Truck Owners and Drivers Association

Deregulation took away the rules in 1980. It never took away the need for standards. Why truckers need a true professional association, and how the Global Network of Associations is building one.

Every supply chain in the world depends on one person who is almost never in the room when it is designed: the trucker. Factories, ports, warehouses and retailers plan around the truck. Contracts are written around the truck. Insurance is priced around the truck. Yet the person behind the wheel is usually the last to be consulted and the first to be blamed.

The Truck Owners and Drivers Association exists to change that position. To understand why, we have to start with the problem itself.

Look at freight as a pyramid. At the top are the shippers and brands who own the goods. Below them, the brokers, logistics providers and carriers who sell, plan and price the movement. At the base is the trucker.

Decisions flow down. Liabilities flow down with them.

Somewhere along the way, the trucker accepted the simplest description of the job: hold the steering wheel and deliver the load. It looks like the easiest role in the chain. It is not. Around that wheel the industry has piled on everything no one else wanted to carry: hours-of-service exposure, cargo claims, detention that goes unpaid, loading and securement risk, permits, taxes, inspections, paperwork, and the legal consequences when any link above fails.

When the trucker settles for the steering wheel, everything else in the supply chain becomes the trucker’s liability.

This is the core problem. It is not a shortage of hard work. Truckers work some of the longest hours of any profession. It is a shortage of position. A driver who sees the job as “delivery service” negotiates like a delivery service and is treated like one. A driver who understands the supply chain he moves, the costs he absorbs and the value he creates, negotiates like a professional.

The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 removed federal control over trucking rates and opened the market to competition. It was meant to lower costs and increase choice, and for shippers it largely did.

For the people doing the driving, the record is harder. Researchers who have studied the decades since describe falling real earnings, longer working weeks and high turnover. Owner-operators gained the freedom to compete, but they also took on the full business risk of every load, with few of the protections the rest of the chain enjoys.

Deregulation removed the government’s rules on rates and entry. It did not remove the need for professional standards, shared training, fair practices and a collective voice. That job was simply left undone.

Aviation faced the same question and answered it differently. Airlines founded the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in 1945. When the United States deregulated its airlines in 1978, the government stepped back from fares and routes, but the industry did not fall into disorder. The standards airlines had built for themselves stayed in place.

Today a passenger can fly across three airlines on one ticket, and cargo moves on common documents worldwide, because the industry agreed on how to work together. Safety audits, dangerous goods rules, agency accreditation and inter-airline settlement are run largely by the industry’s own association, not imposed one rule at a time by every government.

Trucking has no equivalent. That is the gap the Truck Owners and Drivers Association is built to fill: a true professional association that gives truckers the standards, training and collective voice that deregulation left behind.

The Association rests on three texts, each answering a different part of the problem.

Together they say one thing plainly. The trucker is not the bottom of the supply chain. The trucker is its foundation, and a foundation that understands its own weight can change the shape of everything built on it.

A professional association is only as strong as its consistency. The Global Network of Associations is organized in regional chapters and sub-chapters, built around the freight corridors where truckers actually work.

The 35 chapters are active today. The global register maps roughly 130 chapters planned across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia.

Every chapter follows the same membership structure, the same principles and the same standards of service, in its own language. A trucker in Texas, Madrid or Karachi should recognize the same Association, with the same promise. As new regions open, chapters can be started as Mission-Driven, Enterprise or Hybrid chapters, depending on the people and partners behind them.

Standards need tools. The Association carries its work into the cab through two apps:

• iUnity, the app for unity across the Global Network, connecting members with their chapter and with one another. It is available now on the App Store and Google Play, and on the web at app.jointoda.com.
• iTrucker, a business assistant for the trucker as a business owner, and the home of a driver profile that travels with the driver from one opportunity to the next. iTrucker is in development and open to partners and investors who want to build it with us.

Both sit alongside the services the Association already provides, from HVUT and Form 2290 filing to compliance and factoring support.

Membership is built so that everyone who depends on trucking has a place, and a reason, to stand with truckers.

A stronger trucker is not a cost to the rest of the chain. It is a benefit to it.

• Shippers get operators who understand what they are carrying and why it matters.
• Brokers and carriers get partners who plan, communicate and comply as professionals.
• Insurers and lenders get a market with shared standards and better-informed risk.
• Governments get a responsible industry body to work with, as aviation has had for decades.

The road ahead asks more of truckers, too. Rising above the steering wheel means learning the supply chain: costs, contracts, compliance, technology and the value of time. The Association exists to make that learning possible, and to make sure it pays off for the people who do it.