In This Edition:

Banquet Update
MATS Press Schedule
Dorothy Moss Passes
HDAW 07
TWNA Meeting @ MATS
Incorporation Update
Glossary Update
From The Chair
Berg's Blitherings

TWNA Banquet
If you have not done so already, it is not too late to purchase your ticket to the TWNA Awards Banquet. The banquet is March 23 at 7 p.m. in rooms C-201-202-203 of the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, KY. Tickets are $60 or $450 for a table. For press members, the price of the ticket includes your $35 dues. Contact Tom Kelley for tickets.

This year's banquet will be better than ever and the Banquet Committee has been working hard to keep the program to about two hours in length. The banquet will include the presentation of the TWNA Communications Awards, the TWNA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Technical Achievement Award and the Highway Heroes award.

Thanks to Tom Kelley, The Deadline Factory; David Kolman, DK Communications; Don Alles, Eaton Truck Components; Sherry White, Truck-Lite; Jami Jones, Land Line; and Derek Smith, Peterbilt, for all their work on this year's banquet.

Our list of great sponsors includes:

Platinum Level
Peterbilt - Caterpillar - ArvinMeritor

Gold Level
Truck-Lite - Kenworth - Goodyear - Roadranger

Silver Level
Freightliner Group - GM Fleet & Commercial
Great Dane Trailers - HDMA - Mid-America Trucking Show
Power Systems Research - ZF Group

Bronze Level
Alcoa - ATA - Bendix - Grote - Mack - Volvo

Thanks to all of them for helping make the banquet a success.

MATS Press Schedule

Wednesday, March 22 - Media Day

8:00 AM - 9:30 AM - Bendix Comm'l Vehicle Systems - Conf. Rm. B102
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM - Commercial Vehicle Group* - Conf. Rm. B104
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM - Kenworth Truck Company - Conf. Rm. B103
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM - Peterbilt Motors Company - Press Luncheon - Offsite
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM - Caterpillar - Conf. Rm. C201
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM - Commercial Vehicle Group* - Conf. Rm. B104
4:00PM - 4:30PM - Comm'l Insurance Solutions - Conf. Rm. B107 & B108
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Webasto - Conf. Rm. C105
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM - ArvinMeritor - Offsite

* - National Seating, Sprague, Moto-Mirror . . .

Thursday, March 23
VIP Hours: 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM Show Hours: 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM

7:30 AM - 9:30 AM - Freightliner Trucks - Booth #3210
9:30 AM - 11:00 AM - Volvo Trucks North America - Booth #3500
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM - International Truck & Engine - Booth #4100
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM - Mitsubishi Fuso - Booth #842
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Mack Trucks - Conf. Rm. C108
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM - Utility Trailer - Conf. Rm. C109
3:00PM - 4:00PM - Ancra International - Conf. Rm. C112
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Truck-Lite - Conf. Rm. C108
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM - Roadranger - Conf. Rm. C105
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM - TWNA Awards Banquet - Conf. Rms. C201-C202-C203

Friday, March 24
Show Hours: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

8:30 AM - 9:30 AM - Vanguard National Trailer - Booth #620
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM - Indiana Custom Trucks - Booth #5720
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM - Tire Retread Information Bureau - Booth # 6973
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM - Aero Industries - Conf. Rm. C101
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - TWNA Meeting - Conf. Rm. C105
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM - Trucker Buddy Int’l - Conf. Rm. C108

Wife of Kona's Jim Moss Passes
Dorothy Moss, wife of Jim Moss, publisher of Truck Parts and Service and Successful Dealer magazines passed away recently. Our thoughts and prayers are with Jim and his family. The service will be held Wednesday March 15 at 10 AM, at Christ Church in Kealakekua, HI. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made to Christ Church of Kealakekua, P. O. Box 545, Kealakekua, HI 96750.

HDAW 07
A committee consisting of Susan Fall of LaunchIt PR; Sherry White of Truck-Lite; Jami Jones of Land Line; Paul Abelson of Road King; Marco Beghetto of Today's Trucking; and Tom Kelley of The Deadline Factory are gathering information to determine what TWNA's involvement should be at Heavy Duty Aftermaret Week. Possibilities include having a cocktail reception at the 2007 meeting and perhaps eventually moving the TWNA Awards Banquet to the meeting.

