Professional Associations for Drivers - Where Are They?

Most every other industry has at least one professional association for its practitioners. In the tech industry we have dozens of them - an association for project managers, one for business analysts, various general IT groups, the list goes on. What's great about these groups is that it gives people a place to go (whether physically or virtually) to hang out with their peers. They can find other people doing similar jobs at other companies and have a way of sharing war stories, learning from each other, and generally improving the overall state of that particular discipline.

In trucking, there doesn't seem to be any of these for drivers. In Ontario we have a council for driver trainers, which is a great group and the kind of association I'm talking about, but it serves driver trainers and not drivers. We have the various provincial associations, but their primary focus is the trucking companies. There are a couple of groups that lobby on behalf of owner operators, and there are unions in some sectors, but those are lobby groups and they're fragmented. Where is the North American Association of Professional Drivers?

This occurred to me a little while ago and I started doing some research to see if I was just missing something. I haven't scoured every corner of the continent, but I sure can't find any industry association dedicated to drivers.

Perhaps through the Ontario apprenticeship program something like this will start up. It won't be long before there are a good number of drivers who have completed the program and it would be nice for these people to have an association that allowed them to share information and best practices, learn from each other, and just have a place to go, outside of the carrier, to hang out with other drivers. Ideally, the association should be open to any driver, not just apprenticeship participants, but that would be a start at least.

It seems to me that with continual changes in the way the trucking industry works - new technologies, changing regulations and cost pressures, etc. - that an industry association focused on drivers could really help.

 

Have any of you come across anything like this?