Drivers at NTDC Accept Nervousness as Natural Component of Competition

This story appears in the Aug. 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Despite being some of the nation’s top professional drivers, competitors at the 2011 National Truck Driving Championships said it was only natural to be nervous.

Behind the handshakes, camaraderie and smiles lurked an undercurrent of stress you’d find at any sporting championship. Many drivers said they believed it was absolutely essential in order to become Grand Champion.

For many outsiders, American Trucking Associations’ 2011 NTDC was all about drivers carefully maneuvering trucks around rubber ducks on the floor of the Orange County Convention Center. But it was more meticulous than that. Drivers spent weeks studying for the crucial one hour, 40-question written test.

“Those 40 questions are worth 80 points. Two or four points would have made the difference between being on that podium or not,” said Ronald Round, who drives for truckload carrier Pottle’s Transportation Inc., Bangor, Maine. Round, who is based in Enfield, Maine, competed in the five-axle class.

This is why drivers pay so much attention to preparing for the written test, said Roger Nicholson, a UPS Freight driver out of Georgia.

However, Nicholson said the written test is always overshadowed by driving talent.

“These drivers are the cream of the crop, the best that the industry has,” observed Larry Ochs, newly promoted manager of safety at ABF Freight System. “They all have 3 or 4 million miles without an accident, which is pretty good with all the traffic we have out there today.”

It’s easy to be nervous with the knowledge you are going up against the best drivers in every state, said Nicholson.

“The first couple of times you show up, you’re stressed out and you’re really trying to focus at the same time,” said Alphonso Lewis, NTDC’s 2007 Grand Champion. “But once you’ve been here a couple of times, you’re still zoned in but you’re more relaxed.” Lewis won the top trophy the third year he competed at the nationals.

Lewis, who hauls for YRC Worldwide out of Montgomery, Ala., was competing in his sixth NTDC.

“The first year, I was nervous,” Lewis said. “The second year, I put too much pressure on myself. The third year, I went in there and told myself: ‘I’m just as good as any of these guys’. ”

Lewis’ teammate, Kevin Dean, who works out of YRC’s Marietta, Ga., terminal, remembered how apprehensive he was at his first national competition.

“I was not very talkative because I had all this stuff in my head,” said Dean, who was competing in his fourth NTDC in the four-axle class.

Like in professional sporting competitions, the competitors are not the only ones dealing with butterflies. The event can be trying on everyone around them, according to some wives and company support personnel here.

“I had one of our guys tell me, ‘Don’t get mad if I don’t talk to you,’ ” recalled Allyson Hay, a driver for Wal-Mart Transportation. “We had another driver who didn’t talk to anyone for six weeks.”

This year, Wal-Mart sent 45 drivers, four Road Team members and seven support personnel, said Hay, who is captain of the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer’s Road Team.

While normally overlooked, company support personnel handle chores and details many take for granted. Wal-Mart’s team handled ground transportation for drivers’ families and in one night, picked up 100 people from Orlando International Airport.

“Whatever the families need, we try to make it happen,” Hay said. “If they need to go to a Wal-Mart, we get a van and drive them. We help them get to the movies or the beach and we show them affordable places to eat.”

But what happens when drivers work for a small company and the only support a driver receives is from his spouse or significant other?

Dawn Knight was one spouse who was the sole support of her husband, Mark, who hauls for AAA Cooper Transportation Inc., out of Birmingham, Ala.

Knight said aside from dealing with her husband’s worry over finishing better than he did in his last appearance, she had to handle all the logistics for transportation, clothing and appointment-keeping while remaining Mark’s loyal cheerleader.

“It was a little better this year, since I had two kids with me,” she said, alluding to her 16-year-old son, Kole, and his girlfriend, who made the trip.

But she said it’s not always easy. One year, aside from Mark, she was the only representative from AAA Cooper.

“There is another AAA Cooper wife here this year,” she said. “But I have not seen her yet.”