Episode 61: Building Advocacy and Tackling Fraud in Transportation with Chris Burroughs, President And CEO of Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA)

Brent – 00:00:01:

Welcome to Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast where we explore the fascinating world of trucking and freight management. We dive deep into the freight industry and uncover why the trucking industry is more crucial to our country now than ever before. Stay tuned to uncover the driving forces behind successful trucking businesses and hear from the hardworking truckers and leaders who keep the world moving. Let’s hit the road. All right, Freight Nation, and joining me today is one of my good friends and the new CEO of the Transportation Intermediaries Association, Chris Burroughs. Chris, thank you so much for joining us on Freight Nation today.

Chris – 00:00:37:

Brent, thank you so much for having me on the program. Really appreciate all the hard work and support Truckstop has given to the industry over the years, and you being a very good personal friend of mine over the past 14 years or so I’ve been at the association.

Brent – 00:00:49:

Well, the feeling’s mutual. So Freight Nation, I got to meet Chris by very first fly-in. Well, actually at the annual event, the Capital Ideas event, which is the big annual meeting that they have. And then I got to really become friends with him where we met in D.C., and we’re going to talk a lot about the federal government in D.C., and working in associations and the impact there today. But it all started with a friendship. We met in the lobby, believe it or not, of the hotel where we were all staying for this meeting and everything. I got to meet Chris and this was back before he was even a dad. His wife was pregnant, having their first kid and everything. And so we became friends. And Freight Nation, if you take anything away from all these podcasts that we put out, it’s that friendships and relationships matter in transportation. I know it’s not an epiphany to most people that are going to watch this, but if you’re new to transportation or you’re trying to find out about transportation, start with relationships first. And so, Chris, let’s talk a little bit about, okay, so you work for TA as part of working with the most confusing organization in the world, the federal government. So let’s talk a little bit about how you, as a young man, starting your career and everything, decided to get into working inside of the federal government and through that part of your career. So I’d love to start with a story, the very first part of the story on how things got started for you, because that tells so much about how you ended up where you are.

Chris – 00:02:02:

Yeah. So I grew up in a obviously somewhat political family.

Brent – 00:02:05:

Oh, you did? Okay.

Chris – 00:02:07:

Kind of followed into the government relations political side of the arena here. My dad was a congressional staffer for over 40 years for the U.S. House of Representatives. Then mostly worked on official issues. And actually, funny enough, so growing up in the Northern Virginia area, traffic is pretty horrible. We’ll say maybe L.A. or Chicago probably trumps it, but D.C. traffic is horrendous. So they have these high-accuracy lanes, like a lot of places do, HOV lanes. So during the summer months, when my dad was travelling into the city for work at the U.S. Capitol, he needed a slug rider, is what they called. Grab a slug, throw him in the backseat.

Brent – 00:02:42:

Oh, right.

Chris – 00:02:43:

Got your HOV rider. So I became his slug rider, and he’d take me to the Capitol complex there, a young kid, and I’d sit in the back of these congressional hearings, and he’d give me a coloring book or maybe a coin or something and said, hey, be quiet. Don’t say anything. Just sit here and mind your own business. Do your coloring. So apparently something soaked in as I was sitting in congressional hearings, which most people find extremely boring. It’s depending on a topic, and it can be. But something obviously soaked in. I obviously got very politically active, always loved politics, always loved, just about to say I love the federal government. I don’t love the federal government. I think it’s chaos. But I always loved working in that arena. Went to college and got a degree in political science and history. And my first job out of college, I went around all the different committees that were applying and got a job, with the Transition Committee. That was my first experience in the transportation world.

Brent – 00:03:33:

That is fascinating. I used to ride with my dad all over the Southeast when my dad was in the steel business. And I’d ride with him, and I got to go see customers. I got to see how he treated people. I got to see how he communicated, negotiated. So it sounds like we have some similar experiences with our dads where there’s a big part of you. And maybe I should just ask you this question. Was it really like endearing to you that your dad would include you in these things?

Chris – 00:03:55:

Yeah, it was. I have an older brother. He’s obviously smarter than I was because he was like, I’m not being a slug writer. Like, take the little guy, take Chris.

Brent – 00:04:01:

Right.

Chris – 00:04:02:

But yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Brent – 00:04:04:

Yeah.

Chris – 00:04:04:

I built friendships up there. Folks are long retired at this point, but have been kind of mentors to me over the years, following this political path of mine.

Brent – 00:04:12:

Right. Yeah. So all that time with my dad, I ended up being very close with my father. Did that create the same thing for you?

Chris – 00:04:18:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Following the same career path, enjoying politics. He was also my baseball coach growing up. So of course, I want to follow in that path. I coach my son’s soccer team, my middle son, Chris Jr.. So I’m following that same footpath with my kid and want to be a big part of their life too. So yeah.

