Five good things that happened in trucking this week – Oct. 30

While Halloween traditions are going to be a little different this year due to COVID-19 restrictions, members of the trucking industry have banded together to still have spooky fun this year while also giving back to the community. Here are five good things that happened in trucking this week.  

Walmart celebrates its first driver to reach 5 million safe miles

Warren Greeno has been a driver for Walmart for 38 years, and this year has reached an incredible milestone by becoming the first driver in Walmart’s history to achieve 5 million safe miles.

“He’s been to nearly every state,” said Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon in a LinkedIn post. “Congratulations, Warren. We appreciate your dedication and your commitment to safely serving our customers. Thank you to you and your family!”

National Van Lines delivers Halloween candy to Aspire residents

Volunteers from National Van Lines turned trick-or-treating upside down on Monday, Oct. 26, by delivering Halloween candy directly to Aspire home residents.

Aspire Inc. is a non-profit agency that provides an array of services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In lieu of the COVID-19 pandemic, Halloween traditions are up in the air for a lot of cities around the country, so National Van Lines decided to bring Halloween to these residents.

St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund’s spooky cab contest

With Halloween right around the corner – tomorrow – St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund (SCF) is challenging the trucking industry to show how spooky drivers can make their truck or cab this Halloween. If drivers send SCF a picture or tag a friend in the post below, a SCF prize pack is up for the taking.

Trucking celebrates National Cat Day

Truckers travel miles and miles across the country to deliver goods to our communities, and sometimes they travel with four-legged companions. National Cat Day was on Oct. 29, and trucking celebrated its mitten friends on the road. 

Locomation self-driving trucks deliver food from Pittsburgh Food Bank

Two self-driving trucks delivered more than 40,000 pounds of food last week from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to needy families in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. 

The delivery was part of a test drive featuring two human-guided, self-driving trucks produced by Locomation, an autonomous convoying startup located on the north side of Pittsburgh, TRIB Live reported. Locomation’s first product in an upcoming series is the Autonomous Relay Convoy, which enables one driver to steer a lead truck while a follower truck works in tandem, simply following the leader.

“The main goal was to actually experiment with running this autonomous convoy system through multiple states so we could understand how it will look in real life – what kind of coordination is required etc.,” said Cetin Mericli, Locomation CEO and co-founder. “And of course, doing it by carrying food from the food bank adds a purpose to this experimentation.”

Locomation initiated the collaboration with the Greater Pittsburgh food bank after helping the organization meet the demand for increased food distributions when the COVID-19 crisis began.

“When they were helping us during our initial response to the pandemic, they were not utilizing their automated system. They were using drivers and providing their trailers at no cost to us,” said Justin Lee, COO for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. “They’ve supported us so much throughout this past year and this was a way for us to support them back.

“It was their effort with what they were trying to prove with their technology, and they wanted to have a charitable impact with this test run. They could have sent it up there empty to show that their technology worked but their goal is to use their technology for good, so we were happy to partner with them on this.”