At the Truck Stop

The map of Ed Heard’s career can best be described as following the call of opportunity. He never intended to be a truck driver — but now he’s in the running for the biggest award any tanker driver can earn. Heard, who’s driven for Highway Transport for a decade, is in the running for the National Tank Truck Carriers (NTTC) association’s 2023-24 Driver of the Year award. “I had never heard of (the award), actually,” Heard told The Trucker. “When one of the managers came to me with it, he just said, ‘Hey, Ed, we want to nominate you for driver of the year.’ I said, ‘OK.’” A little confused about exactly what he was being nominated for, Heard asked around. “Then I talked the vice president of safety in corporate,” he said. “He explained everything to me — that we were talking about something huge. I thought they were talking about something just company-wide, but they were talking about something on a national stage.” According to the NTTC, the award spotlights drivers who demonstrate exceptional driving skills, a strong commitment to safety and a history of community service. Heard is one of eight finalists; the winner will be announced during the association’s annual conference in May. Heard may have only been driving a comparatively short time, but when it comes to setting a good example, he’s an old pro. He came to trucking after a nearly 30-year career in law enforcement with the Houston Police Department. While there, he received special training in defusing situations involving suspects with mental health issues. “In Harris County, Houston, there is an actual mental health group,” he said. “Us deputies, that’s a lot of what we did — we picked up people that were in crisis. It could be very dangerous sometimes, but it also taught me to be a better listener, to be empathetic when I needed to be. It taught me to be a good judge of character. It just gave me an uncanny way of solving problems and relaying messages.” After retiring from the force, Heard dabbled in business ownership and spent more time with his beloved pursuit of hunting and fishing. However, he found that one generally came at the expense of another, so he sold his business without much thought to what he’d do next professionally. “I just so happened to be on a hunting trip, and a guy that was a commercial driver watched me back a 30-foot trailer into this hole,” he said. “He brought it up to me and asked me if I’d ever thought about driving a semi. I was like, ‘No, that’s nothing I’ve ever thought about.’ “He gave me some information and I told him I’d look into it,” he continued. “I thought it was interesting, and I thought, ‘You know what? Can’t hurt to have a CDL.’ I didn’t really know at the time how much was entailed in it. I was just thinking I could get a license and just have it. That’s kind of how it started.” The more he considered embarking on a second career behind the wheel and on the open road, the more convicted he became that if he was going to do this job, he was going to be the best at it. For Heard, that meant driving a tanker. “I look at everything from every angle,” he said. “When I started first getting interested in driving, I started looking at the whole industry. I was like, ‘If I’m going to get into this, it’s going to be the most dangerous (option), for better pay. As long as I have a commercial license this is what I’ll do, chemical tanking.’” Many drivers shy away from tankers in general — and even many tanker drivers hesitate to haul chemicals because of the many challenges and hazards that come with that brand of trucking. Heard, by contrast, gravitated toward it, signing on with Highway Transport’s chemical division. He says the experiences of his previous career were invaluable for gaining proficiency and confidence in his current one. “I believe anybody that is a new commercial driver, no matter what industry you’re in, it’s going to be a learning process,” he said. “It’s a big learning curve with all of us. I’m glad I didn’t go into other types of trucking first, because tanker is all I had to learn and focus on and get better at. “I tell you what, it was a lot easier because I already had the mental fortitude for danger and something real critical,” he explained. “I was already equipped with that. Everything that I’ve learned in my multifaceted background applied to being a tank truck professional. I think that’s kind of why I’m in this moment. It made me better.” Heard says one of the biggest hurdles he had to navigate in his new role was personal: His wife, Aileen, didn’t initially like the idea of him driving because she thought he’d be gone all the time. Luckily, that was not the case. Heard has settled into a set route between Houston and Dallas that allows him to be home every night. As an added bonus, he gets to spend time mentoring other drivers, something he relishes about his role. “Mentoring is my passion. I’ve probably trained over a hundred new guys, and I’d be willing to bet that 60 to 65 of them have personal issues that affected their training. It affects their learning, because they’re distracted,” he said. “If tenured drivers do not mentor drivers that are coming behind them, then you’re not helping your industry. Each one has to teach one in order for things to get better.” Heard’s mentees are privileged to have someone who’s a good listener, but who also pulls no punches when talking about the keys to success. “You’re going to have to put in the work, and you have to be safe, always,” he said. “When you’re a new driver, you’re very nervous and you’re afraid, probably. Well, that meant you got out and looked things over, you were extra careful with your mirrors, safety was a high priority. “Don’t ever lose that. Don’t get complacent. Safety has to be a priority and it has to be first,” he concluded.