Brent – 00:04:33:

Yeah. So that’s fascinating. And what a benefit and what a blessing it was for you to be able to be around your dad and I’m sure both your parents, but being around your dad and kind of learning. And so you said your first sort of endeavor into the government was inside of transportation. So talk a little bit about that because, Freight Nation, it’s amazing how one thing in your life leads to the next and where you find significance. And this is why I talk about this a lot. Where you find significance, you usually press the gas in your career and go, I’m going to go faster into that. So you got in this transportation part of, did you say you were on a transportation?

Chris – 00:05:03:

Committee.

Brent – 00:05:04:

Committee. Oh, wow. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that because that’s got to be how things kicked off.

Chris – 00:05:08:

Yeah, absolutely. So I worked for the congressional committee handling all the jurisdiction, for transportation issues, really started at the front desk, just answering phones that interact with constituents calling in and working with the members of Congress on the basic tasks they needed from the Committee, working with the senior staff on certain policy issues, dabbled a little bit into the oversight and investigation subcommittee a little bit. But yeah, it was just an awesome experience. As much chaos as there is in the federal government, I will say it was probably one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had. Just super fast paced, great collaboration between the team. It seems cutthroat. We watched House of Cards, obviously, you’d think it’d be really extremely cutthroat. And it is to a degree, but I think you get into a good Committee and we had a great leadership team at the TNI committee. There’s just a great group of young people that were all striving to really advance positive policy positions within the U.S.. So we’re all striving for a common goal and then trying to meet our chairman’s priorities and positions. So that launched me, then was recruited by a small boutique lobbying firm. It’s called the 21st Group. They were looking to bring another lobbyist in-house to their organization. They had a couple transportation clients. So that was my next step, was dabbling in some of the transportation clients that they had and some of the other clients as well, kind of the energy tax space, telecom space. One of those clients was TIA.

Brent – 00:06:28:

No way.

Chris – 00:06:29:

That’s how I got to know the old administration, Bob. Bob Voltmann hired me with Nancy Oliddy, my direct supervisor. So yeah.

Brent – 00:06:36:

Yeah. Sorry. So Freight Nation, how about this? I know you’ve heard this, and a lot of truckers talk about this, whether it’s the CEO or a truck driver, they say they got diesel in their veins because they grew up in everything else. Well, Chris has politics and advocacy in his veins because he literally, from a small young boy to his now over 40-year-old self, has had it in his veins all along. So what a great, fascinating thing, because the thing that I think is so great, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about this, is that understanding how our government works, why it’s constructed the way it is, and how it works is so important. And once you get in and really understand it, it really is. You really do understand why we have the greatest nation on the earth, because the way in which our governance is constructed for our nation. But all right, so let’s keep going a little bit before we get into we go into some of the lore of politics. But so, so Freight Nation, for just for clarification, Chris was just promoted or ascended to the CEO of TIA. Prior to that, when I started in 2013, it was Bob Voltmann and then he retired. And then we had Anne Reinke come in for a few years. And now she’s moved over to another part of the industry, another part of the transportation marketplace. And now Chris has taken over. And it was really a wonderful, easy conclusion for the leaders to say Chris needs to be leading us. It’s his time. So, Chris, let’s talk a little bit about that part of things. Like you got recruited to come to TIA and everything. So let’s talk a little bit about the TIA was one of your customers. And then you got how did you get to TIA? How did you get to the association?

Chris – 00:08:04:

Yeah, so TIA was one of our clients being firm and obviously having that experience and what turned out to be passion for the transportation industry. I naturally gravitated towards doing a lot of the transportation issues for our clients. And one of TIA’s longtime lobbyists had left. And I think it was at a lunch one time at our townhouse. We had Bob in passing was just, hey, we’re looking for somebody like I’m sure you won’t leave, but, you know, let us know if you’re interested. And I said, yeah, let’s talk about it. But so next thing I knew, I was being recruited over to TIA and joined the organization, like I said, about 14 years ago as a manager of government affairs. And it’s been a pleasure really ever since then.

Brent – 00:08:41:

Well, they were lucky to get you. So let’s talk a little bit about what is managing government affairs mean? And because I know the Freight Nation watchers and listeners would love to hear about like, because most people, Chris, look, without you and without TIA, because that’s where I started into understanding the government. I would know almost nothing. But you guys are so. And. You especially are so lights out good at understanding how to navigate those waters. Let’s just talk a little bit about your starting position there and why it’s important that you were sat in that position. And what was the influence you were looking to create? And just some advice to the Freight Nation watchers and listeners on the navigation of government.

