One by one they have come out of the LEAD ATA program, and by now, there are lots of them.
As the American Trucking Associations recently welcomed a new class of entrants into its management-style program designed for the next generation of trucking leaders, the math shows that the numbers of LEAD ATA graduates are reaching a critical mass. Reviewing the graduates going to back to the first class in 2014, the 2021-2022 class will put the total number of graduates over 100.
In other words, a lot of trucking executives have gone through the one-year program that launched in 2014, have developed strong relationships with other graduates over the years, nurtured incredibly tight ties with their own classmates and are likely to soon be identified as leaders.
It’s easy to envision one trucking executive saying of an employee, “You know, Jennifer went through that LEAD ATA program.” And with that, it’s likely to be a mark of distinction.
Elisabeth Barna is the executive vice president of industry affairs at ATA, as well as senior adviser to ATA President and CEO Chris Spears. She also is the manager of the LEAD ATA program.
“The cool thing is they become friends and fast colleagues,” Barna said in an interview with FreightWaves. “They’ve got group chats where they go on and say, ‘Hey, I’m looking for a safety director. Does anybody know one?’”
The end result, Barna said, is “they rely on each other for experiences, but they all become good friends.”
The size of the graduating classes tends to be either side of the 15 students mark. A pandemic-hobbled class for 2020 graduated 11 students; there are 11 students this year as well.
One notable aspect of the nomination process: The employer of the person who is applying is not visible to the judges who choose which candidates make the cut. Barna said that keeps out any biases that might crop up about particular companies.
Allied ATA members who sell goods and services to the industry also can be participants of LEAD ATA. But Barna emphasized they aren’t allowed to use their time in the program to directly try to sign up fellow students as customers.
The average age of the LEAD ATA participant is late 20s to early 30s. But some have been in their 40s. The shortest number of career years before they are nominated for the program has been three. Some participants coming out of the larger companies have been there 15 to 20 years.
With family-owned businesses long having been a feature of trucking, Barna said the number of LEAD ATA participants who are members of owner families are probably 50% of total enrollment. “But we also have some of the larger companies that send people who are rapidly moving up with more responsibility,” she added.
Justin Hill of Hill Transportation Services is a member of the current class that had its introductory meeting at the annual ATA conference, more formally known as the Management Conference & Exhibition (MCE), in Nashville, Tennessee. In a video that is part of the LEAD ATA website, he talks about the program as seen through the eyes of a particular segment of the student body: a family member entrusted with the responsibility of keeping the business alive and thriving.
“Coming from a family business, keeping trucking around for a long time is really important to me,” Hill says in the video. “Just as my grandfather passed it on to my father and he will pass it on to me, I want to pass it on to the next generation, and for us to do that, we need to keep our industry strong.”
The core requirement for the program is a mandatory series of four in-person meetings, one of which takes place at MCE. It is that meeting where the LEAD ATA participants kick off the 12-month course.
Barna said that meeting involves an introduction to the ATA and how it is organized, but making the participants loyal ATA members is far from the primary goal. Other meetings, she said, involve such things as trips to Washington to meet legislators, regulators or their staff who are involved in trucking issues, and hearing from the presidents of the state associations that make up ATA.
There are optional group meetings as well, Barna said, and events such as the National Truck Driver Championship that the group attends. A leadership program also requires a LEAD ATA participant to organize “from start to finish” some sort of event that helps drive home the message of trucking, Barna said. She cited as an example bringing one of the ATA show trucks into a town and building an audience for the presentations that go along with that visit.
Another meeting zeroes in on leadership and involves hearing from a panel of trucking CEOs. “That is where there is a lot of focus on leadership skills,” Barna said.
Another part of the program involves the larger group splitting into smaller groups who then take on a project. The project involves crafting a solution to an industry issue, with the findings presented to the larger group. A project that explored the transition to ELDs when the mandate for their use was looming is an example of one. .
Barna said the process for choosing who gets to partake in the program involves a nomination by an individual that needs to be seconded by his or her employer. The employer agrees to pay a tuition fee — less than $1,000 — and allows the employee to travel and take time off for activities related to LEAD ATA.
The cost can be kept low partly because of the role of the program’s sponsor. Jeremy Reymer is the founder and CEO of DriverReach. His company also is the new sole sponsor of LEAD ATA.
Reymer, speaking with FreightWaves at the Nashville meeting, said what drove him to financially back the program is that he was “a huge supporter of the idea of, how do we take sharp young people who look like leadership material, and really immerse [them] in all things transportation and trucking?”
Reymer said the goal of LEAD ATA was to “get them familiar with all the intricacies of how running a trucking business works, how the industry works through education, and you are really building the future of the transportation industry.”
He added that he had been involved with the formation of the LEAD ATA program, which he described as “very forward thinking.” “So when an opportunity presented itself to be a sponsor, I jumped all over it,” he said.
Erica Denney describes herself as a “jack of all trades” at Denney Transport in Colorado, though her primary focus is sales. She is the daughter of the founder of the company and said she expects Denney Transport to be her first and only employer.
Denney was part of the LEAD ATA class of 2019. She described the best part of her experience as “the relationships, hands down.” When she spoke with FreightWaves, Denney said she had just been on a group chat with members of her class about various trucking issues.
“We went through a whole lot together,” she said. “We really bonded and had phenomenal groups.”
With that one-company background, there was always the possibility of limited perspective. But Denney said her company “goes all over the country” and the interactions through LEAD ATA gave her perspective on the markets for other parts of the country that are far physically from her base near Denver.
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