Trucking’s Ground Game Gets NFL to Kickoffs
This story appears in the Sept. 19 print edition of Transport Topics.
Another NFL season is under way, which means the equipment for 53 players and a slew of coaches for all 32 teams must be moved each week from the practice facilities to their home stadiums or to airports for road games.
And that’s where the trucking industry comes in, moving about two truckloads of gear for every team between the game sites and back for each game.
While teams including the New York Giants and San Diego Chargers take the traditional route of relying on local owner-operators at home and companies recommended by their opponents on the road, the Miami Dolphins use the same crew for all their games. That duo of drivers drives within a 1,500-mile radius and flies to further destinations.
“There’s usually a preferred provider in each city,” said Jim Phelan, the Giants’ vice president of administration. “They’ll have two trucks meet you at the airport. One will go to the hotel. The other will take the equipment to the stadium and unload. They’ll both load it back up postgame and take it to the plane. Then your home guy meets you back at the airport after the game.”
Phelan’s home guy is 63-year-old Gary Nimer. Twenty years ago, Nimer was the owner of two delicatessens in Connecticut and a huge fan of the New York Giants and Yankees. Today, Nimer’s trucking company, Getaway Sports, moves those teams. It also handles the equipment for nearly every football and baseball visitor to MetLife and Yankee stadiums and Citi Field as well as for every NBA squad that squares off at Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center.
“I was opening up a deli at 4:30 every morning when a friend of mine who moved the Yankees asked me to help him part time,” Nimer said. “When I got football [in 2011] and basketball, it became a year-round business. This is my busiest time because baseball and football are both going on. Sometimes, I have six trucks going on Sundays. Basketball starts in October, so if the baseball teams make the playoffs, it gets even busier. But I love my work. I don’t even call it work. It’s a pleasure.”
That’s also how Ovi Ducati, a 34-year-old Romanian immigrant who drives trucks for the Dolphins for All My Sons Moving & Storage, views his job.
“It’s exciting and it’s always a new challenge,” Ducati said. “We don’t stop [on road truck trips] except to shower and eat. We know what the Dolphins want, and we get there hours before they want us there [as do all NFL truckers]. If something would happen, we would fix it before they would ever know about it.”
Dolphins equipment manager Joe Cimino said the unusual home-and-away arrangement, which dates to 2011, gives him peace of mind.
“Rather than breaking in a new crew wherever we go, we have guys who know how we operate,” Cimino said.
“We get a lot of business from being the official mover of the Dolphins,” said Jameson Olsen, All My Sons’ director of marketing and business development. “Since we started our partnership, our business has probably tripled [including eight more teams]. Working with the Dolphins has been phenomenal. When they acquire a player, we help them with the move. It’s relationship-building. When you see the same faces over and over, you build that trust factor.”
That’s also the case in San Diego, where Bill Bowman is only the third trucker to move the Chargers’ equipment dating to 1973, if not their 1961 debut. None of San Diego’s 15 coaches has had to worry about Bowman or his Core-O-Van predecessors.
“We have a system that’s pretty particular,” said the 67-year-old Bowman, who came to San Diego as a Marine in 1967 and prefers to watch the games from his truck. “I know what they usually take, and if it doesn’t show up, I’ll go ask the person in charge to find out why. The list is all in my head.”
Bowman said he has a Chargers bolt that says, “Chargers Equipment Truck” that he displays on the window when the team’s equipment is being moved.
“Kids will wave, and I’ll honk the horn for ’em,” he said. “I want to keep doing this until the Chargers kick me out. The pay is nice, and they’re my team. Even though I’m just the truck driver who loads their equipment, the players always come up, say ‘hi’ and ask how things are going.”
