Fleet of the Year awards presented in Nashville

Three fleets honored for their creative ideas and business practices.

March 4, 2016

2 min read

Left to right Ronnie Oakley Jr Oakley Transport Mike Harvey WIX Filters Cameron Hafer Trans Papa Logistics Jim Mele Fleet Owner magazine Phill Reynolds Transport America — Left to right: Ronnie Oakley Jr., Oakley Transport; Mike Harvey, WIX Filters; Cameron Hafer, Trans Papa Logistics; Jim Mele, Fleet Owner magazine; Phill Reynolds, Transport America.

Fleet Owner hosted the magazine’s 2015 Fleet of the Year awards presentation at a special dinner held in conjunction with the annual Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) convention in Nashville, TN. WIX Filters was the co-sponsor for this 14^th annual recognition of outstanding fleet management.

Jim Mele, Fleet Owner’s editor-in-chief, and Mike Harvey, national sales manager for WIX Filters, presented the magazine’s yearly Fleet of the Year awards to representatives from the three winners: Phill Reynolds, VP of maintenance with TL carrier Transport America, Eagan, MN; Cameron Hafer, DOT compliance and driver development director for Trans Papa Logistics, Inc., Louisville, KY; and Ronald E. Oakley Jr., VP of sales and marketing for Oakley Transport, Inc., Lake Wales, FL.

“There is no formal nomination or application process for our Fleet of the Year awards,” Mele noted during the presentation. “Our editors interact with hundreds of fleets in course of a year and while all have valuable stories to tell, a few simply stand out from the rest – for their management skills, for their successes, and most of all for their innovative approaches to running outstanding fleet operations.”

Transport America won Fleet of the Year honors in the for-hire category for its work with

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ALK Technologies to develop a weather information overlay feature from scratch for its routing software, then allowing it to be offered to the entire trucking industry simply because improving safety for truck drivers and the motoring public alike, to the carrier’s mind, is simply the right thing to do.

Trans Papa Logistics took home the trophy in the private fleet category after building its in-house transportation operation from scratch over the course of the last 10 years, an operation that now visits every Papa John’s twice a week, making 6,000 deliveries with an on-time performance that routinely registers in the upper 90% range.

Finally, food-grade bulk hauler Oakley Transport won Fleet of the Year honors in the vocational category for its solid business practices as it profitably expanded 20% a year over the last three years, growing from 350 tractors and 550 bulk tank trailers to more than 500 tractors and almost 800 tank trailers.

“That growth was fueled by dedication to a single concept – service,” said Mele. “High service levels are critical for highly sensitive cargo whose integrity has to be protected at every step of the way in the transportation process.”

About the Author

Sean Kilcarr

Editor in Chief

Sean Kilcarr is a former longtime FleetOwner senior editor who wrote for the publication from 2000 to 2018. He served as editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2018.