Letter to the Editor: Sontheimer Trophy

Jim Newhouse

I>DCS Project Supervisor

.B. Hunt Transport Services

The Aug. 27 Transport Topics carried the news that the ATA National Truck Driving Championships Sontheimer Award was being renamed as the Professional Excellence Award because the NTDC Committee decided after the 2000 contest that “too few people could recall who Sontheimer was” (p. 18).

Well, it’s been 30 years since the Lombardi Trophy was named and there are many people who do not know who Vince Lombardi was. So should we rename it the Super Bowl Trophy? How many people actually know who Heisman was? Or Thorpe, or Cy Young . . . at least in other than very generic descriptions?

Now that your reporter wrote the nice biography of Goley D. Sontheimer (American Trucking Associations’ director of safety for 23 years), we all know who he was. So why change the name from the Sontheimer Award to something so mundane as the Professional Excellence Award?

If the problem is lack of awareness, then the solution isn’t changing the name; it is making us aware.

The whole point of the ATA National Truck Driving Championships is awareness: awareness of safety, professionalism and pride. But come to the award that signifies those attributes and awareness is totally ignored. Sad.

This letter appears in the Sept. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.

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