Key Takeaways from TMC’s Annual Meeting
Jonathan Stotts
Senior PR & Communications Manager
America Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) is all about facilitating conversation between technical experts, not sales and marketing people. Collectively, they are focused on solving issues faced by the fleet industry, which was the founding principle back in 1956 when the industry needed to bond together to address tire quality.
Today, TMC has 105 task forces meeting under 17 different study groups – study groups identify industry challenges and task forces work on solving those challenges through various methods, like developing recommended practices, education, technical outreach, or voluntary industry standards.
This year’s annual meeting – TMC 2024 – was a bustling three days, March 4-7, at the convention center in New Orleans. More than 5,000 attendees joined dozens of educational sessions, debated current issues, and networked between sessions on the expo floor, featuring hundreds of exhibiting companies and organizations.
The show’s overall theme was Quality Spec’ing for optimal performance – or doing a better job maintaining vehicles and improving fleet operations. And the biggest objective is, as always, minimizing downtime. Vehicle complexity and the ability of fleets to maintain their own systems is becoming a challenge. Staying on top of the issues and using the latest techniques is critical to continue doing business in the most economical way possible.
We noticed Three key takeaways at the show: tires, staffing, and sustainability.
For Anyline, TMC 2024 was a great show that gave us an opportunity to talk to the men and women driving the US fleet industry forward. The work being done by TMC members in the study groups and task forces anticipates future problems and offers solutions to current challenges. We live in a world where technology is changing the way we work at a rapid pace. Communication and learning must accelerate along with tech to keep up with that. TMC’s annual meeting is one of those information-sharing platforms that you shouldn’t miss. See you at TMC 2025!
