Driver of theMonth OCTOBER 2012


JIMCAVALIERI Old Dominion Freight Line by nance harris Executive Editor


Meet a guy who was born to drive. Jim Cavalieri’s dad drove for Holmes Freight


Line for 35 years. His three older brothers all drove trucks. And they were involved in automotive racing. Cavalieri drove top fuel dragsters for Peek Brothers Racing until 2008. “You hit 320 miles per hour in a quarter-mile. It takes all of 4.5 seconds,” he says. “You learn to look down the track as far as you can, but it does mess with you. It’s all kind of a blur.” Te plus side of this experience is that he got to travel to races all over the U.S. for many years. Te minus side of this experience is that every lap costs about $10,000 for the team owners, who eventually retired. Cavalieri says that years of racing apparently


got the need for speed out of his system because he hasn’t had a vehicle accident since he was in high school. “I haven’t got anything on my motor vehicle record, and I’m proud of that,” he admits. “You’ve got to look out for everyone on the roads. As a driver-trainer, I’ve tried to help these kids coming through the Old Dominion driving school. I tell them ‘You gotta slow down!’ When you first start driving, that’s when you are most vulnerable. I just tell them to be patient. Be on defense.” When he got out of high school in Omaha,


Cavalieri worked seasonal construction jobs before getting his trucking career started at Ancona Brothers, a grocery wholesaler based in Omaha. In the five or six years he spent there, he says he learned that the customer is always your top priority. “Without the customer, you’re done,” is how he sums it up. He’s had truck driving jobs for several companies—Quast, Vitran, and USF Dugan—before landing at Old Dominion about six years ago. He has over one million safe driving miles to his credit. He also gets rave reviews for his


professionalism. “He takes time out of each day to organize freight for his customers for his next-day deliveries,” says supervisor Christy Murphy. “I appreciate Jim as a driver-trainer, and for the time he takes with each and every one of our customers on a daily basis.” He says the oddest, funniest thing in his


whole career happened when he was still driving for Ancona. He came upon the scene of a car fire in Kansas. When he stopped to help, the woman driver—quite distraught—pleaded with Cavalieri to save her husband, Earl, who was in the passenger seat. Cavalieri flew into action. And here’s what he discovered: a Wilbert burial vault box on the seat. It contained Earl’s cremated remains. He had saved a guy from a car fire who was already ashes…but he had also helped a woman in distress. He quit trucking for a short period of time


to run his own concrete flatwork business. “It’s not that I’m a perfectionist,” he says, “but pretty close. Tat kind of work allows you to show your skill. It was nice to be on my own for a while. But the construction business is pretty cutthroat, so I decided to go back to driving.” Lucky for Old Dominion. His current


assignment is a daily route from Omaha to Norfolk and back. As a father of three, he likes the predictable schedule of less-than-truckload. It allows him to spend time with his kids and ride Harleys with his buddies when the weather is good. He enjoys doing a little hunting in the winter. Cavalieri hasn’t exactly lost his thrill-seeking


gene since retiring from dragster racing either. “I want to sky dive,” he confesses. “I’d like to learn how to fly. I’ve actually done the bungee-jumping thing. I don’t know how I did that because I absolutely fear heights!” nt


cavalieri


NEBRASKA TRUCKER — ISSUE 5, 2012 — www.nebtrucking.com


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