TWNA Meeting
Mark your calendars and plan to attend the annual TWNA Business Meeting at the Mid-America Trucking Show. The meeting is Friday, March, 24 at 1 p.m. in conference room C105. Agenda items include a state of TWNA report, a report from the Glossary Committee, a report from the HDAW committee, an update on TWNA's not-for-profit application and a post mortem of the banquet. Please plan on attending.

TWNA Incorporation Status
To further the process of TWNA to becoming a not-for-profit corporation the board has approved the following minor changes to the bylaws:

Board Chairperson also serves as Corporate President.
Board Treasurer also serves as Corporate Treasurer.
Board Secretary also serves as Corporate Secretary.
Treasurer position reserved for an Associate Director.
Chair/President & Secretary positions reserved for Press Directors.
Realign Director elections, Press - even years, Associate - odd years.
Corporate Officer terms will run concurrent with Board Officer terms.

The two directorships not currently aligned with the even/odd schedule will complete their current terms, then each be followed by a one-time single-year term to complete the realignment.

As TWNA's chairperson, Denise Rondini, Kona Communications, will also serve as president. Sherry White of Truck-Lite has been elected as treasurer and Tom Berg of Newport Publishing has been elected as secretary.

Glossary Update
The Glossary Committee - Roxane Rose of Roxane Inc.; Bette Garber of Highway Images; and David Kolman of DK Communications, are still gathering terms for the updated TWNA Glossary.

Draft copies of the Glossary will be available at the TWNA booth at the Mid-America Trucking Show. Please stop by the booth (#2420) to review the Glossary. The board currently is reviewing a draft of the glossary and will get back to the committee with suggestions for changes by the end of March.

Special thanks to Phil Madsen, On Time Media, for all his suggestions for terms to include in the Glossary. This updated version will include truckers' slang.

Sherry White of Truck-Lite, is spearheading an effort to find sponsors to cover the cost of printing the Glossary. The Glossary will include a sponsorship page in the front with a logo of each sponsoring company. Please contact Sherry if you are interested in being sponsor.

The print version of the TWNA Glossary should be ready by May and will be mailed to all members with the TWNA Directory.

From the Chairperson
I would like to take a moment to encourage each of you to make plans to attend both the TWNA Awards Banquet and Business Meeting this month at the Mid-America Trucking Show.

Both events are a great way to connect with fellow TWNA members and to express your opinion on the types of projects TWNA should be involved in.

The banquet is Thursday, March 23 from 7 p.m. until approximately 9 p.m. in conference rooms C 201-202-203 of the Kentucky Exposition Center.

The Business Meeting is Friday, March 24 from 1 p.m. until 2 p.m. in conference room C105.

I hope to see all of you there and have a chance to hear what you've been up to lately!

BERG’S BLITHERINGS:

Too Many Trucks and Too Many Trucker Bullies

Over the years, one of TWNA’s missions is to counter what we see as unfair articles about trucks and trucking in the general media. Usually a board member writes a letter of correction to an offending newspaper or broadcast outlet, pointing out how its story was inaccurate or one-sided, and pointing out how important trucks are to our economy.

Now, whom do we complain to about offending trucks? We don’t like to think that truckers are offensive, but a lot of them are. We’ve all written that freight tonnage is at an all-time high, and because most finished goods go by truck, there are a lot of trucks out there. On some highways at certain times, they outnumber autos, and they become scary.

I’ve had people tell me they fear trucks because they’re so big and so numerous that they take over the roads. Just for instance, this happens nightly on Interstate 40 from Barstow, Calif., east, where the road is mostly two lanes in each direction and the state’s lane restrictions end. I-40 remains a four-laner through most of Arizona and beyond, and big rigs use all the space they can get.

I used to react to these complaints with the near-party line that trucks are important because everything we eat, wear, work and play with, and otherwise use comes by truck, and their drivers are invariably safer than most motorists. I’d spout that line because I seldom traveled those roads and hadn’t experienced the takeover effect.