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. — Jeffrey Geyer, a professional truck driver for Manning Transfer, headquartered in Blaine, Minnesota, has been named the Minnesota Trucking Association’s (MTA) 2023 Driver of the Year The announcement was made at the MTA’s Driver of the Year Award Ceremony on Jan. 23, according to a news release. “This award is a great way to honor the best in our industry. Driving safely is no easy task, especially when you take into consideration his daily driving conditions like congestion, driver distractions, and the added challenges of Minnesota winters. Having over 4 million safe driving miles is an outstanding accomplishment,” said John Hausladen, MTA’s president. “We’re proud to award Jeff for this achievement.” Outside of trucking, Geyer, along with his wife, Janet, is a foster parent. Over the years they have had a total of 18 foster children, six of whom they adopted to join their five biological children. Kacie Jestus, safety director at Manning Transfer, spoke highly of Geyer. “In his 17 years being here at Manning, Jeff is accident-free! That speaks volumes,” Jestus said. “He is a true professional driver. He is conscientious of his own safety and those around him while driving. He is one of those drivers you can count on to get the job done, and get it done well. We are so grateful to have a driver like Jeff here with us at Manning.”

If “home is where the heart is,” then professional drivers Stephen Asgar and Charlene Dougan are right at home wherever they are. That said, “home” might be pushing a stroller holding the couple’s three dachshund dogs through Disney World while they aren’t working. “Home” could just as easily be sitting side by side, riding down the road in their Boyle Transportation tractor. Whether “home” is on the road, on vacation or actually at their place of residence, the two agree that they are always at home when they’re together. “Boyle has gotten us home a lot,” Charlene said. “They always want to know a home time. I’m like, I don’t want to go home but I’ll give you a date.” “We usually try for like a month and a half out, minimum,” Stephen added. “But there’s been times — maybe not with Boyle — but in the past that we’ve stayed on (the road) for six months straight.” The couple is approaching their first anniversary with Boyle, a Billerica, Massachusetts-based carrier that specializes in life sciences (pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and biologic) products and government and defense transportation. Prior to Boyle, they worked for another carrier hauling similar products. While the two have found a home in trucking, trucking was not the first career choice for either. “We met in college,” Charlene explained. “I guess we became a couple in like July of 2017. We started trucking together in July of 2018.” Before striking out on the road, Charlene worked from home as a coder-biller for hospitals and physicians. “After working from home for a half a decade, I was a bit bored,” she said. “I was just rotting in my house.” Because she enjoyed driving, Charlene said, she started working on the side as a driver for Lyft, a company that uses independent contractors to provide ride-sharing services and business delivery. She discovered that she loved driving so much that she thought she might enjoy working on the road full time as a truck driver — so she enrolled in a CDL school in Jacksonville, Florida. Upon graduation she ran solo loads at a Walmart distribution center for six months. Stephen has his own trucking story. “I was in Pennsylvania and going through a rough time in my life. I moved back home to Florida,” he shared. Once back home, he said, his thoughts kept returning to the job he had been laid off from before moving. “I’d worked at a warehouse facility for CVS,” he said. “I always talked to the truck drivers, and I thought, ‘This might be something interesting.’” He chose to enter a training program sponsored by a motor carrier; after earning his CDL, he became a driver for the company. “As soon as I was free of my contract, I bought my own truck and did the owner thing for seven years — and it was good when it was good.” In mid-2018, Stephen and Charlene began driving together. When the freight recession hit in 2022, they decided to become company drivers. After checking out their options, they chose to drive for Boyle. Because of the nature of the freight, they said, drivers’ schedules are