THE SUNRISE EXPRESS TEAM (L-R): SCOTT GRONEWOLLER, TONY MILLER, JACKIE JONES, DAVID VETTEL, RAY VETTEL, STEVE BEAHM, TYLER JONES AND RICK OTTO.


Ribbon empty beer containers from Grand Island to Milwaukee on Feb. 26, 1985. Ray joined the company the next year. The son of a truck driver and terminal op- erator, he had moved to Ohio after graduat- ing high school to work for Coldway Food Express, the company that had employed his father. He was there five years and was a troubleshooter and terminal manager when


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the company’s owners, in poor health, sold the company. In 1986, he joined Sunrise Express as a dispatcher and vice president of operations. For a while, he was the only dispatcher, and he did it well. His brother, David, remembers marveling at family gath- erings at his brother’s ability to keep track in his head of his drivers’ routes and phone numbers. Mark Roland, a customer relations


manager who has been with the company 30 years, said Ray was “aggressive, in a word.” “He was very good at finding freight and very good at getting drivers to take it and then connecting the dots to get them home,” he said.


Ray said his own personality was a good mix with Mettenbrink’s laid-back demeanor.


Issue 1, 2017 - Nebraska Trucker


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