Truckers Deserve Love During National Truck Driver Appreciation Week

Thank a truck driver. Better yet, let’s set aside an entire week to show our love for truck drivers, men and women who deliver goods and services that make our world go ‘round.

Oh wait, that would be the National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, which is September 10-16, 2017. How about a bit of history on NTDAW? The first National Truck Driver Appreciation Week was in 1998 and was eagerly celebrated by the American Trucking Associations. Each year NTDAW is heralded as a much-deserved time when our hard-working, load-hauling friends are recognized.

Our Love for Apex Clients

Here at Apex we appreciate our clients 365 days a year, but especially during National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. We have a great, diverse array of clients. Here are a few fun facts about them:

• Our longest active client began June 1996.
• Our youngest active client is a mere week old.
• We have clients with one-truck, a one-man trucking company otherwise known as an owner-operator.
• We also have clients that own a company with more than 100 trucks in operation.
• Where are most of our Apex clients? Our top Apex client states are (in ranking order): Texas, Illinois, California, and Florida.

Love Those Fun Trucking Facts

Speaking of fun facts, you know there are many about the trucking industry and those truckers we appreciate so much during NTDAW and beyond. So, we scoured the internet – Google is our friend! – and found a bunch of those fun facts.

• Automobile manufacturer Alexander Winton invented the semi-trailer, which today we call an 18-wheeler truck, in Cleveland in 1898.
• There are about 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States. Also, there are 15.5 million trucks operating in the U.S.
• The typical U.S. truck driver is male, age 33, from Florida and drives 105,000 miles per year.
• Only 6% of truck drivers are women, compared to 47% of the total workforce being women. Still, that’s more than 200,000 female long haul drivers.
• The first woman truck driver to earn a commercial driver’s license (CDL) and drive a commercial truck was Texan Lillie McGee Drennan in 1929. She always carried a revolver.
• Small business trucking companies with 10 or less trucks make up 90% of the trucking industry.
• There are about 350,000 owner-operators in the U.S.
• Small business truckers drive more than 115,000 miles on average per year representing more than 3 million miles in their lifetime. They spend more than 240 nights per year away from home.
• “Smokey and the Bandit,” still the most popular trucking movie, was in second place as the biggest box office grossing film of 1977. “Star Wars” was No. 1 that year.
• Other well-known trucking movies: Steven Spielberg’s 1971 TV movie “Duel;” director Sam Peckinpah’s “Convoy” from 1978; and the Patrick Swayze-Randy Travis 1998 thriller, “Black Dog.”
• Trucking songs? Oh yeah, there are many. Among the most iconic are: C.W. McCall’s “Convoy,” Alabama’s “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler),” Kathy Mattea’s “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” Dave Dudley’s “Six Days On the Road,” Dan Seals’ “Big Wheels In the Moonlight,” Grateful Dead’s “Truckin’,” and Little Feat’s “Willin’.”

Are you a truck driver or small to medium size trucking company in need of a little cash flow appreciation? Let us introduce you to the advantages of being an Apex client. Call us at 855-369-2739 or get started here.