Chris – 00:09:19:

Like you said, your intro, Brent, there are tons of associations.

Brent – 00:09:22:

Yes, so many.

Chris – 00:09:23:

So many. Think of that plus all of the entire corporate America. These are all the voices that are going to Capitol Hill.

Brent – 00:10:00:

Right.

Chris – 00:10:00:

To have their issues heard and have their issues elevated. They’re building relationship with members of Congress. They’re building should their staff building relationship with the federal agencies with the administration. Everybody as an organization, within STIA is, in the government affairs role. It’s really trying to elevate what our members are doing in the Marketplace, they’re impact on the economy and advocating and lobbying on behalf of the issues that are important to our organization, trying to get that piece of paper. The one that the staffer or the member says, hey, this is the issue I want to take up. I want to help address the freight brokerage industry. I want to help increase truck parking for the truckers out there. So it’s really being an advocate on behalf of the industry. But back to your point, it’s relationship building. It’s all about relationship building, and it’s no different than what our members are doing with their customers or their carriers. From a sales perspective, they’re building a relationship with their customers, with their carriers. We’re doing the same thing with members of Congress and their staff. We’re building that relationship so then we can go to them and so they understand the industry and the impact of the industry. The term lobbying, I forget what it dates back to, but I believe under the Grant administration, I believe it was the Willard Hotel where President Grant would like to go at night with some of his cabinet members and sit there and have a cigar and a brandy and just relax a little bit. And a lot of the citizens would come to the lobby of the Willard Hotel where he was hanging out to chill a little bit and bring their concerns. We’ve got this concern, we’ve got that concern. And that’s where the term lobbying actually originated was from the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.. In the lobby when Grant was sitting there trying to enjoy himself. And I’m sure he appreciated the feedback he was getting from the folks and his constituents. But yeah, I mean, it’s really just having your voice heard. Make sure your priorities are priorities for them as well.

Brent – 00:11:18:

Right. Yeah. Wow. All right, Freight Nation, you got a little piece of history there on how a lobbyist became a lobbyist. It’s always amazing how things go back to some of the simple things that happen in our lives. So, Chris, one of the things that TIA, Transportation Intermediaries Association, does for its members, and we’re going to talk about why you want to become a member of an association, especially in our industry, having your voice heard. But one of the things that you guys do is that you work within the confines of the government. So talk a little bit about what that looks like from the position that you were in, head of governmental affairs for a large association inside of transportation. Talk about what does that look like and what methodologies or approach that you take towards interacting with our government. Because I think most people don’t really understand how that works, why it works the way it works. You might give it a couple of minutes on that, because I think to me that’s fast. It’s one of the things that drove me to want to come back to D.C.. Every year with the TIA, with the TCA, with the ATA to talk to our government, because the light bulb came on for Brent. Like, oh, this is the way it works. So talk a little bit about that, because I think the Freight Nation watchers and listeners would love to hear that.

Chris – 00:12:27:

Yeah. So the front end, which is the ongoing process, and I’ll do a little case study, but the front end ongoing process is obviously that relationship building. Members of Congress, the House members are up every two years, senators are up every six years, a little bit more stability on the Senate side, but the House, there’s turnover. Coming into this new 119th Congress in 2025, there’s 75 new members of Congress that we’ll have to build a relationship with. So that’s constantly ongoing. Additionally, congressional staff turnover is extremely high. It’s gotten better, but it’s super long hours. I mean, some of the staffers are there until one o’clock in the morning. And up until some recent years where there were some much needed pay bumps, they were making $28,000, $32,000 a year for working just ridiculously long hours and hard work. So that’s a constant process in terms of building relationships, staying in front of folks. Like I said, no different than what our members are doing in their business life. So let’s take a case study of an issue. So one of the first issues I dealt with when I came to TIA was the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program under the U.S.. Customs and Border protection. Think of it as, for the folks that are probably aware of it, it’s like a TSA pre-check at border crossings. Priority lanes, you’re a trusted partner within this program. DOT-licensed property brokers were not allowed to be part of this program. The CBP talked about resources. They talked about not physically touching the freight. There were some concerns with the agency. Nevertheless, I won’t go into all the details of whether that makes sense. But this was an issue that several members brought to us at TIN and said, This is becoming a competitive disadvantage for us. We want to be part of this volunteer program. We’re not allowed to be. While these other logistics companies and asset-based trucking companies are allowed to be part of it. This is something we may need to look at. And additionally, there is this national security concern of why would you not want as many trusted partners looking at cross-border freight as possible. So we were coming up. This whole CTPAT program was created after 9-11. And that’s the goal was to know where trusted freight was. So we said, okay. So we go up to the Hill. We start building our offices. We have relationships. We start talking about this issue. Because, again, they’re hearing from a lot of people. Who is this really going to resonate with? Looking at core membership districts. Obviously, an issue like CTPAT cross-border. We’re going to look at the Northern border. We’re going to look at some of those folks down the Southern border. Add border crossings. Identifying potential champions for this. Educating them on the issue. And then finding a path forward to move something like that. And obviously, grassroots advocacy within our membership is a huge part of that. Getting members to come into D.C., getting members to… That wasn’t such a huge thing when I started at TIA, Zoom calls. The last few years, getting people on Zoom calls to talk to members of Congress and their staff about, hey, this is important, and here’s why. Because our voice is obviously impactful. And we’re the ones that are building the relationships. But our members’ voice, to your point about the fly-in, is so much more impactful. I mean, you guys are the businesses in the particular congressional districts. You’re the voters. You’re voice means, so much more to them. Because quite frankly, you’re their boss. Everyone talks about term limits. There are the term limits are there. If there should be term limits or not, I’m going to go into that. But in terms of the House, there are term limits every two years. And the Senate has term limits every six years. It’s called election. So they want to hear from constituents and they want their constituents to come in and bring them issues. And not everything is going to resonate with every office. There’s 535 members of Congress, including the House and Senate. So it’s finding, identifying those relationships and then finding and identifying a vehicle to move a piece of legislation to ultimately get it to the president’s desk can be tricky, especially in the last, I would say, five to 10 years. It’s become a lot of chaos. Both sides of the political spectrum like to talk about regular order and we’re not following regular order. There’s no regular order. There’s no regular order. The whole schoolhouse rocks. How does a bill become a law?