monitored — and good communication skills are essential. “We have apps where we can message, and they answer right away,” Charlene said. “And if you call, they answer within seconds. I worked at another company where you’d be on hold for 45 minutes — but not with Boyle.” The couple generally runs from the Midwest to Northeast, as far South as Tennessee and the Carolinas, and occasionally to Canada. “We park our truck in Ohio near where my mom lives,” Charlene said, adding that they also rent a parking space for their trailer, with Boyle paying half the cost. “We’d probably park in Florida, but parking is so expensive in Florida that it’s much cheaper to park in Ohio and get cheap flights to Miami,” she said. “We can’t bring the truck home in Florida because our neighborhood is ‘no Class 8 vehicles,’” Stephen added. The couple works hard while out on the road, and they say they also like to stay busy during their “off” time. While off the road, the couple’s itinerary might include snorkeling in the waters off of Southern Florida or driving to Orlando to spend a week at Disney World. Both on and off the road, both Stephen and Charlene are avid gamers, and they carry gaming equipment in the truck for use during down time. “We game a lot, like Fortnight and World of Warcraft, that kind of thing,” Charlene explained, adding that she also enjoys painting. Her favorite subject is nature scenes, which often include animals, or abstract works. And, of course, it wouldn’t be home for Stephen and Charlene without the dogs. The couple travels with a trio of dachshunds, ages 20, 4 and 2 years. “When we first started dating, I had a pit bull and she had a dachshund,” Stephen said. “We decided that when our relationship was really starting to take off, so, ‘Hey! Let’s get a dog together.’ That’s as close as you can get to having a kid.” Of course, traveling with one pet, let alone three (one a “senior citizen”) brings unique challenges. But the couple says they wouldn’t have it any other way. Even when the family travels hundreds of miles between breaks, the dogs are well behaved. “They’re good at ‘holding it,’ and they’re pee-pad trained,” Charlene remarked about stopping to walk the dogs. “We usually have a stroller that we pop them in to go for a walk or to take them to the mall.” Charlene says the only bad thing about having three dogs in the truck is the hair. “I have to vacuum every day, or there are fur piles,” she said. While on the road, the team tries to eat well. In fact, they do much of their own cooking and meal prep in the truck. In addition, whenever possible, they stop at farmers markets to pick up fresh fruit and vegetables. “We’ve got a Foreman (grill) and an air fryer/microwave combo,” Charlene said. “Boyle gives you a big area for the fridge, so we have a 5 1/2 cubic-foot fridge. And there’s a lot of cabinets.” In short, whether they’re together on vacation or earning a living on the road, Stephen and Charlene do their best to make wherever they are feel like home. Photos courtesy of Stephen Asgar and Charlene Dougan.

Ron Millman, a driver for Georgia-based East-West Express, is one of only a handful of people on the planet who can say he’s covered 7 million miles in his driving career — and he’s one of a precious few who have covered that much ground without a single at-fault accident. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, in an era of distracted driving and unprecedented highway congestion, Millman says he’d never had an altercation with another vehicle of any kind at work until about a year ago. That’s when a driver with outstanding warrants clipped him before fleeing the scene. The memory of the event is equal parts amusing and frustrating to the Boston-born Millman. “I was eight minutes from my delivery when that kid hit me,” he said, still incredulous. “I could look at my stop. That’s how close I was — I could see it from the interstate. This guy comes up the ramp, comes around the curve, and I looked at him and thought, ‘Buddy, you better get over. You’re going to hit me.’ And he did — he hit me.” The ultimate irony of being hit by someone fleeing the law is that Millman is something of a “criminal” himself. After all, he’s repeatedly the broken statistical law of averages for many years. A journey of 7 million miles would circle the globe 280 times. That’s equal to about 15 round trips to the moon. To cover all those miles with just one highway incident, which wasn’t even his fault, defies every actuarial table known to humanity. For Millman, however, the formula is simple: “Don’t bring your problems from your house to your job when you’re driving,” he said matter-of-factly. “And the biggest thing is, drive like you’re in a coloring book — always stay between the two lines.” As mind-boggling as Millman’s safe-driving streak is, it’s only one chapter of a unique life that, had he not lived it, he says he might not believe himself. Landing in the foster care system as a boy, Millman ran away at 13 with no more of a plan than to hitchhike “to wherever.” A trucker picked him up and asked where he was headed. “Wherever this truck lands,” he remembers saying. The truck was going to Deland, Florida. Once there, the driver asked the lad’s next move. Hearing none, the man recommended Millman hit up the wintering circuses for a job. He did, and spent the next five years traveling as a roustabout. During that time, he learned how to drive a truck. Millman left that gig with the intention of joining the military, but health problems disqualified him for active duty. He held a few miscellaneous jobs before deciding to become a professional truck driver, earning his license at age 20. “I was still under restriction, though, because you have to be 21 to run other states,” he said. “So, until then, all I did was drive around Massachusetts.” Except for one short departure from the industry, Millman has been driving ever since. At 77, he’s driven doubles and triples, pulled dry vans, reefer and even hazmat. His never-ending journey has taken him throughout Canada, into Mexico and touched all 49 of the continental U.S. states. “And if you built a bridge over to Hawaii, I might drive over there, too,” he said with a laugh. During his career, he’s driven team and he’s driven solo. He prefers the latter, particularly as he’s gotten older. Reaching across the generation gap has become increasingly frustrating, he says, so he’d rather make his runs alone, doing things the way he knows they should be done. “These young people, when they get in the bunk, they’re watching movies or playing games, and when they come back out, they’re not ready to drive after a 10-hour break,” he said. “I just got to the point where this ain’t worth it. I can’t do double work. “I’ve been running basically between Georgia and Florida for almost the last three years,” he continued. “I like it because I’m by myself. I come and go as I please. They hand me an envelope and I go do my job. I may not talk to dispatch for two days, maybe three days, because I know what I’ve got to do and they’re very well aware I know what I’ve got to do. They don’t really bother me.” Waiting for Millman at home for most of his driving years has been his second wife, Deborah, who, despite being in a potentially dangerous profession herself — that of a meat cutter — doesn’t like to ride with him. That’s more a comment on other drivers than on Ron’s skills. In fact, she might be the only person on the planet who was unsurprised when he turned over 7 million safe miles in June 2023. “It’s just another day on the job for him,” she said. Asked when he’ll park it for good, Millman shrugs. “To be truthful with you, as long as I can pass the DOT physical, I guess I’ll be there,” he said. “It’s the only thing I really know how to do. My wife has asked me a number of times, ‘Why don’t you get a local job, like in a grocery store?’” “But I’m with a good company,” he continued. “East-West Express is a very good company, and I told her, ‘If I’m going to continue to work at my age, I’m going to do what I enjoy and what I like doing.’” Until his day arrives, Millman will be out there, running his route, keeping his head on a swivel and exercising common sense. There’s one other thing he does every trip. “I’m not a real religious guy, but I do believe that the ‘Man Upstairs’ has looked after me all these years,” he said. “Back in 2010, I had two heart attacks, back-to-back. He could have taken me, and he didn’t take me. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the one that’s been watching over me. “Every time I come off the road and into the yard, the very first thing that I do, I make sure and look up and say, ‘Thank you, God, for another safe trip.’ God is my follower. He watches over me on all these trips. He always has. That’s why I feel I’ve done so well at it — because he’s guiding me down the highway,” Millman concluded.

