If the upcoming National Truck Driving Championship is, as truckers say, the Super Bowl of safe trucking, then last weekend's 2004 Michigan Truck Driving Championship was the final competition of the playoffs.
"It's pretty tough to get here," said R. Bean & Son Transportation trucker Tim Bean, a Howard City driver with more than 1 million accident-free miles behind the wheel. "It's the best of the best drivers."
Saturday, Bean was one of 127 Michigan truckers at MSU's Lot 89, the commuter lot, vying for the opportunity to test their driving skills against the best of the nation in Salt Lake City, from Aug. 18-21. The winner of the national competition receives a $10,000 U.S. Savings Bond and the right to be called the safest trucker in America.
Before making it to nationals, however, a driver must first win their home state's competition. To qualify, a trucker must have 12 months of accident-free driving prior to the competition, and have been working for a single company for the same amount of time.
"I was really quite nervous," said Bean, recalling his feelings before competing. "Once I got going, I felt better. I'm probably in the top five for our class.
"To win, I'd be thrilled to pieces."
Bean and his counterparts were separated into classes based on the type of truck driven, then judged on their ability to precisely back up, parallel park and stop on a given line in six different situations.
To determine the winners, those rankings were combined with scores from both a written exam and points awarded to drivers for quickly picking out safety problems with trucks before competition.
One winner from each of the nine classes advanced.
Ron Looks, a Con-Way Central Express trucker from Cadillac, said he knew his performance wasn't good enough. The Michigan Trucking Association's Driver of the Year has driven 2.1 million miles - about 700 times the coast-to-coast distance from San Francisco to Virginia Beach, Va., - without an accident, but couldn't back up close enough to the dock in the alley dock competition to believe himself a viable competitor.
"I did a pretty poor job of driving," he said. "You're thinking you got it but you're still too far. I just didn't get close enough."
Even though he lost, drivers like Looks, said Con-Way Central Express President Dave McClimon, promote to outsiders a great image of the profession - and the 10,000-employee company.
"We place a tremendous amount of emphasis on safety," he said. "There's nothing more important."
If an employee wins the national competition McClimon said the company awards a $30,000 Ford F-150 in addition to the official prize money.
"It's a very positive image," McClimon said. "We use it in our advertising material."
Safe drivers, such as Looks and the other 13 Con-Way Central Express competitors, contradict the popular image that truckers are usually at fault when traffic accidents occur involving the vehicles, McClimon said.
"A truck driver has much more exposure but the accident rate is lower," he said. "They assume it's the trucker's fault without the facts."
