Every year, the Truckload Carriers Association presents its Clair C. Casey Safety Professional of the Year Award to the person “whose actions and achievements have had a profound and positive benefit or contribution to better safety on our highways. This individual exemplifies leadership and demonstrates the goals of protecting lives and property in the motor transportation industry while serving their company, industry and the motoring public.”
There is no better way to describe the 49-year career of Don Lacy, the 2011 Casey winner and Prime Inc.’s Director of Safety. And it’s especially impressive when you consider exactly how Lacy got his start in the industry – as a freshly-minted college graduate in 1962 whose first job was with an insurance company whose clients included a small trucking firm.
“After handling one of their accident claims, that trucking company asked me to go to work for them,” Lacy recalled. “They wanted me to check into safety because they’d never had a safety manager before. Back in those days, most of the safety guys were ex-drivers or ex-policemen. I have never driven, but I’ve always been a safety man at heart.”
And Lacy has never left it, steering his way up the ranks of several carriers before spending most of the past 20 years with Prime Inc. At this stage of his career, he’s able to look back and comment on the changes he’s seen in the trucking industry –rapid industry growth, greater government regulation, advances in research and technology – and how all of that has impacted safety.
“For many years our company was production-driven – how many miles we could drive, that kind of thing. Today the biggest drive is towards safety. It’s become the most important part of the business. Everybody is part of the safety effort.”
Lacy has made sure that the latest technological developments are incorporated into Prime’s business model as soon as they’ve been tested and researched. “We’ve been a leader in onboard safety technology in our trucks. We were the first company to have rollover stability control, lane departure warnings, and forward-looking radar.”
Lacy also points to other safety and communications advances that have happened on his watch, including electronic onboard recorders for drivers’ logs; simulcasts of weekly drivers’ meetings in company-owned terminals; downloadable podcasts of safety meetings, and a recently implemented driver wellness program that puts the focus on healthy living for those behind the steering wheel. “For years we always worked on the trucks, and everybody considered the equipment the biggest asset, when in reality it was always our drivers.”
Statements like that bring Lacy back to his early days in the trucking industry, and his desire to keep those working in it safe and sound.
“That’s one reason I hang around,” he said. “It’s still fun and exciting for me. I feel like I’m helping people. And that makes you feel good.”
