BLP: 379 50 Years of Fighting for Truckers

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Todd Spencer joined OOIDA as an owner-operator member in 1976 and has spent the half century since fighting for small business truckers. We sat down with him at OOIDA headquarters in Grain Valley, Missouri for a long conversation about the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the fights it has won, and the ones still ahead. He was elected to the board in 1978, came on staff in 1981 as editor of Land Line and communications director, back when the organization was small enough that he was not sure he would get paid, and became president in 2018 after decades as Jim Johnston's right hand.

He grew up in Missouri with a favorite uncle who drove, started hauling grain, shingles and building materials out of Kansas City through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa, and has slept in line at the river terminal waiting to unload like plenty of people watching this. He tells the story of four states that once pulled truckers off the scales and required them to take a drug test on the spot. A woman driving through Nebraska refused, called headquarters, and OOIDA sued Utah, Nebraska, Minnesota and New Jersey along with the federal agency behind the pilot program. They won in every state. He also walks through the split speed limit fight in Missouri and the Tennessee inspections that included searching a driver's living space, and why he believes a right you cannot assert is not really a right.

The conversation goes deep on how the industry changed. Why deregulation and investor capital turned JB Hunt, Werner and Swift from small companies into the dominant players, and why those companies are run by MBAs, attorneys and accountants instead of truckers. Why lease purchase programs and per mile pay exist at all. Why he calls the driver shortage a myth that carrier executives sell to lawmakers, and why he would raise the CDL age rather than lower it. What worries him about autonomous trucks and about bad actors overseas resetting electronic logging devices. And why, after 50 years, his answer is still the same: if you drive a truck, you ought to be a member.

Chapters:

0:00 Joining OOIDA in 1976

1:47 Hauling Grain, Shingles and Building Materials

2:40 Sleeping in Line at the Terminal

3:20 Jim Johnston, a Trucker's Trucker

4:26 Starting Out Under the ICC

5:20 The Oil Embargo and 250 Organizations

6:14 Driver Training, Decades in the Making