DOING IT RIGHT


BY JENNIFER BARNETT REED Contributing Writer


With only six years of long-haul


trucking under his belt, you might think 2012 Driver of the Year Jules Amo of Knight Refrigerated would need a little more experience himself before he took on the job of training his company’s fresh-from- trucking-school hires. But what the 52-year- old Amo has to offer his new co-workers goes well beyond what’s on his resume. Amo lives in Springfield, Mo., but


is based out of Knight’s Phoenix terminal and drives primarily in the Southwest. He was nominated by his supervisor at Knight, Chris Brown, for both his tireless attention to safety—his six years have been accident- free—and the results he produces through his involvement in the company’s Squire program, which pairs inexperienced new drivers with veterans for a month before they can go out on their own. “The drivers he trains are the safest,


and they stay with the company,” said Brown, division manager for the Squire program. “He’s very thorough—he doesn’t shortchange anything.” Brown said she recruited Amo to be a


Squire trainer after just a couple of years on the job because of the initiative he showed with the company’s dispatchers, calling to let them know when he was free to take a load rather than waiting for them to call him. He shows the same kind of work ethic training new employees, she said, using downtime on the road to help them practice driving skills or get up to par on the administrative side of the job. Amo’s route to becoming a truck driver


was a meandering one. He joined the Air Force out of high school and spent 10 years working as an air transportation supervisor.


Arizona Trucking Association 2012 Yearbook


Through mentoring program, Driver of the Year Jules Amo teaches new drivers his approach to safety and life on the road


(Left to right) ATA Chairman George Cravens, Driver of the Year Jules Amo, Knight Refrigerated, Assistant ADOT Director Terry Conner and Kenny Palmer, Transtar Insurance Brokers


Then he spent another 10 years driving a small delivery truck. After that came several years of “floating,” which included a job teaching driver’s education to 15-year-olds. When he lost his final “floating” job, he said, he realized that what he had loved most about it was the driving. So even though he was in his mid-40s by then, he decided it was finally time to do what he really wanted to do. After a stint with a trucking company in Salt Lake City, he joined Knight about five years ago. As a Squire trainer, Amo offers advice


on adjusting to the lifestyle the job requires. He speaks from experience: He and his long- term girlfriend make their relationship work by talking face-to-face through phones or computers, and they always make plans for the next time they’ll be together, even if they don’t know exactly when that will be. “I have to be upfront about what the


challenges are,” he said. “You could be gone three to six weeks without seeing your


family. For some people, that’s really difficult, especially if they’ve never been away before.” There might be more practical


adjustments as well, Amo said. “You might have a guy who’s never had to do his own laundry before. Or he has to maintain his own finances for the first time, and there’s nobody to pick them up if they screw up.” Still, he said, the lifestyle changes aren’t


the biggest challenge facing new drivers. “The biggest roadblock is that people


just can’t operate the truck safely for a long period of time,” he said. Amo credits education, experience,


and “plain old luck” with helping him stay accident free, and he says his decade in the Air Force taught him the value of doing things the right way, even when the boss is a thousand miles away. “Just because the company’s not


scrutinizing me out here,” he said, “everyone else is.”


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