A New Year’s Thank You to the Trucking Community and the #TDSMC

As the New Year approaches the team at Hurt Trucker wants to thank the entire trucking community for their hard work every day.

Professional truckers and their support network, including family members, friends, trucking advocates, unions, websites and online networks, help keep truck drivers motivated throughout each and every year.

We look forward to a tremendous 2012, making new trucking friends, and building our relationships with our current friends, especially the ones we met back in October at The First Annual Truck Driver Social Media Convention. The convention was a huge success, and was held at the Gold Strike Casino and Resort in Tunica, Mississippi.  Allen and Donna Smith from Ask The Trucker did a tremendous job organizing the event and bringing together voices from across the trucking industry.  In just its first year, the event drew over 170 attendees from 28 states and two countries, including many professional truck drivers (both company and independents) along with many industry participants such as Pilot Travel Centers, Hotels 4 Truckers, and OOIDA. 

The event was also well covered by the media, with representatives from national media outlets such as Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The New York Times, and industry magazines Overdrive Magazine, Truckers News Magazine, and Challenge Magazine.

Our team from Hurt Trucker was there too, representing the trucker’s unique and challenging world of personal injury and workers compensation law for injured truckers. We met new friends and learned a lot about the many challenges faced by professional truck drivers.  We heard from many of the most knowledgeable people in the trucking industry.  Attorney Paul Taylor with the Truckers Justice Center discussed trucker’s rights under the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (“STAA”), which (among other things) protects truckers who refuse to drive a truck in violation of safety regulations or when they have reasonable concern of serious injury.  We will pass along some of the information Paul shared about the STAA in a post in the near future. 

We also had the pleasure of hearing James McCormack discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by new truckers and trucking prospects.  Eddie Gichuhi (the founder of Trip Sheet Central) shared his expertise to help truckers start, manage, and grow their own trucking business.  Landon Middleton discussed the power of social media, and Richard Wilson led a passionate discussion of the regulatory and compliance issues that impact truckers.  A special thanks to Kylla Leeburg with Truckers Against Trafficking for spreading the word on this important cause and Hope Rivenburg for her dedication to trucker safety issues such as Jason’s Law for Safe Truck Parking.  

We experienced first-hand what we already knew – a strong and dedicated community of truckers and trucking advocates exists, and the members of this community use social media to connect and spread the message.  We are very proud to be part of this community.  We also are looking forward to attending the 2012 Truck Driver Social Media Convention in Kansas City, Missouri.  Allen and Donna are already hard at work planning the event.  We encourage everyone interested in the causes important to the trucking community to attend next year’s event.  We will keep you posted on the planning and scheduling for the conference.