Con-way Driver Honored as NTDC Grand Champion

This story appears in the Aug. 31 print edition of Transport Topics.

PITTSBURGH — Like many other champion truck drivers, Dale Duncan first took the wheel in childhood, on a family farm in Indiana, where his father supplemented the family income by driving a truck.

During adolescence, Duncan learned to position giant tractor tires so he didn’t crush growing plants. On country highways, he steered heavy grain trucks and tractor-trailers that were piled high with hay.

“People don’t realize it, but it’s all about angles,” Duncan said. “It’s geometry.” That early learning served Duncan well. He took home the grand champion’s trophy this year from the annual National Truck Driving Championships held here Aug. 18-20.

It was the second time that Duncan, a 44-year-old driver in San Diego for Con-way Freight, had earned the driving competition’s top prize.

He also took home the title in 2006, after winning first place that year in the tank-truck class.

This year, Duncan won in the five-axle competition and was one of three Con-way drivers taking home first-place trophies in separate vehicle classes.

“I think we lead by example to all the other companies, that this is a great event for that reason,” Duncan told a cheering crowd after he was announced as grand champion at the NTDC banquet.

A record 415 drivers competed this year at the NTDC, which was founded in 1937 during the Great Depression by American Trucking Associations to honor the best drivers in the industry.

“There’s no other event that ATA puts on that lets somebody show the love of the industry that those people really have,” ATA Chairman Charles “Shorty” Whittington said of the drivers.

The banquet honoring the champions, which closes the NTDC, was the highlight of his chairmanship and moved him and wife, Ro Anne, to tears, Whittington told Transport Topics.

“Being able to stand on that stage and shake those guys’ hands and the top of my hand is black and blue . . . but it’s a nice black and blue. You look at it, and you smile,” Whittington said, adding that all the winners combined have millions of miles of accident-free driving.

The NTDC is “a chance for people that never have any other chance to really shine,” he said.

The NTDC and the state competitions that drivers first must win to compete in the nationals are designed to promote safety on America’s roadways.

The annual championships have come to be known as the “Super Bowl of Safety” because, to excel in the tests that make up the competition, drivers must be highly skilled, as well as accident-free for a full year before competing.

Duncan, for example, is proud to be a grand champion, especially the second time around, but he told TT that nothing makes him as proud as his driving record.

“I haven’t had a ticket or a moving violation in over 25 years of driving,” he said.

He may not have the long-distance mileage other drivers rack up, Duncan said, but the traffic conditions in which he works are more “adverse.”

Southern California’s crowded freeways, where Duncan does pickup and delivery all day for Con-way, are a stark contrast to the country roads he ran in his youth.

For a time, Duncan, who also is a licensed pilot, drove trucks with his father but eventually moved to California. He went to work for Con-way in 1990.

The competition this year included a record number of drivers because ATA has expanded the event.

For the first time, the competition included a step-van contest, in which 33 drivers participated. Drivers from FedEx Ground swept the field, winning first-, second- and third-place trophies.

In past years, to qualify for the national driving competition, contestants such as David Thompson, a FedEx Ground step-van driver, had to compete in other truck classes.

“Since step van is what I drive every day, I felt like that would just be a natural thing for me to drive,” said Thompson, who this year won the step-van competition in Arkansas.

With wife Joni and their three children in tow, Thompson went to Pittsburgh this year as a step-van driver and went home a first-place national winner.

For many of the drivers, the NTDC is a family event, with ATA member companies bringing in driver spouses and children and treating them to baseball games, boat rides on Pittsburgh’s three rivers, company dinners and other outings.

Like Duncan, many of the drivers are steady competitors, coming back year after year, often accompanied by fans and executives from their employer firms.

Duncan has competed for 11 years, not always getting to the nationals from his state competition. But in all, he has won four national competitions in addition to his two grand championships.

To become national champions, the NTDC winners in each truck class, plus the step-van category, must excel in three sections of the competition: driving, a written test and a pre-trip inspection.

