Driver of theMonth APRIL 2014
KEN FOX Orthman Logistics By Steve Brawner Contributing Writer
How does a driver go decades without so
much as a fender bender? By sensing what other drivers are going to do, and by getting lucky occasionally. “You’re incredibly fortunate, let me tell
you,” said Orthman Logistics’ Ken Fox, the Nebraska Trucking Association’s June Driver of the Month. “It isn’t that I haven’t had my share of close calls, but the Good Lord takes care of you.” Fox hasn’t had an accident since the 1980s,
and in that case a motorist drove in front of him. In addition to being fortunate, how has he maintained such a safe driving record? “You just try to keep alert and keep
checking your mirrors,” he said. “After a while, you develop a sixth sense kind of for what some of the other vehicles are going to do. You get a feeling somebody’s going to go ahead and pull out in front of you or this or that and try to anticipate it. ... Just something about the way that vehicle might be coming up to an intersection or the way somebody’s driving, yeah, you can’t explain it.”
Fox’s safe driving record isn’t his only
impressive streak. His 2007 Kenworth T800 has 750,000 miles on the odometer and has never had its brakes replaced. “Tat’s pretty much unheard of,” he said. “But I drive a piece of equipment to make it last. ... You take care of it, and you try not to make panic stops all the time, and you drive it with a little respect, that it’s a truck, not a race car.” A northeast Iowa native, Fox moved to
Nebraska in high school in 1971 and then went to work for heavy equipment maker Orthman Manufacturing in a factory job a few years later. Soon he started driving for various trucking companies, including one that hauled for Orthman. Eventually, his carrier was bought by Orthman Logistics. “And so I ended up kind of back where I started,” he said. Based near Lexington, Fox hauls farm
equipment, mostly around the nation’s heartland, often picking up steel in the process and bringing it back to the manufacturing plant. During the fall and winter months, he transports farm equipment to dealers in the Mississippi Delta region in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. Te day of the interview, he had left Lexington with a load of farm equipment, had stopped in the Texas panhandle, was traveling east of Dallas and
was headed to Jonesville, La. Some of the equipment he hauls is
oversized, which requires making sure he has plenty of room and paying special attention to traffic behind and coming around the truck. Traffic has gotten worse during his many years in the motor carrier industry, and occasionally, passenger car drivers will let him know they don’t appreciate the extra road space he is occupying. “Any trucking today is a special challenge,”
he said. “Tere’s no courtesy amongst four- wheelers or even amongst a lot of the truck drivers any more. Traffic’s terrible, you know; it’s getting heavier all the time.” Fox said almost all of the heavy farm
equipment he hauls goes to dealers. It’s one of the more enjoyable parts of the job. “Most of them are pretty good people,
and you get to visit with them a little bit while you’re unloading, you know, see how the economy and crops and stuff are in their area,” he said. He’s hauled steel most of his career and
likes hauling it, too. When his runs are completed, he enjoys doing yard work at home. “I get real cranky if I don’t get home weekly,” he said. nt
NEBRASKA TRUCKER — ISSUE 3, 2014 —
www.nebtrucking.com
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