SPOTLight
DRIVER OF THE YEAR Daniel Phillips
BY TODD TRAUB Contributing Writer
Daniel Phillips was backing trucks up
to the loading dock almost before he could see over the steering wheel.With that many years in the game it’s no wonder Phillips, a veteran driver for industrial gas hauler GenOx Transportation, Inc. had the expe- rience to earn Texas Trucking Association’s Driver of the Year honors. “It means a lot to me to be recognized
for 47 years in the business,” said Phillips, 67. Growing up in Beaumont, Phillips recalled watching his father, who drove military trucks during WWII and then pursued the profession in peacetime. “He would come home late at night after a run, do his paperwork at the kitchen table, grab a bite to eat and a few hours sleep and return to the road by sunup,” said Phillips. “He did that for years. I take my hat off to him.” As a young man, Phillips would spend
hours on end riding with his father who spent 52 years in the industry as well—all of them accident free. When he was nine years old he recalls not even being able to reach the pedals of his father’s truck, but knowing he wanted to one day be a truck driver. And soon that day would come. Phillips began driving for Beaumont
Stone Company when he was 20. He cred- its his family, upbringing and experience for making him the success that he is today, a driver with more than six million acci- dent free and ticket free miles. “That doesn’t just happen,” Phillips said. “You have to work on that every day.”
“Trucking has been good to
me,” Phillips recounts. “It is the prestige and the respect that drivers receive which is important, and there is a lot of courtesy.” He recollects friendly encounters with a range of people, from state troopers and DOT officers to an older customer in Tennessee who always insisted Phillips be his dinner guest. Phillips worked many areas of the industry and as an owner oper- ator since 1996, transporting industrial gases. He has worked with the owner of GenOx Transportation, Inc., Kevin Mathews, for more than 20 years. “This is a well-deserved recognition
for Dan and has been long in the making! Dan’s driving career spans nearly five decades, during which he has driven for forty seven years and nearly six million miles without ever receiving a ticket or having an accident,” said Jacqueline Ferguson, GenOx’s Director of Safety. Phillips has reduced his time behind the wheel and focuses his time on mentoring younger drivers. In his typical outgoing fashion, Phillips shares his expertise and
Photo: Jon D. Kennedy
doesn’t mind taking a midnight call from a younger driver struggling with a technical problem. Phillips has a great reverence for his
colleagues and the industry, and was raised to be courteous and considerate at all times. “It’s called respect. You give respect and you get respect.” Phillips enjoys whip- ping up French cuisine at large family gath- erings, hunting, fishing and camping at Pleasure Island, near Port Arthur. He has enjoyed a long and fruitful
career in trucking, and as a result— Phillips, who is contemplating retirement in the next couple of years, can savor his driver of the year honor and look back on thousands of cheerful miles in the busi- ness. “I criss-crossed this country so many times I stopped counting,” he said. “East, west, north, south.” As TXTA’s 2015 Driver of the year,
Phillips can rest assured that all those miles are heralded not just by his peers, but as a shining example to the public of the professionalism that is the American truck driver today. R
Summer 2016 21
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