COVID-19 concerns hurt attendance at TMC21

CLEVELAND — In November of 2017, Jason Miller arrived in Nashville on a Sunday morning for the American Trucking Associations' fall Technology & Maintenance (TMC) meeting.

An ice storm arrived a few hours later.

"Anyone who was on the way there, couldn't get there," said Mr. Miller, who was working at Hankook in 2017 but who is now the National Fleet Channel sales manager at Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. "About two-thirds of the vendors and about 90% of the fleets didn't show. We were just walking around an empty convention center in Nashville."

That was the least-attended TMC in his memory.

This week, he's experiencing the runner-up.

TMC21 — the ATA's first in-person event in 19 months — began Sunday at the Huntington Convention Center, giving fleet professionals, vehicle manufacturers and component suppliers a chance to speak face-to-face (or mask-to-mask), rather than over the phone or on a computer screen.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, attendance was way down — and it had nothing to do with the weather. Mr. Miller spoke on a picture-perfect September afternoon in Cleveland, inside a convention center that provides a view of Lake Erie and FirstEnergy Stadium across the street from its main entrance. But with the Delta variant spreading — and many companies either hesitant or unwilling to travel — it's clear that the industry is months, or maybe years, away from getting back to normal. (TMC21 officials did not respond to a request seeking attendance information.)

"It's cool to see something that resembles normalcy, but what I'm seeing here is not normalcy," Mr. Miller said. "The population of fleets here is expectedly low.

"But I guess it's crawl, walk, run. We went 18 months where we didn't get to see anyone anywhere."

Tim Kelly, the National Fleet Manager for Bridgestone Americas, called TMC21 "an important event for us," even with low attendance.

"This is great, interacting with customers," he said. "I think people miss this for sure. It's great to see people and catch up with a lot of good customers and potential customers.

"I know a lot of customers didn't come because of corporate policies and stuff where they weren't able to come out, but there are still quite a few here."

TMC21 was the first of a three-year run at Huntington Convention Center. The event featured a mix of task forces, educational sessions, town meetings and forums. Several major tire companies had exhibits, including Michelin, Bridgestone, Continental and Goodyear, which completed its acquisition of Cooper in June.

Mr. Miller assembled his fleet team in February of 2020, meaning he got about a month of normalcy before the world went on lockdown. But Cooper never stopped traveling, he said.

"Most of the fleets wouldn't talk to us or meet with us, but we said, 'Hey, I can sell you a few tires at a great deal if you let me crawl around your trucks to keep track of them,'" Mr. Miller said. "Almost all of them said sure. We were on this pilgrimage across the country, doing nothing but measuring tires. We're coming out of COVID with mountains of data, and we would not have had the luxury of doing that were it not for the lockdown."

Companies have been more open to face-to-face meetings in recent months, but that could change at any time, Mr. Miller said.

"Whatever I tell you today, it's gonna be different tomorrow," he said. "Everything keeps changing. Are we back to not traveling? Some companies have already restricted traveling and on-site visits. Some are not coming back to the office when they thought they would. Some are back to the office, but they'll see you only if it's necessary.

Literally, whatever you think it looks like, it seems to change within the week."