But now I have, and I’m not so inclined to defend trucks. A month or so ago my wife and I, who now live near Columbus, Ohio, had the displeasure of motoring along I-71 between there and Cleveland. There is a lot of truck traffic on this route, and the state has been slow to widen it beyond its original two lanes each way. Toward evening, a wreck had stopped all southbound traffic for a while and I noted with approval that most big rigs had lined up in orderly fashion in the right lane, waiting for the tie-up to end.

When it did, so did their drivers’ sense of order, and courtesy. They busted loose, building speed to and beyond the 65 mph limit for autos, and of course totally ignoring the 55 mph truck limit. They assumed use of both lanes, tailgating cars who didn’t get out of the way until they won by intimidation. It made no difference to most of them that traffic ahead was moving at a certain speed; they wanted to go faster, and they bullied motorists until they either moved over or somehow sped up.

Usually after passing slower traffic, truckers did pull over to the right lane. But that ended as we got closer to Columbus and the glut of trucks had thickened to where it took both lanes just to accommodate all of the vehicles. By then I had totally lost any sympathy for big rig drivers and all their complaints about the hard lives they are forced to lead. I was a motorist, and I wished that every truck had been equipped with a speed limiter or a recorder, or that state troopers had been around to enforce the laws and tame the truckers.

Hey, I occasionally drive big rigs as part of my reporting, so I understand them and the troubles their drivers and owners face. And if I now think that they’re out of control, how do average motorists feel? They’ve never been in a rig, much less driven one, so how much sympathy can they have for trucks and the trucking industry? They don’t, and no amount of p.r. campaigning by the American Trucking Associations or any other group is going to change it.

Now, I could blither on about how ATA should police its members so their drivers behave themselves. But I won’t because very few of those trucks we saw that night belonged to ATA-member companies. The ATA represents a very small minority of America’s tens of thousands of trucking entities, so is not responsible for the misdeeds of most drivers. But wait....

Every time there’s a proposal to raise fuel taxes or tolls, or place new tolls on interstate highways – anything to raise the money needed to expand highways to accommodate more traffic – ATA and its members scream. The idea of tolling of interstates that are now "free" seems to especially incense trucking people, who note that they already pay for the roads through registrations and various taxes, and should not be taxed again.

That principle has merit as a theory, but not in practice. We simply need more highway lanes, and the money to built them, and fuel taxes are no longer sufficient to get enough money into the Highway Trust Fund. And not so incidently, thanks to the driver shortage and the supply-and-demand situation that now favors truck operators, they can now raise rates to cover increased expenses. So couldn’t the ATA and its members rethink their stance on this?

To be fair, state associations sometimes back increases in truck registration fees and even the hiking of existing tolls. But for the most part, trucking executives feel they as business people must chant the mantra of "no new taxes," and are sometimes shrill about it. Meanwhile, too many of their drivers continue to act as bullies, canceling out the good deeds of Highway Heroes, who are still out there, and the good folks in the Trucker Buddy program, whom we’ve all written about with reverence.

Well, little of this is TWNA’s official concern. But I do think we should all keep the oft-occurring specter of fearsome trucks in mind as we go about our reporting, and especially if we write letters to editors protesting unfavorable news coverage.

But getting back to my original question, whom to we complain to about offending trucks? To their owners, of course. Just jot down the number of the tractor, along with the date and time, then contact the company. A few even have those "how is my driving" 800 numbers we can call.

Ha! Try writing down anything while you yourself are driving, and no one’s with you to act as secretary, or it’s dark and no one can write anything without turning on an interior light, which isn’t a good idea for safety. And if nearly all truck drivers are misbehaving, as they were that evening along I-71, you’d need several pages of a notebook to record all the numbers. Call those 800 numbers just as you see some misdeed? No! "Hang up and drive," as the bumper sticker says.

Okay, we’re not supposed to complain about something without offering a solution. So here’s what I’m gonna do on my next road trip, if I can remember to: I’ll take along a tape recorder and mouth truck ID info into it, then act on it when I get home. I’ll do that if I get irked enough, anyway. How about you?

And by the way: You know that ATA-designed poster, the one that says, "Good Stuff – Trucks Bring It"? Yeah, it’s a neat slogan, and the poster's purple, yellow and white graphics are visually grabbing. But have you noticed that the cartoonish big rig pictured is bright yellow, and looks like a school bus? –Tom Berg