Brent – 00:16:16:

Oh, yeah. I love that.

Chris – 00:16:17:

There’s so much in that process. And I’m not saying that’s right because it’s not. But it just, there’s some constraints and small majorities, especially on the House side, last person, moving into this Congress as well, that create headaches for people. It’s not a great way to govern, but it is. It’s the way that they are governing. So we have to work within those parameters and make sure that we’re continuing to be the best voice that we can be. So you mentioned previously what you didn’t answer was like, what advice would you give?

Brent – 00:16:43:

Yeah, yeah.

Chris – 00:16:44:

It’s get involved.

Brent – 00:16:45:

Right.

Chris – 00:16:46:

Reach out to your member of Congress, call our office and just have a conversation about the issues that are important to you. Every time a constituent calls office, they take down the name, they take down the zip code and the person that answers the phone, the staff assistant, they document everything. And they give that to the state of staff, gives it to the member that goes up the chain, they are tracking every call that’s coming in and taking everything seriously.

Brent – 00:17:08:

All right. That is one of the things. So first off, Freight Nation, I hope that you see this. And if you’re a broker, I hope that you’re encouraged by the new CEO here for the TIA, because man, does he know his stuff. And that’s important, super important when it comes to our industry and understanding the nuances of our industry and how it needs to be heard by our federal government as far as the different regulations and laws and impact that we have and things. So I hope you heard that. And if you’re a carrier watching this, and I hope a lot of carriers watch this, understanding the heart behind any association and behind the people that lead those associations is really important to understand that the broker association out here that is the representative for the brokerage part of the transportation industry has a great heart towards our industry and has a great heart to helping our industry. And that’s super important. So if you’re a broker, take heart. You got an expert leading the TIA. And if you’re a carrier, just know that the brokers, for the most part, and I realize that there’s always people in any industry that aren’t operating the way they need to. But for the most part, brokers are out there to help transportation be successful. And so super important to take that away. So great example, Chris. Thank you so much. All right. So you went from government affairs. You’ve been in government affairs. You moved up to a VP. Was it senior VP as well? I think that was there a SVP or did y’all do that there at TIA? Okay.

Chris – 00:18:23:

We don’t firmly do that yet.

Brent – 00:18:25:

All these titles are interesting. Boy, I have an interesting title, of course. So let’s talk about leadership real quick. And then I want you to talk about what TIA does and helps their membership do. Because one of the great sayings is that you become part of an association because it’s at the table to have the conversation with the leaders in an industry, whether they be inside the industry or inside the federal government. So that’s what an association does. Well, let’s talk a little bit about, all right, so it’s a big step to go from being part of the leadership to being the de facto top of the leadership of any company in any association. Talk a little bit about what you were thinking maybe before you said yes. And now that you’ve been in your job for only a few, maybe a month now, what’s been going through your mind as you start thinking about being the final decision in any process?

Chris – 00:19:11:

Yeah, I mean, just to be candid, Brent, I’m truly honored we have been selected for this position. This is something that 14 years ago was a long-term goal.

