President of largest freight broker group to step down in the wake of trucker protests

The head of the largest freight broker group in the U.S. will leave the association after more than two decades.

On June 10, the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) announced that Robert Voltmann will resign as the organization’s President and CEO as of the end of September, 2020.

Voltmann joined the TIA as CEO in 1997.

In a June 10 letter to members, Voltmann said:

“While this was a difficult decision for me, I have accomplished everything I was hired to accomplish. Together, we took TIA from a fledgling organization with weak finances and turned it into an association worthy of the dynamic third-party logistics industry. TIA is now clearly recognized as the voice of third-party logistics and has the financial strength to continue to grow and change with the industry. It is time for me to continue to change and grow myself by taking on a new challenge and for TIA to transition to a new leader.”

The announcement that Voltmann will step down comes after high profile nationwide protests during which truckers rallied against cheap freight and said that brokers were to blame for plummeting rates.

For three weeks, a group of truckers protested on Constitution Avenue on Washington D.C. to raise awareness about broker issues and low rates. Their message made its way all the way to President Trump, who Tweeted in support of truckers and went so far as to say that truckers are being “price gouged.”

The Washington D.C. protest activities ended shortly after trucking representatives Mike Landis and Sergey “C.J.” Karman met with the FMCSA’s Jim Mullen and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at the White House to ask for broker transparency. 

In the video below, Voltmann defends brokers and said that low rates were the product of “too many trucks chasing too few loads.”