” said Kylla Lanier, the organization’s co-founder and deputy executive director.

Human trafficking is a worldwide problem that reaches into just about every industry, Lanier said. Lanier is a former teacher and missionary, but she and her mother and sisters were moved to found Truckers Against Trafficking after reading a book about the issue and realizing what a powerful force truck drivers and truck stop employees could be in the effort to free victims of modern-day slavery.

Since the organization was founded in 2009, it has partnered with almost every state trucking association in the United States, as well as national trucking associations, major corporations, law enforcement agencies, trucking schools and other groups. It provides DVDs, informational wallet cards, posters and other materials at no cost, and to date has registered more than 166,000 trucking industry employees as “TAT trained.”

Kimmel is now one of them.

“It was an eye-opening experience for me,” Kimmel said. “Since then I’ve followed Truckers Against Trafficking and have helped however I can.”

Joining the Cause

The Arkansas Trucking Association is one of the latest state trucking associations to formally partner with Truckers Against Trafficking. Lanier spoke to the ATA Safety Management Council in December, and attendees “wiped out” a box of training materials, Lanier said.

 “Everybody in that room committed in whatever way they could,” she said. Trucking companies promised to train all their employees, and an insurance company representative asked for training materials to pass out to the company’s carrier clients.

Truckers Against Trafficking has three goals, Lanier said. First, they want to reach the trucking industry through every avenue possible. They work with trucking schools, national and state trucking associations, carriers, even shippers who contract with carriers and are in a position to influence them to include TAT training for their drivers.

Second, they work with law enforcement to get them into the same room with key trucking industry stakeholders for training sessions.

And third, they want to marshal the resources of the trucking industry to help in the fight against human trafficking. A number of major national companies have already signed on as corporate sponsors, Lanier said.

The trucking industry is in a unique position to help fight human trafficking, said Shannon Newton, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association.

“It takes advantage of truck drivers’ expertise, where they spend their time, where they do their work, in order to leverage that and be good citizens,” Newton said. “We want our drivers to be equipped with information and know what to look for and whom to call. They might see something but don’t want to be perceived as a tattletale. So having this centralized hotline specifically targeted toward human trafficking gives drivers the opportunity to say ‘This is what I saw.’ It gives them a safe place to call and try to be proactive and helpful.”

The hotline — 888-373-7888 — is run by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. It is staffed around the clock, and drivers don’t have to share their personal information or speak directly to law enforcement if they don’t want to.

The TAT training is simple, but it’s proving to be very effective. Kimmel’s may be the best-known story of a truck driver helping identify a victim of human trafficking, but it’s far from the only one.

Lives saved

Already, more than 1,200 calls have come to the national hotline from the trucking industry — calls that helped identify close to 400 possible cases of human trafficking involving 692 victims, 234 of whom were minors.

“It’s working,” Lanier said. “We get to hear really cool things.” In Ontario, Calif., she said, a security guard at a truck stop who’d been trained using Truckers Against Trafficking’s materials noticed suspicious activities going on at a motel across the street. After he called the hotline, law enforcement arrested three traffickers and recovered several victims — including a minor.

The warning signs of human trafficking can be subtle, Lanier said. A lot of times, people who appear to be voluntarily working as prostitutes are actually under the control of a pimp. They may have been coerced or forced into prostitution initially and kept there by threats or beatings. If the person is a minor, she said, that’s the only thing that matters: Under federal law, anyone under the age of 18 who is being sold for sex is a victim of human trafficking.

The woman may be bruised, or talk about needing to make a certain amount of money before she can go home. She may have a branding tattoo — something as blatant as a bar code, or phrases like “cash only,” “Daddy’s girl,” “money maker,” even just the pimp’s name.

“They brand them like cattle a lot of times,” Lanier said.

Drivers might also notice two women — one older, one younger — going together from truck to truck or into a motel. The older one might be working for the trafficker — a victim herself, told she has to train the younger one. The trafficker might drop someone off at the cab of a truck and come back 15 minutes later to pick her up. There might be, as in Kevin Kimmel’s case, a van or an RV parked where it wouldn’t normally be, with men coming in and out of it.

“We got a tip from a trucker’s wife about a van at a truck stop in Brownsville, Texas,” Lanier said. “Men were purchasing girls brought over the border.”

Lanier understands that drivers might be reluctant to get involved. That’s why the hotline is completely confidential. What they need to do in return, though, is try to give as much information about the situation as they can to the hotline so law enforcement will have enough details to take action, Lanier said: Location, time, exactly what’s happening, any license plate numbers or vehicle descriptions.

The trucking industry’s response and willingness to get involved sets it apart, Lanier said, and both Congress and the United Nations have taken notice of its efforts.

“Sex trafficking and labor trafficking happen in every industry around the world,” she said. “It is the trucking industry that has stood up and said ‘We’re not going to bury our heads. We’re going to do something about it.’”

For more information, visit www.truckersagainsttrafficking.org.