TMC Leader Lee Long Aims to Broaden Appeal of Truck Technical Careers to Younger Students

TAMPA, Fla. — Lee Long, the maintenance director of Southeastern Freight Lines and new chairman of American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council, said his biggest interest is drawing more people into work as heavy-duty technicians.

Long is the third executive from his company to serve as chairman of TMC, a group concerned with the precise, efficient upkeep of tractors and trailers.

But for Long, “People are my passion, I like talking to them. My father told me there are three things to depend upon: faith, work ethic and people. You have to teach them what you want and how to do it, he said, or pull the load yourself.”

Long, a 20-year employee of the Lexington, S.C., less-than-truckload carrier and the manager of a staff of 380 people, took over as chairman of the group on Feb. 23 at the conclusion of TMC’s annual meeting here.

Long also won TMC’s Silver Spark Plug Award at the meeting and was cited for his dedication to the interest of technicians, working for the Professional Technician Development Committee and the SuperTech competition. Long wants to take his campaign for promoting technical careers not just to vocational schools and high schools but to middle schools.

Long noted that people between the ages of his three daughters and his three grandchildren are constantly texting and working with smart phones.

“I think if you gave middle-schoolers some of our handheld diagnostic tools, they’d be in-trigued with them and think they’re cool,” he said.

“We need to sell our product as a tech-savvy position rather than being a grease monkey. To work as a technician today, you need to operate a computer, make calculations and show judgment on who to maintain equipment,” Long said.

He serves on an advisory committee in Columbia, S.C., for the Heyward Career & Technical Center, a vocational high school with a Diesel Technology Program.

“A man named David Prigge heads it, after we discussed starting it five yeas ago. Now we’ve brought in Navistar [Inc.] to provide equipment, and Southeastern has sponsored four kids there. I love seeing things like this get started,” said Long.

Long got started in southeastern Iowa in 1954. His father was transportation manager for the private fleet of Hy-Vee Food Stores. His grandfather prepped new and used cars for an Iowa Chevrolet dealership.

Long played football and wrestled in high school and also played the lead of Tevye in the school’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in his senior year. And there was work with trucks.

He followed his father to Hy-Vee and washed trailers, sealed their floors with varnish and replaced tires. After high school, he went for two years to Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C.

“I learned how to treat people and communicate,” he said. Then it was back to Iowa for a two-year trade school program and work at Vitalis Truck Lines in Des Moines and Sunrise Dairy’s private fleet. He married his high school sweetheart, Debi, and stayed with the dairy for about 10 years, until 1988.

Long said he liked South Carolina’s weather much better than Iowa’s, so he answered an ad in Transport Topics and got the job of maintenance director for Greenwood Motor Lines, an LTL carrier owned by a textile company. Through involvement in the South Carolina Trucking Association, Long met Duke Drinkard, then Southeastern’s vice president of maintenance.

In 1991, Greenwood was bought by an Ohio-based carrier, and Long feared he’d have to go back to the cold, so he applied to SEFL and Drinkard hired him. Drinkard was TMC chairman in 2002-03. Drinkard’s successor as Southeastern’s maintenance vice president, David Foster, had been chairman in 1998-99.

Long said having three chairmen in 15 years from the company is not a coincidence.

“At Southeastern, we maintain the best equipment for operation at the lowest cost per mile to serve our internal customer, the driver,” Long said, summarizing Southeastern’s approach.

“Lee is very passionate about TMC, especially PTDC [Professional Technician Development Committee]. He has a passion to help others succeed,” said Foster, Long’s boss. “Duke was a leader. He gave Lee and me opportunities and encouraged us to take leadership roles.”

Foster said when he, Long and Drinkard go to TMC meetings, “We’re in for the first sessions in the morning and stay through the last in the evening. We don’t leave in the middle to play golf. It’s well known that what you put into an organization is what you get out of it.”