Up Front

The Best of the Best

We’d like to congratulate Alphonso “Al” Lewis, a professional truck driver based in Montgomery, AL, who was named the Grand Champion at the 2007 National Truck Driving Championships. Lewis outscored and out-drove 377 other competitors—all of them state qualifiers from around the country—to win the “Super Bowl” of trucking held in Minneapolis.
     Mr. Lewis, the first African-American winner in the 70-year history of the Championships, has logged 21 accident- and injury-free years as a driver. For more on the Championships, see the “Life on the Road” feature on page 60.
     Winning the NTDC might not make Mr. Lewis the “Jackie Robinson of Trucking,” but we know enough about the competition to understand that anyone good enough to claim the NTDC Grand Champion title is the “best of the best,” a true professional. By the way, what’s your definition of a true professional? We put the question to a handful of drivers for this month’s “Say What?” feature on page 32.
     As always when you ask drivers for opinions, the replies are all over the map, but one trait cropped up in many of the answers: having a deep respect for the job, the industry and the rest of the motoring public. That sounds good to us. To Mr. Lewis and all you other true professionals out there, keep up the good work. This industry needs more like you.