Jim Johnston was elected president of OOIDA in 1975. Jim nurtured OOIDA as the largest national organization of professional truckers in the country. He boldly led OOIDA’s legal challenges against many state governments and regulatory bodies on issues associated with unfair treatment against truckers.
Jim was active in White House working groups during the Carter administration. He also served on research panels of the National Academies of Sciences Transportation Research Board, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Government Accountability Office, and others dealing with various aspects of trucking operations, such as commercial vehicle safety, truck size and weight issues.
He formerly served on the National Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee to the U.S. Department of Transportation. He was a member of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Senior Strategic Advisory Committee, and a former member of the ITS America Commercial Vehicle Operations Policy Subcommittee, on which he served as chairman of the committee’s Data Privacy and Control Task Force.
On October 6th 2015, Jim was honored for his leadership and dedication to the industry on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Bill Shuster. On his death in January of 2018, Jim was serving his ninth five-year term as OOIDA President and CEO.
