“I just believe very passionately that if you’re going to take your industry seriously, you need to be engaged, you need to be involved.” —Joe Rajkovacz, Director of Government Affairs, Western States Trucking Association

The quote above comes from my long talk with Western States Trucking Association’s Joe Rajkovacz, the former owner-operator with a very long history in trucking and with the last decade and a half or so with the association. It’s headquartered in California, of course, and has been among the most prominent actors challenging the California Air Resources Board’s ever-more-complicated emissions and equipment regulations through the years.

Rajkovacz is a true believer in the value of association membership for business owners in any industry. Specifically for him, of course, that’s trucking, tracking back to his time as an owner-operator first in the 1980s and elsewhere before that, as you’ll hear in today’s Overdrive Radio episode highlighting his career.

In this final regular edition of the podcast for the year, track back through his early years trucking, from a fleet’s wash bay to behind the wheel as a Teamster for a brief time early on, then to truck ownership, decades over-the-road, and coming off the road for full-time association work with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association in 2006. He wouldn’t be there but for a few years, after which he joined Western States, then called the California Construction Trucking Association, to devote more energy to challenging CARB’s Truck and Bus Regulation. 

It’s there where he’s officially concluded his career, retiring earlier this month back near where he got his start trucking, in Wisconsin.

A good look back in the past here at Rajkovacz’s second truck, a beautiful B-model Cat-powered 1986 Ford CLT9000, complete with four license plates and 19 different fuel stickers, or thereabouts, Rajkovacz notes, before IFTA had made its way around to all the states. “A great piece of iron,” he said, that he bought new and ran up through 1993. He’s pictured back around the time the truck was mostly new with his wife, Joan, and their first-born son, John. Today, they’re proud parents of three, grandparents to eight, and staying warm, we hope, at their home in Wisconsin.Courtesy of Joe Rajkovacz

Overdrive Radio’s sponsor is Howes, longtime provider of fuel treatments like its Howes Diesel Treat anti-gel and Lifeline rescue treatment to get you through the coldest temps, likewise its all-weather Diesel Defender and Howes Multipurpose penetrating oil, among other products.This conversation for the podcast was conducted in November during the long-running annual event where I truly got to know Rajkovacz well — the annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies. Rajkovacz has been a perennial presenter there, and it’s certain he’ll keep up his engagement with regulatory and legislative issues on the West Coast and likely be back at NASTC in years to come. I hope so, anyway.

You’ll find in today’s episode plenty evidence of what his career represents — he’s among the best examples we have of a trucking industry participant who spent the time and did the work to act on something fundamental for the truly engaged in the business: a real love for it, and a desire to see conditions for its participants improve for the better.

Find more about the Western States Trucking Association via this link.