Brent – 00:19:21:

Oh, it was. Okay, that’s good.

Chris – 00:19:23:

To eventually maybe potentially take over TIA from a president-CEO perspective and have had some great leaders and great mentors over the years, certainly with the last four years with Anne as our president-CEO. She’s been a great asset, a great friend to me. I’m helping me through this process and really building me for success over the last four years. So I really appreciate her leadership style. All that I want to continue to put across the organization. We’re a small organization. We’re not huge. We have about, with contracts, we have about 20 employees. So we’re not a big association. Like any organization or any business, we want to have lines of communication, great collaboration, great teamwork. And I think we do, and we’re all striving towards the same goal. And that goal is to build success for our members and be a voice for our members on Capitol Hill. Those are our two big goals. And as I’ve transitioned to this new role, really my two priorities have been really enhancing our advocacy efforts. Taking what we’ve done, the great work we’ve done over the past 10, 15 years, and just really elevating it beyond that. Continue to be out there, to be a voice, to be an advocate, and grow our profile on Capitol Hill. And end with the administration, end with the federal agency. And two is really ramp up our member engagement, providing value for our members and the core principles that we’re currently doing, but really enhance it and expanding upon those as well. One thing is the last couple of years, we’ve launched some of these regional meetings we’re doing. We’re going to look in 2025 the double.

Brent – 00:20:49:

Okay.

Chris – 00:20:49:

Meetings we’re going to be doing across the country. Hitting those regional focus within our membership that some folks may not be able to travel to our annual conference in April. We’d recommend everybody come. But, you know, it’s just not reality for everybody. So we want to hopefully have hit the country in the next two or three years in terms of regional meetings, in terms of pockets, and just build success, again, for our members and provide the latest information on sales and technology and what’s going on with this crazy fraud pandemic we’re all dealing with. So that’s my goals. My short-term goals. Just build a class-action organization that our TIA members quite frankly deserve.

Brent – 00:21:22:

Right. So, you’ll see Freight Nation, you’ll probably see my pullover I have on here. It’s got the old TIA logo. I’m going old school on both of these. Old school TIA, old school Truckstop logo. I wear this because this is my favorite, like, pullover when it relates to the broker industry because it has both logos in the front so you can see both of them. So it’s super important. It shows you Freight Nation. I hope it shows you whether you’re a broker or a carrier that Truckstop endeavors to be a part of the environment that helps protect and grow you business. And TIA is part of the protection for brokers, which helps more freight come into the market for every carrier that needs to move freight. It’s important because both sides of the equation, brokerage side of the equation, getting freight from shippers and helping the shipper effectively move their freight. And then for the carriers, we exist to be a part of TIA to fundamentally help that transaction work better and more open and honest. So let’s talk leadership. When you take over as a CEO, does the wiring in your brain change or anything like that? What was sort of your first thoughts as you took over? And said, okay, well, the buck stops with me, as they say in government. Right. So how do you think a little differently? Or you said that Anne was helping to, like, prepare you to potentially take this over. How did you start, like, thinking more like the ultimate leader of a business or what were some of the processes you went through to help you in that?

Chris – 00:22:35:

I think a lot of this is ongoing.

Brent – 00:22:36:

Isn’t it always? Yeah, yeah.

Chris – 00:22:38:

Yeah, it always is. We as people, we continue to learn and continue to grow. But I think the shifting the focus from changing a role between the vice president of government affairs to CEO is, I want to give Anne credit for this because she was very inclusive of everything that was going on. She built her leadership team, which I was part of, along with the rest of the VPs, had a lot of say and there was a lot of transparency, which is a good thing. But flipping that switch a little bit to every decision that we make, obviously looking at that from a strategic perspective and shifting away from just thinking about the government side of things and thinking about the strategy in terms of the Hill and work with the administration and all that’s important. You’re not going to get that out of me as you said, it’s in my blood. That’s not going anywhere. That’s why obviously no surprise to me, one of the priorities was enhancing our government relations. And then we’re in the process of doing that. We just hired a new VP of government affairs. He’s awesome. He’s going to do a great job. But just looking at everything holistically, strategically, from an association perspective and got to flip that switch a little bit. You’re in a different role, obviously from being a CEO and being small, especially when I started 14 years ago, I think there was like seven or eight of us in TIA. So yes, I was the manager of government affairs, but we all wore many hats. So I got great insight in working with Cindy on her piece of education and Jessica on her membership side of things. There’s been a learning curve and getting into the weeds of issues a little bit from a strategic perspective. I had that great experience over those years because we were small, because we had to do so much to help each other. One of my first things when I started at TIA was building relationships. And I really went out and built relationships with members of the association, traveled as much as I could to go out to see members, go to conferences, learn as much as I could about the industry, about the issues that are important to everybody. And it wasn’t always just a government relations function. Because some of these conferences you go to, they don’t do government relations, but just learning about the industry, the issues that are affecting everybody was important to me. And I built great relationships over the years with many members, including yourself. So that’s been extremely helpful with me and really set me up, I think, to easily, more easily flip that switch than coming in obviously fresh to start thinking about some of this stuff. Because I’ve been thinking about this strategic for a while and being an asset to Anne and the rest of the team.

