The Illinois Trucking Association is a long-standing association (77 years) promoting the trucking industry and over the years they have done quite a bit of wonderful things for their members. Unfortunately, now it seems the over regulation of the Illinois Department of Transportation is just too great for them to do any good.
Some Independent Truck Drivers stated that the Illinois Trucking Association was less than adequate and certainly not worth their money to join. When we asked why we received a myriad of reasons from hours of service rules to the no idling at night rules, when the temperature got down below the teens? They said;
What you want us to freeze to death in our trucks and then the next morning they will not start so we have to pay for a jump?
These were not the only concerns, others complained about politics of the leadership and favoritism towards more established and larger trucking companies. Indeed, this is a common complaint of all Industry Association Leadership no matter what sector of our economy and it really would not matter which industry or association we were talking about. There will always be human leaders out there who wants to be in charge and yet forget where they came from.
Nevertheless, we know the value of a strong membership to face off against government bureaucrats and sometimes it takes one to know one and that means you need to have an association behind you that acts like a government bureaucracy to deal with the linear thinking in government.
We wanted to give the Illinois Trucking Association the benefit of the doubt and so we went to three truck stops in Illinois and asked only Illinois Commercial Truck Drivers what they thought of the Illinois Trucking Association. Only 31%, that is 31 drivers out of 100 had something nice or a compliment to say, most all the others made less than complimentary comments.
Many named the actual leadership by name, so the survey appeared to be valid, these drivers knew what they were talking about. When we presented information to the Illinois Trucking Association they were not interested; “Do not contact us anymore” and so there you have it.
L. Winslow is an Economic Advisor to the Online Think Tank, a Futurist and retired entreprenuer http://www.worldthinktank.net . Currently he is planning a bicycle ride across the US to raise money for charity and is sponsored by http://www.Calling-Plans.com and all the proceeds will go to various charities who sign up.
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