Chester Masser Jr. has driven 4 million miles without an accident in his CDL driver job. But to him, his safety record has as much to do with others on the road as it does with him. He describes safe driving as “a team event.”
Masser’s incredible safety record earned him a spot in the National Truck Driving Championships in Indianapolis, Ind.
this week. It runs through Saturday. His local publication, HeraldMailMedia.com, wrote about Masser in a nice feature.
He earned his spot in the nationals by winning the Maryland truck driving championships earlier this year, according to FedEx. It will be Masser’s third time in the finals.
At Masser’s first two national contests, he drove a tanker and finished “in the middle of the pack,” he said.
This year he will compete in the flatbed division, driving a semi-trailer and a flatbed trailer through a series of obstacles and precision-driving tests.
“I’m not going to be pompous enough to say I’m the perfect driver,” says the 61-year-old Masser, who owns TOTGAS Trucking Inc. in Hagerstown, Md., and drives relay for FedEx Ground. “You watch out for the other guy, you yield the right of way and prepare for the other man to make a mistake.
“And, fortunately,” Masser continues, “when I’ve made the mistakes on the highway, the other guy’s been a defensive driver, and he was prepared for me to make that mistake, and we avoided an accident. It’s not just one person. It’s everybody working together.”
Masser comes from a family of truckers and has been behind the wheel since age 19.
“After a lifetime of being in the industry, it’s kind of like you want to take it up a step higher, and I should have started earlier,” Masser said. “It’d been nicer if this program is more widely recognized by the companies. You do step it up. It’s quite a lot. You learn more about the trucking history, the legalities of it.”
Read the rest of the HeraldMailMedia.com story here.
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