Brent – 00:24:48:

Yeah, no doubt. So one last question on leadership, and then I want to shift into some of the topics that TIA is helping to administrate through our current marketplace. All right. So one more thing. All right. So just about this, and I love to talk about this with CEOs, is about your number one asset walks out the door every day at five o’clock, as they say. It’s the team, right? It’s the team that works for TIA. Talk a little bit, just for a couple of minutes maybe on, how do you properly listen to and take great respect in other people’s ideas and stuff, and then finally make the decision on the direction that you want to go for organization. I think that’s important. And a lot of people don’t think about that when they take over as the leader of any company or association or gathering of people. They think about the idea that they’re the final decision, but including everybody else, make sure you can do the most strategic decision. So talk a little bit about your approach to that. Then I want to jump into some topics.

Chris – 00:25:41:

Yeah. And I think my situation was probably unique because we have a phenomenal staff, many of which have been there many years. Our leadership team, Cindy, Jessica, Polly, they’ve all been there 13, 14 plus years. That was probably one of the more interesting things, to be honest, is coming in and being their peer one day to being the CEO of their boss the next day. But yeah, I mean, I have a very open to our policy with our staff. I want people to come with me with ideas. We may not always agree, and it’s going to fall in line with the mission of the organization and the direction that we strategically want to move to help our members. But there have been a few decisions recently where it made sense to me. And if I was in a VP role, I probably would have been like, yeah, let’s do this. Being in the CEO role and thinking about the entire organization, looking at what are the potential risks associated with this. There’s some decisions that I made as CEO that I would not have made, quite frankly.

Brent – 00:26:35:

Wow. Okay.

Chris – 00:26:36:

So you got to think about those things. And obviously, listening to your general counsel, listening to your leadership team, those are all important aspects to the business. But yeah, just being open. I mean, I’m a firm believer. I’ve always been. I’m back from my discussion on working for the U.S. House of Representatives in terms of the collaboration. We just had a great group of folks. I want to build, again, build that collaborative culture at TIA, which quite frankly is there. Just continue to grow upon it and make it better. But, you know, be transparent across the organization of what we’re working on. And we’ve got a great team that, again, it’s all moving to the same path. Same mission. We’re all playing from the same sheet of music.

Brent – 00:27:10:

Fantastic. So Freight Nation, listen to what Chris said about this. Some of the decisions he might have said yes to as a VP, he has to reconsider how to make that decision as a CEO, because you have to take the whole enterprise of the business or the association of the people into consideration. And so it’s a little bit different, a filter that you have to go through to make a decision. So that’s great advice, Chris. And I know that’s a lot of wisdom that you pull from being the new CEO. So that’s going to serve you well, as they say. So let’s talk about topics. We got about 10 minutes left. What are the things that are top of mind for TIA in our industry? I want them to come from you because I got a bunch, but like we see all sides of Truckstops. So at TIA, what are some of the things that are top of mind? And let’s just explain them a little bit and then talk about what are some of the potential thoughts that you guys have in resolving them?

Chris – 00:27:56:

Yeah, I’m glad you gave me that caveat because being in the government relations role, I could go really deep and I tend to talk really fast. So I will give you just the 30,000 level of view.

Brent – 00:28:05:

There you go.

Chris – 00:28:06:

A lot of these congressional meetings, you may get, you’ve been to the flying bunch, you may get five to 10 minutes to actually point across.

Brent – 00:28:12:

Yeah, that’s so true. Great point, Chris. I mean, look, at Freight Nation, if you’re ever in front of a political leader, whether it’s a House of Representatives, or if it’s a senator, or if it’s just their staff, which is who you usually get to talk to, you get five to seven minutes, and that’s all you get at the most. And it’s like, oh, okay, thank you very much. Well, do you have some follow-up? Do you have some paperwork? What can you leave us? We’ll take this into consideration. And then you’re done. You’re like, oh, wow, that was quick.

Chris – 00:28:35:

I met with a member of Congress once in the Longworth, it was one of the House Office buildings. And he was on the sixth floor, and he was like, all right, he’s like, where are the elevator? But you got from the sixth floor to the basement to give me your spiel. And I was like, I don’t know, I’m have about a nuclear break, in the sixth floor here.

