Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch 2 Evan Oneto OTA Chair I want to thank each and every one of you for what you do for your country, your state, your community, your companies, and this association. This Thanksgiving season, I’m grateful to count myself among your ranks. Fall OTA Visits Highlight Diverse Membership, Challenges for Trucking AS CHAIR OF OTA, part of my responsibility is to maintain a dialogue with our members, to see how we can better serve them in the hopes of maintaining and growing our membership. So, this fall I was lucky to get the chance to tour the terminals of some of my fellow Portland area carriers along with OTA’s CEO, Jana Jarvis in order to better understand their priorities as well as their concerns. We visited carriers spanning a wide range of sizes and vocations. We met with everyone from small, family-owned companies, to national LTLs like my own company. We met with carriers in heavy haul and specialized transport, moving, drayage, truckload, fuel distribution, private fleets, and even truck dealers too. And while the folks we visited with were quite diverse, they were united in many of their shared concerns about our industry. I am grateful to each of my fellow OTA members who took the time to sit down with me and Jana and not only talk about their business and explain their challenges, but also to share their ideas, observations, and experience. It was truly instructional to learn about the different business models of such a wide range of carriers. It seems that for every different truck configuration you see driving down the road, there are scores of vastly different types of trucking businesses to go with it. But even more compelling than the facts and figures I learned during my trip is the human component it added to so many of the issues we talk about every day as truckers and as Oregonians. The rise in crime and homelessness seems to be a constant talking point in Portland these days. But to go and see the terminals where hard-working employees are regularly subjected to burglaries, graffiti, and illegal homeless encampments that become centers for drug-dealing and violent crime in the industrial parts of the city where Portland leadership seldom visits, makes the subject feel far more visceral and urgent than any discussion about it happening around a water cooler in a downtown high-rise office. It gave real context to a conversation I had with a mover who talked about the unprecedented number of their customers who were moving out of Multnomah County the last couple years. Visiting some of our heavy haul members and seeing the size of some of the equipment they have to haul through and around Portland added a new dimension to the frustration all carriers seem to feel about encroaching bike lanes and talks of road diets to further narrow lanes, or roundabouts at intersections, that make it less safe for normal loads to move through our road system, let alone the incredible oversize loads these talented companies move with skill and precision. Seeing our truck dealers and witnessing firsthand the amazing knowledge and expertise they provide to such a vast array of customers, I felt the incredibly difficult situation they’re put in by the imposition of impossible environmental mandates forced on engine manufacturers— leaving them on the front lines to explain to truckers the reasons for either the lack of available product or the soaring costs that new engines will incur. In short, my membership visits were a powerful lesson in the vast and varied problems each of us face in our own companies and industries. It made me also appreciate just how many issues OTA must be knowledgeable on and advocate for on our behalf at all levels of government. But I was also impressed by another aspect—the incredible talent, wisdom, and even sometimes optimism that exists among our members despite these challenges. The “can-do” spirit that permeates trucking is still alive and well. My experience visiting you all reminded me that beyond the millions of dollars of Oregon’s economy that we contribute to either directly through our own business or through the
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