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“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, nor a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”

-Vince Lombardi

Trucking industry to 'rise from the ashes'

According to American Trucking Associations (ATA) President and CEO Bill Graves, the current state of the trucking industry is, like beauty, “in the eyes of the beholder.”

“Each one of you is viewing the challenges and opportunities through very different sets of eyes,” Graves recently said during his annual State of the Industry address at ATA's annual Management Conference and Exhibition in Phoenix. “Some see more of the former and some more of the latter. But I can say with absolute certainty that, whatever you currently think about the state of the trucking industry, it will only get better if we continue to work together, be willing to lead, not just accept these changing times and continue to have faith in the essentiality of this great industry.”

Drawing on recent as well as historical tipping points and events, Graves added, “We're looking to resurrect a trucking industry, not only from the economic ruins of the past two years, but also anticipating a ‘re-birth' influenced by a myriad of complicated national and international factors.

“In the last two years, we've experienced the worst recession in most of our lifetimes, political gridlock has slowed our nation's democratic process, creating tremendous unrest by our citizens, and the proposed activist policy and regulatory agenda in Washington is rocking the entire U.S. business community back on their heels.

“All these factors combined positions us for our very own ‘Phoenix' kind of moment. However, the timing of that rise back to profitability, back to robust freight volumes, back to the need for new trucks and trailers, back to having headaches over where to find drivers, keeps eluding us. The timing of that moment has been speculated about for a good portion of this year, and now seems destined to be sometime in 2011.”

Concluded Graves: “Rest assured, once our rise from the ashes is underway, we will have something positive to look forward to.”