Brent – 00:28:50:

Boy, that was the example of an elevator pitch.

Chris – 00:28:52:

The top issues, priorities we’re looking at from our organization, obviously, one, really, I think it’s no surprise that any of the listeners is fraud.

Brent – 00:28:58:

Right. Hurts everybody.

Chris – 00:29:00:

It hurts everybody. It is just at an all-time high. We did a data report. Our members had indicated between about a 10-month period, about 600% increase in terms of fraud.

Brent – 00:29:09:

Yeah. Yeah, we’ve seen it. Yep.

Chris – 00:29:11:

It’s absolutely crazy. We hear from members every day about this. And these criminal organizations, they’re well-organized. I mean, this is not a random person who’s doing this. These are well-organized criminals.

Brent – 00:29:21:

And attacking through cyber. If this isn’t, they’ll stick up at the Truckstop. This is a cyber attack on people’s businesses.

Chris – 00:29:27:

Yeah, absolutely. And then yesterday, I was at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They had a morning roundtable discussion. Let’s issue a fraud, how it’s impacting the road, the rail, and retail industry. So it’s a massive problem. One, we’re focused on, there’s some legislation that we’ve been pushing for, a couple pieces of legislation we’ve been pushing for, we’ll continue to push for. Won’t dig into the details of that, but it’s a massive issue. I think the latest incident wrapped on this issue that really highlighted it, and it’s highlighted a lot with the press too, is the tequila heist, as they’re calling it.

Brent – 00:29:56:

Oh, yeah. Sammy Hagar.

Chris – 00:29:58:

So they had two truckloads stolen, and it was really your prototypical double brokering incidents where a broker selected a legitimate carrier, and then it was actually triple brokered down the line to the guy in the hands of a fraudulent entity, millions of dollars of tequila stolen.

Brent – 00:30:11:

They got one load back, which was good.

Chris – 00:30:13:

They didn’t get one load back. Yeah. So yeah, fraud is obviously top of mind. We’re really trying to, from a legal perspective, we just relaunched our legal recently, looking at these negligence selection lawsuits that are going on, on these massive nuclear verdicts, which are really crippling the industry in terms of an insurance perspective, the liability perspective. We’ve got to find some sort of solution, whether that be legislative, the regulatory process. Ultimately, until the Supreme Court decides, it’s going to still be split, but we’re getting some favorable court decisions throughout the country. So obviously focused on that.

Brent – 00:30:45:

Yeah. Hey, whole thing on the nuclear verdicts, I want to say this to the Freight Nation watchers and listeners. This is super important. I know that you may look at the company that it’s affecting and go, man, that’s bad for that company. It affects every single player in this marketplace. It doesn’t just affect the carriers. It doesn’t affect the big carrier that it’s going in. It affects every carrier because your insurance rates are going to go up. Guess who else’s insurance rates are going to go up? The broker. Guess who else’s insurance rates are going to go up? Eventually it comes back to the shipper because we’re all in one connected universe. So we have to fight these overreaching parts of the decision process or the outcome process inside of these nuclear verdicts for our industry, because some of them just don’t make any sense. But yeah, so continue on the next topic. I want to make sure Freight Nation, they understood that because, this affects all of us. Just like fraud affects every player. Insurance affects every player. Not just that one company.

Chris – 00:31:30:

Yeah, absolutely. And it boils down and trickles out all the way to the consumer. When we go to the grocery store or the retail store, there’s going to be additional cost of, because of this, quite frankly, because of it at a regular date and someone’s got to bear the burden of the cost and ultimately it’s the consumer. Kind of in the same vein, your carrier selection has been a huge focus of the organization. We’re all familiar with CSA 2010. But really trying to get the agency to fix the carrier safety rating process has been a top priority for ours for many years. The fact that 92% of trucks are still unrated, quite frankly, is just not acceptable.

Brent – 00:32:04:

And there is no rating system at all for it. There’s no requirement other than the standard FMCSA licensing and insurance part of it.

Chris – 00:32:12:

Yeah. And because of the first two issues in terms of fraud and nuclear barriers, it’s hurting a lot of the small players out there, the small carriers out there who may get passed up because of fraudulent concerns. They get passed by because of, hey, you’re underrated. We may not be able to utilize you because of the threat of this $20 million in nuclear verdict that could be brought forward by a plaintiff’s attorney. So, again, these are all small business issues that they were focused on. You talked about carrier groups earlier and carriers, and we’re a huge advocate of the carriers. I have a very good personal relationship with OIDA, with ATA, with all the carrier groups. Talked to Louie quite a bit. Good guy. He’s a very great guy. And Chris Spear over at ATA. I talked to Chris.

Brent – 00:32:52:

Another good guy. Yep.

