Issue 1, 2018

5 www.ortrucking.org Issue 1 | 2018 ADVOCATING, EDUCATING, AND PROMOTING THE TRUCKING INDUSTRY EVENTS UPCOMING EVENTS Welcome New Members of Q4—2017! Bed Rock Trucking Ezlogz City of Hillsboro Staton Companies R W Hays Co. dba Hays Oil Company Signature Transport, Inc. City Delivery Service King Estate Winery Best Buy In Town Wilson Oil dba Wilcox & Flegel D&T Excavation, Inc. Hoffman Corporation connected to OTA in a limited consulting capacity, and I am personally grateful that he has conceded that much! I am in the midst of the 2018 legislative session as I write this column. In my 20+ years of lobbying, I have never experienced a more difficult environment in which to do productive work. 2019 promises to be even more difficult. While Republicans at the national level are experiencing record fundraising and election success, that is not the way it is here in Oregon. We, as an association, have to finally get serious about TruckPAC fundraising and our grassroots strength at the local level. Our political adversaries are well organized and well-funded and we have the choice to step it up or simply concede. Dale Lemmons, OTA’s Chair of TruckPAC, issued each of you a challenge in the last issue of the Dispatch and at our Southern Oregon Trucking Industry Mixer. Please take this seriously. We will have our golf tournament event again in July—but it isn’t sufficient to our needs. We need to be able to fund initiatives and lawsuits as well as candidates since that is how the political climate has changed. I’m counting on each of you to look at Dale’s challenge and meet it as best you can. Watch for other new efforts on the OTA front later this spring. Mark Gibson has taken on the responsibility of organizing our political strength regionally by coordinating our involvement in the various transportation committees around the state. We are establishing a new Membership Committee at OTA— if you are interested in helping to grow our membership let us know. We have a variety of committee opportunities available and your commitment will only make OTA stronger! And remember… as Martina Navratilova once commented, “The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.” On behalf of your industry, your company, and your association— be a pig!