CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - For many drivers, parallel parking a motor vehicle can be a tough maneuver to pull off. But try doing it in a five-axle tractor trailer, and you’ll start to get an idea of just how hard the Wyoming Truck Driving Championship can be.
More than three dozen truck drivers from across the state came out to the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s Cheyenne headquarters recently to compete for the title of top trucker in the state. It was the 25th annual state championship, which is hosted by the Wyoming Trucking Association’s Council of Safety Supervisors.
“It’s to pull our professional truck drivers across Wyoming in for a competition so that they can showcase their skills and their knowledge of the industry,” said Kathy Cundall, the council secretary. “They do a written exam, they have an interview they go through and then they do the driving skills portion.”
The driving skills test includes several portions, including right and left turns, a serpentine pathway and specific challenges like an offset alley, a diminishing clearance alley and the aforementioned parallel parking. Each driver can choose which class of truck to compete with, from step vans and straight trucks to five-axle tankers and twin trailers.
“They usually sign up for what they usually drive in their everyday work,” Cundall said.
Each portion of the competition carries a different point value, with the top scorers winning a Montana Silversmith belt buckle and a shot at the national trucking championship competition set for August in St. Louis.
Before they hop in a truck, though, each driver must first complete a pre-trip inspection of the vehicle to look for any defects. Juel Leuis, a safety investigator with U.S. Department of Transportation, said that each truck has a certain number of defects deliberately planted on it, and each driver is expected to identify them as part of their day-to-day routine.
“They have to check certain elements of the truck - the tires, the fire extinguisher, lug nuts, brakes, lights - to make sure that truck is safe prior to leaving the terminal or wherever they’ve been parked,” Leuis said. “The defects we plant could be anything from a cracked windshield to a loose lug nut, fire extinguisher might be missing, there could be some load securing issues, a broken air line; those are some basic ones.”
Steve Ganison was among this year’s competitors, and the only representative to work for the city of Cheyenne, as a sanitation truck driver. Ganison said he’s been coming to the truck driving championship for the better part of two decades, adding that he always comes away having learned something he could be doing better in his own line of work.
“It’s just the talking, seeing the support, and a lot of the safety things you learn,” Ganison said when asked why he keeps coming back. “I’d like to see the city get more involved, just because of the safety aspect.”
Like many returning competitors, Ganison said he wasn’t as concerned about the actual driving portion of the competition. He said downtown Cheyenne’s narrow alleyways have given him plenty of on-the-job training in negotiating tight spaces.
“Some of the alleys we have to turn into are horrible, so I’m already set up for some of the turns and things here,” he said. “If I didn’t have the alleys to drive through, I’d probably be worried about that.”
But Gary Adams, a Cheyenne-based driver for Old Dominion, said that the trucking association does like to switch things up from one year to the next. Having completed the competition this time around, he said it was more challenging than in past years.
“This is the hardest year,” Adams said. “There’s obstacles in it that are a lot harder than they were before.”
Still, Adams and his fellow competitors said the actual competition is only part of their reason for coming out. Another large part of it is the chance to talk shop and commiserate with other members of the profession.
“It’s a great day to get together and meet people,” said Christina Codenys, who was serving as Old Dominion’s “den mother” for the straight van group, keeping the drivers together from one event to the next. “We work closely with FedEx next door, and it’s a great time. Family come out to support them, and we have a banquet at the end, it’s really nice.”
But for Sheila Foertsch, the managing director of the Wyoming Trucking Association, Saturday’s competition was also a chance to publicize the critical role trucking plays in the American economy. She said that role is especially important in a rural state like Wyoming, where more than three-quarters of the state’s cities rely exclusively on trucking for their commercial goods.
“I think it’s important to recognize the drivers and give them some ability to show the public and their peers what they do every day,” Foertsch said. “These guys are out on those roads every day doing runs, some of them the same run day after day, some something different every day, and the safe manner in which they efficiently deliver the nation’s goods needs to be recognized.”
She added that the competition’s emphasis on safety is especially important in light of the multi-car accidents that occurred on Interstate 80 near Laramie in April. Foertsch said that Wyoming can present unique challenges to truckers who aren’t used to driving here, and the education and networking opportunities provided by competitions like the one in Cheyenne can help to spread the word about what to expect.
“Some of our routes, we have mountain passes, weather that can change in an instant, and many drivers are coming from other states where in June they don’t expect fog,” she said.
“We’re trying to get that message out, and we’re certainly trying to do a better job on looking at ways of how we can better educate drivers that are coming from out of state who don’t know how to drive across I-80.”
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Information from: Wyoming Tribune Eagle, https://www.wyomingnews.com
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