A convention this week in Normal centered on business, politics and the connections between the two in the trucking industry. The Illinois Trucking Association's annual meeting included several speakers touching on economic concerns for the industry and the nation at large.
Matthew Hart became executive director of the Illinois Trucking Association [ITA] in 2011 and has since been working to bring awareness to freight companies on economic shifts. The nonprofit organization holds an annual meeting in various locations to connect owners and employees of trucking companies from all over.
Hart said his focus remains in Springfield and Washington, D.C.
“That’s one of the key things that our members ask us to do — to be their voice in Springfield because they’re all running trucking companies back home,” Hart said.
Hart spoke to conference attendees at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Uptown on Tuesday morning.
“It’s our job at the ITA to be speaking with state representatives, state senators, members of Congress and all the staff and educating them on the decisions that they make in Springfield and Washington, D.C., and what it means to the trucking companies back home,” Hart said.
Hart said the slow-moving state of the economy poses an issue for Illinois specifically.
“We move over 70% of the freight," he said of Illinois truckers. "When it comes to manufactured freight, we move 95% of all the manufactured freight and we’re a huge manufacturing state."
“Today in 2025, you’ve got to be really sharp in watching all of your expenses [and] you’ve got to be out there fighting for new revenue streams because we’re all fighting to keep our companies afloat,” he continued.
Hart said tax incentives listed in the GOP's massive tax cut and spending plan are beneficial for the trucking industry, specifically bonus depreciation that offers an immediate tax deduction on assets and promotes tax savings.
“When you buy very large and very expensive equipment and you depreciate it, there are advantages we can capitalize on,” Hart said. “The other big thing is the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. Those were set to expire, and a lot of our guys were looking at much higher tax bills going into 2026. Now, they can rest assured that their taxes are not going to go up in 2026.”
Hart said the current freight recession, widely known as the Great Freight Recession of 2025, can be bypassed with bonus depreciation. The Great Freight Recession refers to pandemic-induced stress on the trucking industry with an excess of trucks and not enough demand to match.
“We’re looking for every penny that we can, and the last thing we need is higher taxes,” Hart said.
Future of the trucking industry
A multimodal transportation center was announced in 2023 when the City of Bloomington got a state grant worth $1.3 million from the Megasites Investment Program. The center is planned for south of Central Illinois Regional Airport and will expand on the Twin Cities’ already-existing road, rail and air travel stations as the first in the state to offer all three for freight companies.
Hart said a development like this will be beneficial to the needs of the area.
“You can’t rely on one mode of transportation in 2025,” Hart said. “A lot of the manufacturing in the Midwest relies on parts that come from not only Asia but parts that come from Canada and Mexico. A lot of times, those parts are getting here by rail [and] sometimes they’re getting here by truck.”
Hart also said he would like to see more women enter the trucking industry's workforce.
“Right now, overall, women account for less than 10% of our workforce. Women — especially when it comes to truck drivers — a lot of times are statistically safer than our male counterpart drivers,” Hart said.
Hart said women are increasingly entering the workforce and that it could be due to the design of newer trucks.
“The truck 30 or 40 years ago still required a lot of heavy lifting and manual labor just to operate. Today, with cruise control, power steering and anti-lock brakes, a lot of the technology we have in our trucks today makes it easier for people to drive,” Hart said.
“Statistics have shown that men like to take risks, and statistically, females don’t usually take as many risks as their male counterparts, and that kind of shows in the safety data.
This week's conference held several breakout sessions, two of which focused on the use of A.I. by trucking companies.
“We’re very early on in the stages of using A.I. in the trucking industry, but we also think A.I. could be a great place for us to run safer trucking companies out there and that’s what we’re really excited about,” Hart said.
Don Strubel works as the intermodal logistics manager of Container Parking, a facility offering parking spaces for trucks in Joliet. Strubel said he thinks AI will bring many benefits to his business.
“I think it can help dispatching be a lot more efficient, whether that’s bringing emails or bringing loading info right to your database rather than having someone manually entering it. There’s a lot of different things AI can do that I think we haven’t tapped in yet and I think as a society. A lot of us have a lot to learn from it,” Strubel said.
Keynote speech
A veteran who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks gave the keynote speech Wednesday morning at the ITA meeting.
Retired Marine Corps pilot Robert Darling was invited to share his story working directly with military and political leaders during the attacks.
“I’m proud of this organization and the people that feed us, serve us, protect us [and] heal us — that is really an honor for me to go and share this story,” Darling said.
Darling discussed his experiences from first learning of the Sept. 11 attacks to then immediately working closely with then-Vice President Dick Cheney in the underground bunker of the White House that was occupied by the Bush administration.
“There’s a technique called compartmentalization,” Darling said. “If you can start learning to tune out the noise and focus on exactly what needs to be done right now — we call that compartmentalization — and you’ll save a life. You’ve got to get focused and get rid of all things in your life that have nothing to do with what you need to do right now.”
Darling said efficient communication among President Bush, hospitals and the Federal Emergency Management Agency was nearly impossible at the time, adding the changes made since 2001 will result in a faster response to a similar occurrence.
“We have national targeting centers and operation centers where agencies and departments are co-located,” Darling said. “It’s going to come down to our leaders; do our leaders do the right thing, do they go to the right places [and] do they understand what their roles and responsibilities are?”
“They need to have the courage to make a decision,” Darling continued. “They can’t be paralyzed [and] they can’t wait for that other piece of information. They reserve the right to make multiple decisions, but you’ve got to get to action.”
Darling said he wants members of the ITA to know how important they are to the national security of the country.
“They’re not just moving goods and services,” Darling said. “I don’t want them to think of their job as all about transportation, cost of fuel and the cost to load a pallet. They are supporting the ability of the United States to respond anywhere in the world through their participation in this national security apparatus.”
Darling said that while the nation is considered at war, no member of the ITA will be in danger of being homeless or without necessities; the organization won’t allow it.
“I get to tell them just how important they are to all of us, so that’s why this is a real treat to me,” Darling said.