Pulling into the truck stop parking lot — the kind of place she’s been rolling to a stop at for almost 50 years behind the wheel — BJ Neal scans her surroundings and lets the muscle memory honed by decades on the road click in her head. It may look like a small detail, this deductive process of choosing just the right spot, but it isn’t — at least not for someone who came up the hard way. “When they started having the huge truck stops, there were drivers who recognized I was willing to just be a straight, honest driver, and they would give me pointers,” Neal told The Trucker. “They would always tell me what truck stops were the safest to park and where to park. You never parked in the back row. That’s where drivers would sell parts of their loads, where the lot lizards worked, there were the drugs and all that,” she said. “I don’t have to deal with that anymore, but I can remember when parking (space) at a truck stop had to chosen carefully,” she continued. “When I go now, it’s well-lit, it’s open. I don’t even think about it anymore, but I still have a tendency not to park in the back because of old habits.” It seems Neal was destined to be a curiosity in her career. She was raised in an era when females in the cab of a truck were frowned upon (if they were allowed at all), and she started driving in an era when she was often, in her own words, the only gal in the room. Today, she stands out because, at the age of 81, she is still truckin’ along. For someone who says she just wanted to get the job done, the sassy Oregonian has blazed quite the trail. “I have tried over the years to figure out why I have so much fun doing this,” she said. “All I can say is I must have a thing about running around on wheels, because I’ve always enjoyed it. “The same highway is never the same. There’s always something,” she continued. “People say, ‘Don’t you get tired and fall asleep at the wheel?’ I say, ‘No, I’m busy. I don’t have time!’” Neal first discovered a love for the road sitting beside her father, who drove logging trucks in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. By the time she was old enough to earn her chauffeur’s license — this was long before the days of CDLs — management put the kibosh on her ride-alongs with her father. However, the hook had been set, so to speak, and Neal happily followed the road into trucking. When she met her future husband, who was also a driver, she recalls shooting him straight about her goals. “My husband knew what I wanted to do, because from the time I was a kid, I always said, ‘I’m going to be a truck driver someday,’” she said. “In those days, they didn’t have many rules they enforced on how long you drove, so produce haulers had to do an awful lot of extra hours,” she continued. “Back then, you picked the stuff up fresh, so they iced it. We used to have to go places and have the ice blow out of the load. Down the road, you’d see water dripping behind you all the time.” Neal’s husband was supportive of her goals. “My husband asked his boss if he could teach me and his boss said, ‘Yeah, go ahead,’” she said. “He didn’t have to pay me; all he would be paying would be my husband, and I’d be doing the extra driving. I got most of my hours as relief driver for him.” By the mid-1970s, Neal and her spouse were driving regularly for small operators between California and the Pacific Northwest, and they even bought their own truck. When the marriage fell apart, however, she found it difficult to get hired. “My husband and I divorced in ’83. It just happened. By then I had about eight years driving experience, but I was never a paid driver — and they still did not like the idea of a woman being in the truck alone,” she recalled. “There was a lot of reluctance to hire me,” she said. “I did have friends that knew I was a good driver, so I was encouraged to check a company out of Portland, Oregon, that hired teams and did not care if you knew each other. They put two people in a truck, and that was it. They hired me and let me drive.” The company’s system put Neal in whatever truck was available, with whoever was available. Some of these pairings worked out, but most of them didn’t — and Neal said she soon grew tired of sharing the cab. Determined to drive her own rig, she eventually left Oregon and headed for Texas. There, she did a lot of slip-seating, constantly changing equipment and driving whatever rig dispatch put her in. “Eventually things changed, and I went with companies where I had an assigned truck,” she said of her 30 years driving in Texas. “Everybody knew when they hired me that I had a lot of different trucking backgrounds and could take any truck.” Eventually, time did what adversity and discrimination never could: It slowed her down. As she approached her 70s, Neal said, she quit long-haul runs for more localized routes. Since moving back home to Oregon in 2016, she has done what she describes as “part-time” driving. Most recently, she joined K&E Express Transportation out of North Bonneville, Washington. She now drives a local route, delivering to grocery stores and warehouses. Every run she makes adds to her career total miles. That’s a number Neal stopped tallying after hitting the 2 million mark during her years in Texas. Neal says that life is good and she’s happy, and that the years haven’t “ground all the pepper out of her” yet. “The only complaint I have in life is that, because I learned to drive the older trucks, I don’t like the newer trucks,” she said. “I have a lot of trouble with them, with all their so-called ‘smart stuff,’” she continued. “It’s stupid to me. [This company has] one truck that’s a 2015 I think, a Kenworth, which I love to drive but don’t get to all the time. The rest of them I just deal with.” Luckily, Neal’s company takes notice of its drivers’ preferences. “They’re replacing all of this equipment with newer trucks, and I’m going, ‘Aaaaaaaah!’” she said. “The owner said, ‘I’m going to keep the old Kenworth.’ I said, ‘Oh, good!’ It’s better than driving these new things.”