ATA Selects 18 New Captains for America’s Road Team
This story appears in the Jan. 17 print edition of Transport Topics.
American Trucking Associations last week announced the selection of 18 truck drivers to be captains of the 2011-2012 America’s Road Team.
The 18 captains were announced Jan. 12 after a rigorous competition in which 34 finalists were winnowed from an original pool of about 1,200 drivers vying to win a slot on the prestigious Road Team.
The team members will spend two years traveling across the country speaking to communities, news media and public officials to show the public “what trucking’s really about,” ATA Chairman Barbara Windsor told team members during the announcement last week at ATA headquarters in Arlington, Va.
“We are a very important face of trucking,” said Windsor, who will sometimes travel with the team.
“We want you to not only tell our story about safe trucking and how everything moves by truck. Also, we want you to influence the truck drivers out there on the highway,” she said.
ATA President Bill Graves said team members, selected in part for their “remarkable” safe-driving records and their community service, are trucking’s “ambassadors.”
The captains, each of whom drives for an ATA member carrier, have a collective 483 years behind the wheel and more than 36.5 million accident-free miles of service.
As captains they will be educating the public about transportation and safety issues and sharing tips on how to safely share the road with tractor-trailers, ATA said.
They also will be meeting fellow drivers at terminals and truck stops and talking about safe driving habits.
One new Road Team member, Samuel Douglas Lee, who drives doubles for Old Dominion Freight Line in Greensboro, N.C., said he is so excited to be on the team that he is “pinching myself” to make sure it is real.
“This is the top of the scale for me and the high point of my career,” said Lee, adding that he cried when his two young sons phoned to congratulate him the night he learned he had made the team.
Like many of the best drivers, Lee is from a trucking family. His father was an Old Dominion driver and both his brothers drive for a living.
To win a slot on the team, drivers had to take tests, answer a battery of questions before a panel of judges and write and deliver a three-minute speech to demonstrate they could convey their knowledge of and commitment to trucking.
“I’d never written a speech before in my life,” said another team member, Dion Saiz, a driver for FedEx Freight in Albuquerque, N.M.
In his speech, Saiz said, he talked about his father, Ben Saiz, an ABF Freight System driver who was on the last Road Team.
“I grew up around trucks most of my life,” said Saiz, adding that his grandfather, Anastacio, also drove a truck.
Brooks Washburn, also a driver for FedEx Freight in Albuquerque, said gratitude prompted him to compete and win a seat on the team.
“I thought it was a chance for me to give something back to the industry that’s given me so much,” said Washburn. “[It’s] been so good to me and my family over the years; it’s my way of serving the industry back and helping to educate people about the trucks.”
A 31-year veteran of trucking, Washburn said the competition was extremely difficult. “These are some of the best drivers in the country.”
The other Road Team members are: Willie Atkinson and Danny Fuller, both drivers for Con-way Freight; Gary Babbitt, Central Freight Lines; Joe Allen Boyd and Kenny Lowry, both of Wal-Mart Transportation; David Boyer, Nate McCarty and Tim McElwaney, all drivers for ABF Freight System; Randall Dee Briggs and Alphonso Lewis, both of YRC Inc.; UPS Freight drivers Dennis Martin and Roger Nicholson; J.W. Ray, Werner Enterprises; Jeffrey Wade, Southeastern Freight Lines; and Robert Weller, Hahn Transportation.
ATA created the Road Team in 1986 and the companies whose drivers are chosen as members agree to pay their salaries even though team members may be off the job two or three days a week touring the country.
The team is sponsored by Volvo Trucks North America.
“These dedicated professionals help create safer highways for all of us and ensure the timely delivery of life’s essentials,” said Ron Huibers, Volvo’s senior vice president of sales and marketing.
The new team spent most of last week at ATA headquarters in Virginia, getting to know one another, meeting with ATA staff and preparing to take trucking’s story on the road.
At a reception last week in the Rayburn House Office Building, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and members of Congress were on hand to greet the new team.
Anne Ferro, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, also attended. Ferro is former president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association.
