91��Ƶ

July 11, 2002 9:50 AM, EDT

There was no Department of Transportation or Environmental Protection Agency when Larry Strawhorn joined American Trucking Associations in 1965 as an automotive engineer, fresh from two and a half years as a test engineer for Mack Trucks.

The landscape changed in 1966 with passage of the National Traffic & Motor Vehicle Safety Act and then the establishment of the Transportation Department, which as Strawhorn recalled, “put the federal government into the truck-safety business.”

Over the next three decades as trucking’s chief engineering troubleshooter and equipment guru, Strawhorn saw the government’s role in transportation grow and develop, sometimes in unwelcome ways.

For the full story, see the July 8 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.