The Trucking Alliance

The Alliance for Driver Safety & Security, also known as the Trucking Alliance, is a nonpartisan coalition of freight, logistics and supporting business partners. The Trucking Alliance vision is to advance safety reforms that can reduce and ultimately achieve zero large truck crash fatalities.

Statement by Steve Williams, Co-Founder and President of The Trucking Alliance; Chairman & CEO of Maverick USA

January 2023

“Trucking has been my life. I wasn’t born in a truck but I have never been very far from one. Both my grandfathers and my dad drove for a living. They were my heroes and I’ve spent my career attempting to emulate their character and work ethic; to restore the image and prestige of the professional truck driver.

“Our nation’s supply chain network cannot function without commercial truck drivers. If the supply chain breaks down, so, too does our economy and the standard of living we enjoy. In fact, we saw this with the COVID pandemic.

“Our industry must figure out how to deliver more freight on much more congested highways, without compromising safety. We must reduce and ultimately eliminate all large truck crash fatalities. To advance this mission, we must support our professional drivers and those who depend on them, with safety reforms that make sense for our country first, our industry second, and our companies third.

“Truck drivers operate large freight trucks within a few feet of millions of our friends and families every day. Our industry has the ethical and moral responsibility to make sure that all commercial truck drivers are well trained, well rested, and drug and alcohol free.

“We are making progress. Our coalition was instrumental passing safety reforms, such as requiring electronic logging devices to replace the outdated paper log books that truck drivers falsified. We now have a drug and alcohol clearinghouse, so that employers can know if a driver applicant has failed a drug test. Hair testing is now recognized, over a much less effective urine drug test, to keep illegal drug users from driving large trucks. Truck speed limiters and Automatic emergency braking systems will soon be required on all new large commercial trucks.

“The Trucking Alliance will continue to support more safety reforms and emerging technologies in 2023, both of which can help make the commercial driver’s work environment safer and more secure.

“Finally, the commercial trucking industry must achieve a record of safety with the public with whom we share the roadways, as the commercial airline industry has achieved for the passengers it transports. We should not rest until that objective is achieved.”