Land Line Magazine
Land Line Magazine is an American business magazine written for professional truck drivers, and the official publication of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA). Founded in 1975 and based at OOIDA headquarters in Grain Valley, Missouri, it is published nine times a year and distributed nationally to owner-operators and small-fleet truckers. Its companion website is LandLine.Media, updated daily, and its sister outlet Land Line Now is a one-hour news and information programme on SiriusXM satellite radio. Together, the three form the media arm of OOIDA, the association that has represented independent truckers in Washington since 1973.
Why OOIDA Started Its Own Magazine
OOIDA was founded in December 1973, during the Arab oil embargoes that shut down much of American trucking, by drivers who travelled to Washington, D.C., and found themselves ignored. The association grew slowly — by 1974 it had only about 35 dues-paying members — and its early leaders concluded that the existing trucking press would not cover their cause. As founding member and later president Jim Johnston wrote in the magazine's 40th anniversary edition, the popular trucking magazines did not care what the association was doing, so OOIDA decided it had to have its own publication. Land Line was born in 1975, under Johnston's presidency, to carry news to small-business truckers that was not being delivered by mainstream media or the established trucking publications.
From Newsletter to Professional Magazine
The first years of Land Line looked more like a newsletter than the professionally produced magazine members receive today, and no known copy of the first edition survives. Its early circulation base was built partly from lists of truckers who had paid an initial fee to support the association. The turning point came in 1981, when OOIDA hired Todd Spencer as communications director and editor of Land Line. Spencer, himself a former owner-operator, sold his own truck to buy a typesetting machine so the association could produce the magazine in-house and establish it as a legitimate news source. He was elected to the OOIDA board in 1978-era leadership circles, became executive vice president in 1992, and in 2018, after Johnston's death that January, was elected the association's fourth president; he remains publisher of Land Line Magazine.
The Name and the Grain Valley Base
New generations of drivers sometimes ask why a truck magazine is called Land Line. The name dates from the era when independent truckers organised by telephone — the land line — coordinating shutdowns, association business and information long before mobile phones and satellite radio. The magazine is produced at OOIDA's headquarters at 1 OOIDA Drive in Grain Valley, Missouri, a suburb east of Kansas City, where the association also maintains its main operations alongside a Washington, D.C., office for its government affairs work. Managing editor Jami Jones has led the magazine's day-to-day editorial operation in recent years.
What Land Line Covers: Law and Regulation First
The news section of Land Line places particular emphasis on federal and state legislation and regulations that affect trucking. That means detailed reporting on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, hours-of-service rules, speed limiter and emissions proposals, highway funding, tolling, parking shortages, broker regulation and court cases — always translated into what a rule means for a one-truck business. State-by-state coverage follows bills in legislatures across the country. This policy-first approach is the magazine's reason for existing: OOIDA's position is that if truckers do not represent themselves, others will misrepresent their situation, and Land Line is the channel through which the association keeps its members informed enough to act.
Business Advice, Products and Life on the Road
Around that news core, Land Line carries the practical content of a full trucking business magazine: advice on operating a small trucking business, including taxes, insurance, equipment finance and cost control; product announcements and reviews covering trucks, engines, tyres, accessories and services; technical information and how-to features; and personality features and profiles of drivers. Readers also find health, lifestyle and history material aimed at people who live on the road. The mix reflects its audience of owner-operators who are simultaneously driver, mechanic, bookkeeper and chief executive of their own small business.
Circulation and Audience
Land Line claims the largest direct-mail circulation in the U.S. trucking industry among publications for professional truckers. Reference listings recorded a total circulation of about 214,000 in June 2016, and media material has put its distribution at more than 216,000 professional truckers, with pass-along readership reaching over 324,000. Most readers are owner-operators with a single truck, while more than fifteen percent are small and medium fleet owners running two or more trucks; collectively its readers own more than 300,000 Class 8 trucks. The magazine goes to OOIDA's membership, which has numbered more than 160,000, making membership and readership substantially the same community.
Land Line Media: Magazine, Website and Radio
The magazine is one-third of OOIDA's media operation. LandLine.Media publishes trucking news daily and carries the magazine's content in both web and PDF form for reading on a phone — a format tailored to readers whose working lives are mobile and unpredictable. Land Line Now, the association's one-hour news and information programme on SiriusXM, extends the same editorial voice to audio, and the brand also produces podcasts. OOIDA's own description of the combined operation is that it tells trucking news from the trucker's point of view, explaining how developments will affect drivers rather than repeating the framing of large fleets.
Awards and Recognition
Land Line and its staff have won numerous awards from the International Automotive Media Awards, the Truck Writers of North America and the Society of Professional Journalists through the Kansas City Press Club. That recognition matters to the magazine's self-image: founded because its founders believed no one else would tell truckers' stories properly, it set out to prove an association-owned publication could meet professional journalistic standards while openly advocating for its readers. Its 45th anniversary in 2020 was marked with special programming, including a retrospective episode of its Live From Exit 24 show with president Todd Spencer and former editor-in-chief and OOIDA historian Sandi Soendker.
Editorial Independence Within an Association
Land Line's structure raises an obvious question — how a magazine owned by an advocacy association covers that association — and its history supplies the answer its editors give: OOIDA created professional editorial jobs, hired working journalists, and let the magazine build a reputation measured against outside standards. Todd Spencer, hired in 1981 specifically to professionalise the publication, sold his own truck to buy production equipment, and the magazine went on to win awards from bodies with no stake in OOIDA, including the Society of Professional Journalists' Kansas City Press Club chapter and the Truck Writers of North America. Its journalists work the same beats as other trucking reporters — agency rulemakings, court dockets, statehouse bills and truck shows, including reporting from show parking lots where drivers gather — while being open about the standpoint from which they report: the interests of the independent driver.
Place in Trucking Media
Land Line occupies a unique position in American trade publishing: a national magazine owned by the advocacy association whose members it covers, written for the smallest businesses in trucking — the independent owner-operators — rather than for large fleets or shippers. Founded 1975, published nine times a year by OOIDA from Grain Valley, Missouri, with daily news at LandLine.Media and a daily radio presence on SiriusXM, it remains the principal print channel between the association and the drivers it represents, and a primary source for anyone researching how regulation and economics affect small-business truckers.
