Historic New Orleans School Gets the Trucking Treatment
early 150 trucking executives joined community volunteers on a sunny Saturday in New Orleans to paint, plant and rejuvenate their industry image.
“We’ve been fortunate to have been involved in trucking and transportation,” said Roger Roberson, president of Roberson Transportation of Champaign, Ill. “We believe you got to give something back. It’s something we’ve always taught our kids.”
What the volunteers gave back Oct. 24, the day before the opening of the American Trucking Associations’ 1998 Management Conference & Exhibition, was a facelift for a worn but historic old school in a blighted neighborhood of New Orleans and a promise of hope for the children inside it. Each industry volunteer donated a day’s worth of labor and $50 for supplies to paint and plant trees and shrubbery at the school.
The street surrounding the old school had to be blocked off that morning to make way for Radio Flyer’s world’s largest red wagon, which Roberson had hauled all the way from Chicago on one of its flatbed trailers. The giant wagon’s two-story tires barely fit beneath the utility lines that ring each block around the Morris F. Jeff Elementary School, preventing the wagon’s huge black handle from being brought out from beneath the cart and attached to the wagon’s towing bar.
The wagon was created after Gen. Colin Powell announced his America’s Promise program, which is committed to supporting industry efforts to improving the lives of the nation’s 15 million at-risk kids.
“Gen. Powell said kids deserve the opportunity to have nothing more to worry about than a red wagon,” said Walter B. McCormick Jr., president of American Trucking Associations. “And we’re here in New Orleans to help that happen.”
Qualcomm Inc, a supplier of trucking communications systems, donated a computer terminal that will enable a class of fifth-graders to keep in touch with 40-year trucking veterans Harry and Norma Vogel, who drive for U.S. Xpress of Chattanooga, Tenn.
“We’ve been wanting to do this for some time because so many of our friends do it,” Ms. Vogel said. “Besides, we love kids and have six of our own and six grandchildren.”
The dispatcher-type terminal lets the kids send and receive e-mail with their trucker buddy, check the weather where he’s headed and plot his travels on a map, said Susan Hind, industry relations manager for San Diego-based Qualcomm.
The drivers write to the class once a week, sharing their travel experiences with the kids, and the schoolchildren write their trucker buddies once a month, said Tom Wetzel, president of the nonprofit Trucker Buddy International of Chicago. The six-year-old program now oversees some 5,000 truckers who mentor as many school classes across the country.
“It gives the kids a chance to learn about what’s involved in being a trucker and the responsibility, while at the same time the kids are learning geography, math, language and other skills,” Mr. McCormick said. “It puts a face behind the windshield.”
The Trucker Buddy program and the volunteer facelift for the school are part of the initiatives encouraged by outgoing ATA Chairman Ed Trout to personalize the industry for mainstream Americans.
“We have to change the image of trucking in this country,” said Pat Quinn, president of U.S. Xpress and chairman of the ATA’s committee on political communication and image. “These kids will grow up with a different image of the knights of the road than they would have had.”
Janet Plume is a free-lance writer based in New Orleans.
