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Does your trucking company write off thousands of dollars of small losses due to the negligence of other drivers? While small-dollar claims might not seem worth the hassle of collecting, they can add up quickly and amount to significant business losses.

Truck drivers are often away from a motor carrier’s physical buildings — where everyone else is located — so they don’t always develop as strong an attachment to the company as other employees do. So if a company doesn’t regularly reach out to drivers and involve them in its culture, that company runs the risk that drivers may look elsewhere for work, to a carrier that they perceive as better.

According to The National Safety Council, vehicle accidents are among the most costly of injury claims for businesses. The average cost of a loss related to a vehicle accident is nearly twice as much as the average workplace injury.

Should the federal government be measuring your company’s safety culture? The short answer is “no.” Absolutely not.

No law on the books can prevent the lone-wolf intentions of a madman set on harming people with a vehicle. But we can take steps to prepare.

We keep seeing signs that things are looking up for the trucking industry. Most of the relevant economic indicators are favorable for trucking. Commodities are getting stronger, oil rig counts are increasing and the housing recovery is persisting. At the same time, small businesses are feeling a greater sense of optimism, and improvements to the tax code may boost entrepreneurialism. Low unemployment rates ultimately will lead to higher wages, giving consumers more money to spend and putting more goods on trucks.

The recent announcement that Knight Transportation and Swift Transportation are merging is a much bigger and industry-changing event than realized. It comes on the heels of another major development: the public offering by Schneider. In three years, these two deals will be viewed as having set in motion a number of mergers and acquisitions at a pace never witnessed before in the truckload and intermodal industry.

The American trucking industry depends on drivers: a simple statement but one that bears repeating. As president of American Trucking Associations, I have the great privilege of representing 3.5 million professional truck drivers, working on their behalf in Washington to make our industry better, to make their jobs easier.

As I prepare to serve as chairman of the Transportation Intermediaries Association for the next two years, I reflect on my experience with the association. Throughout the past 13 years of attending TIA events, participating on various committees and investing time as a board member and executive committee member, I have experienced firsthand the benefits that come from associating with and investing in TIA.