NTDC competitors spend countless hours — and often years of practice — to perfect their skills.

Michael Stickley, a Con-way driver from Virginia who won first place in the four-axle class this year, started competing in 2004, but he didn’t even make his company team that year. He first won at the state level in 2006.

“It’s been a work in progress,” he said of his NTDC victory this year.

Stickley said he had wanted to compete for years but hesitated, fearing he would embarrass himself.

“Once I got involved, I realized that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” he said, vowing to compete again next year.

“When you get here and you see the caliber of drivers you’re competing with . . . it makes you proud to be a driver,” Stickley said.

Duane Foreman, a driver at YRC Worldwide’s Burnsville, Minn., terminal, competed for four years before he won the state championship in three-axle this year.

Foreman said he always had wanted to compete but had to wait until his four children — now ages 5 to 15 — were older before he had the free hours to practice.

The competition “tests your skills [and gives] you incentive to drive safely,” said Foreman. But the skills needed to be a good competitor are the same ones drivers use “in your everyday work,” he added.

For some drivers, the competition is an exhilarating attraction.

“Words can’t describe it,” said Matthew Richardson, a rookie competitor this year. “You’re here and competing with guys from all over the country.”

In his work, Richardson drives a 20-foot box truck out of FedEx Ground’s Lewiston, Maine, terminal, but he competed in the twins class because he wanted a new challenge, he said.

Furthermore, Richardson confessed he caught what veterans of the driving championships call “the bug,” meaning he wants to compete again next year.

“I have to come back because I didn’t win it and, for myself, it’s a challenge to myself,” Richardson said.

The ATA-sponsored championships offer drivers more than just competition. The event gives them a chance to rub shoulders with and learn from their most-skilled peers.

“It’s more like a reunion,” said Kelly Richards, a driver for Wal-Mart Transportation in Iowa.

Like several other Wal-Mart drivers, Richards competed in the sleeper berth class, which is what the retail chain’s drivers operate during the workweek, he said.

When he was not on the floor competing, Kenneth Grygla another Wal-Mart driver and sleeper berth competitor from Utah, was collecting autographs from the competitors.

“I love these books,” he said of the annual NTDC program, which features a picture of each competitor. “It’s like a yearbook,” Grygla said.

Seven NTDC participants this year were women, ranging in age from rookie Leah Thiele, 25, to grandmother Darlene Baal, 66, a driver for Midwest Coast Transport in South Dakota.

“I got 50 points on that alley dock,” Baal said of her perfect score on the docking portion of the four-axle competition.

Thiele, who wants to be on “Ice Road Truckers” next season, drives in Alaska for Carlile Transportation Systems Inc., as do many of the drivers featured on the television reality show.

Thiele competed in the flatbed class this year and said, “I’m going to come back until I win.”

For Steve and Marc DiTomasso from Rhode Island, the NTDC was a father-son event.

“It’s really different being on this side of the fence,” said Steve, as he sat in the stands waiting for son Marc, 33, to take his turn in the driving competition.

Steve is a retired YRC driver who made it to the national competition five times. Marc, who drives for YRC-owned New Penn, was making his first appearance in national competition.

“His palms must be sweating just like mine are,” the older DiTomasso said as he watched Marc climb into the cab of the four-axle truck he maneuvered around the driving course.

In an interview with TT after the competition, Marc said it was “comforting” rather than intimidating to have his father watch him.

Both father and son agreed that participating in competition is a learning experience that makes for better, safer drivers. To participate at the state and national championships, drivers must be accident-free for a year.

“One of the main things you learn coming to the nationals is how serious it is,” Marc said. “You learn more about the truck, more about safety,” he added.

“You learn by your mistakes,” Steve said.

Marc said he wants to win at the state level next year so he can go to NTDC next year in Columbus, Ohio.

“The only thing you want to do is ride again,” Marc said. “Just put me in the truck.”