Chris – 00:32:54:

We’re an advocate for each other. We may not agree on every issue. Like Rod, we work with both those organizations, truck parking. We’re a coalition partner with the move that they’re making on that and the great progress of finding reliable, safe truck parking for truck drivers. Some of the restart provisions over the years, the hours of service, making it more manageable and quite frankly realistic for the carriers has been a priority. And we filed comments on their behalf to make that. One of the more recent issues that we may not agree with as much with the small owner operators is this issue of broker transparency. We’re heavily focused on that issue currently with the notice-based rulemaking being open for a comment period right now. We worry about the detrimental impact of this rule on small business, not just small brokers, but also small carriers as well. And we’re working through that from a variety of different perspectives. We personally feel like this is an overreach for federal government. This is a 1980s regulation that, quite frankly, shouldn’t be on the books, or if it does, make it applicable to what the United States Commerce Commission wrote.

Brent – 00:33:51:

Right.

Chris – 00:33:52:

When brokers were a commissioned sales agent of a trucking company.

Brent – 00:33:55:

Right, right.

Chris – 00:33:56:

Similar to what a dispatch service is now, I would say.

Brent – 00:33:58:

Right, yeah.

Chris – 00:33:59:

At that point in time when they were talking about the sharing of rates between all the parties, motor carrier truckers were paying brokers a commission for sourcing loads for them. And then the ICC, which obviously doesn’t exist and a lot of authority was seized over to FMCSA, was worried that a shipper and a broker would be a common. Owner and double dipping. I’m not sure if too many Home Depot loads they may have logistics arms or it’s not reality the way the current marketplace works. So we’ll continue to push forward on that. But that’s one of many issues. And like you said, it’s relationship building. We want to be advocates for each other because, quite frankly, we would not exist without the small owner operators. And we’re a light blood of theirs as well. We’re the ones that are the shippers. I was at a shipper Committee call yesterday with an organization and this topic of fraud came up. And one of the shippers on the call was like, hey, we don’t use any carriers that are less than 10 to 15 trucks. We just don’t have the resources to do it. That’s why they hire brokers to handle the traffic department.

Brent – 00:34:55:

Yeah.

Chris – 00:34:55:

So we want to be an advocate for them as well. And again, we want everybody to succeed. We want our members to succeed. We want small carriers to succeed. We want large truck companies to succeed. It’s better for the industry if the supply chain is humming along and everyone’s doing well.

Brent – 00:35:07:

Yeah, so thank you for those four topics. As I look at any regulation, we just need regulation that people can follow the rule, the regulation being a law. Most people don’t think about regulations being a law. It’s one of the regulations and laws that our industry can follow and adhere to that help every single part of the entity, that help that small owner-operator, the small fleet person, the medium fleet person, the large fleet person, the broker that ultimately helps the shipper, that ultimately helps every U.S. Citizen from a standpoint of cost of goods getting to market. So fantastic. All right, Chris, so what’s the next step for TIA? I know you got your two things. You’re going to enhance advocacy and you’re going to wrap up member engagement. So what’s the next thing on your mind for TIA? And then we can wrap it up.

Chris – 00:35:47:

I’m excited over the next few months, getting between the beginning of 2025 and our annual conference in April in San Antonio. I think that’s my little period there where I’m going to really ramp up these two priorities and then just really, again, just want to build a great organization that delivers value to our members, has a powerful voice on Capitol Hill for our members, and is a great coalition partner to those other industry stakeholders who play a vital role, everything in the U.S. Economy. So keeping things moving forward, being an advocate where we can for the industry.

Brent – 00:36:21:

Yeah, man. Well, what great words. And so Freight Nation, it is important that you are part of your industry associations, because as they say in politics, you’re either at the table or you’re on the plate. All right. So you want to be at the table all the time, Freight Nation. You want to have your voice heard. Call your representatives, call your synergies, work with your associations, become a part of your associations so you can help move our industry forward where it can be the most successful and profitable in serving your company and serving our nation. Man, Chris, thank you so much. First off, congratulations for the new position. We’re all very excited for you, but thank you so much for being on Freight Nation today.

Chris – 00:36:57:

Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Brent – 00:36:58:

As always. Well, Freight Nation, that’s a wrap. Thanks again for watching and listening to Freight Nation. We appreciate just being able to bring this information to you and bring these great stories to you. So we appreciate everything during this holiday season. Hope it goes really well for you. And don’t forget to work hard, to be kind and to stay humble, Freight Nation. All right. We’ll catch you the next time. On behalf of the Truckstop team, thanks for listening to this episode of Freight Nation. To find out more about the show, head to truckstop.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. Until then, keep on trucking and exploring the open roads with Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast.