Alabama association chief Colson named new head of ATA

Will take over Dec. 1; predecessor Spear departed in August

Will take over Dec. 1; predecessor Spear departed in August (Photo: ATA)

The American Trucking Associations has turned to one of its affiliates and plucked the head of the Alabama Trucking Association to be the national group’s next president and CEO, effective December 1.

Mark Colson has been named to head the ATA, which was jolted by the sudden departure of Chris Spear in late August.

According to a statement released by ATA, Colson has been president and CEO of the Alabama Trucking Association since 2019. Prior to that, he worked for several Alabama-based business organizations, including the Business Council of Alabama.

Colson, according to ATA, has been active in the group’s activities. He has been a member of the association’s Strategic Priorities Committee and the Truck PAC Board of Directors. Colson also is on the Advisory Committee of the American Transportation Research Institute, the ATA’s research arm. 

According to ATA, Colson was elected by his peers at other ATA state associations as vice chairman of the Trucking Association Executives Council.

He is the 10th ATA president and CEO in the group’s history, which dates back to 1933. He is a graduate of Huntingdon College, and receive an MBA from Troy University. 

The chairman of the Alabama Trucking Association, Scott Smith who is CEO of PS Logistics, praised Colson’s tenure with that group. Colson, Smith said, “grew our membership and broke revenue records year over year for all our entities, and established our political action committee as one of the best and most effective in the state.”

In the ATA prepared statement, Colson said his role as head of Alabama Trucking “has been the honor of my career.”

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John Kingston

John has an almost 50-year career as a journalist, most of them covering commodities and markets. The largest part of his career was spent at Platts, now part of S&P Global Energy. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment. He was awarded the 2020 Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah International Energy Award for Lifetime Achievement for the Advancement of International Energy Journalism.