Fortune favors the safest fleets.
Family-owned refrigerated carrier Fortune Transportation, a winner of multiple safety awards over the years, secured its biggest so far this week, collecting the Truckload Carriers Association’s Grand Prize in the small-carrier division of the 2023 TCA Fleet Safety Awards during TCA’s Annual Convention in Nashville.
“I would like to thank the drivers first and foremost,” Perry Olson, owner and CEO of the Windom, Minnesota-based company, said in his acceptance speech. “They are out there doing their job every single day, and nothing happens without them. And to Jeff [Reeves] and the rest of the safety team—thank you.”
Bison Transport, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, claimed the Grand Prize in the large-carrier division for fleets that traveled 25 million miles or more in 2023. Both carriers demonstrated they had “exceptional safety programs and impressive accident frequency ratios” over the last year, TCA reported.
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“TCA is proud to recognize Fortune Transportation and Bison Transport for their outstanding achievements in safety,” Jim Ward, TCA president, said in a news release. “This year, we received the most entries ever in the history of the Fleet Safety Awards, showing that TCA members are truly industry leaders when it comes to safety.
“Fortune and Bison are very deserving of the Grand Prize as a symbol of their amazing efforts to improve safety on our roadways.”
Fortune boasts a long history of outstanding safety efforts.
The 44-year-old carrier collected two prestigious honors in 2022: the American Trucking Associations’ President’s Trophy for safety in the under-25 million miles category, and the TCA Safety Award for Excellence in Safety for carriers in the 15-24.99 million miles category. “It is a tremendous honor for the people of Fortune Transportation to be recognized on a national level for the outstanding efforts we put forth into safely sharing the road with our fellow motorists,” Olson said at the time.
Fortune also won ATA’s President’s Trophy in 2017.
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To be eligible for the TCA’s Grand Prize, fleets first must submit their accident frequency ratio per million miles driven. The three carriers with the lowest ratios are identified as winners for each of six mileage-based divisions. These carriers then undergo an audit by independent experts to ensure the accuracy of their results. TCA announced the names of the 18 division winners in January and invited them to submit further documentation about their safety programs, both on and off the highway.
After a thorough review by a diverse industry panel of judges, the winning companies were determined to have best demonstrated their commitment to improving safety on North America’s highways, TCA said.
Fortune and Bison, as well as all carriers that placed in the top three of their mileage-based divisions, will be further recognized during TCA’s 2024 Safety & Security Meeting set for June 2-4 in Indianapolis.
