Editorial: Where Everyone's a Champion
Marty Lawson, a 52-year-old driver for Harley-Davidson Transportation in York, Pa., won the top title at this year’s contest in Tampa, Fla. Marty also took the grand championship last year, when the driving tournament was held in Long Beach, Calif. While this is the third time a driver has been grand champion twice, no one before Marty has ever won the coveted prize in consecutive years.
And he did it while winning in different vehicle classes. This year, Marty amassed the most points in the sleeper berth. Last year, he took the trophy for the twin-trailer division. In both cases, a complicated handicapping formula gave him the highest point totals for the tournaments.
Praise and recognition are due to Marty Lawson and to the other eight class winners who were judged based on their knowledge and skills. It is also due to the nearly 400 contestants of the national competition, and to the hundreds more of America’s great truck drivers who competed in the qualifying rounds at the state level.
When he won the grand title in 1998, Marty Lawson told Transport Topics that he had set his sights on the prize 22 years earlier. This year, he said, the very act of competing in the National Truck Driving Championships “has been my life. It has changed the way I drive, and if there were one thing I could do to make any other driver safer, it would be to involve him in this championship.”
The organizers of the driving tournament couldn’t have said it any better.
Marty Lawson says he isn’t going to try for a three-peat next year, although not many of his colleagues in Tampa were buying that. Time will tell.
Congratulations Marty, we’re proud of you and all the other contestants.
