FALL | TCA <strong>2015</strong> Talking TCA d a v e h e l l e r | d i r e c t o r o f s a f e t y a n d p o l i c y B Y lY N D O N f I N N E Y a n d d o r o t h y c o x This ongoing feature that appears in each issue of <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> is called Inside Out, but if you looked at the top of the page, you probably already knew that, didn’t you? We’re not exactly sure who came up with that title, probably some editor who was stuck banging on his computer inside an office building trying to come up with a name for this feature, and who was looking out his window at the crisp sunlit day wishing he could be outside rather than inside. The purpose of this series is to profile the <strong>Truckload</strong> Carriers Association staff, let you get to know them a bit better and help you understand why they are so effective at what they do. This issue, the story is about David Heller, CDS, Director of Safety and Policy, but if you turn Mr. Heller inside out you’ll find a man who prefers to be called Dave, who worked hard to earn three letters (they’re an acronym for Certified Director of Safety) that follow his name but who will never flaunt them, a man who’s never met a stranger, who can talk your arm off, and one who has so much knowledge about his field that the editor who named this series WILL stay inside for as long as necessary to listen to what he has to say. Journalistic protocol says that from here on out in this article we should refer to him as Heller, but for some reason Heller doesn’t seem appropriate for a man with such a winsome personality and who loves people so much. So we’re going to close the stylebook, put it on the shelf, and just call him Dave for the rest of these pages. (PS: Don’t tell any of our reporter friends what we did.) Dave was born February 3, 1972, near Danbury, Connecticut. “I’d tell you the name of the town, but you’ve never heard of it, so I’ll just say near Danbury,” he said with his patented chuckle. As a young man, he’d already developed the gregarious personality that would serve him well as an adult. “I guess I would say that I’ve just always liked to talk to people,” Dave said. “I know it’s not to hear myself talk because of the way I sound, but I just like hearing what other people have to say. For a lack of a better term, I like being informed. I will always believe that other people’s lives are probably a lot more interesting than mine.” His formative years were by all accounts pretty routine for a youngster growing up in the Northeast. He was the youngest of three children with an older brother and sister. His parents required discipline and could be stern when the need arose. “Were they fair? Of course. Did I ever get a spanking that wasn’t called for? No. Every spanking I got was justified.” He doesn’t give specifics, but you get the impression that on occasion, he — as the old saying goes —would drive his folks up the wall. “My mother always said if I’d been the first, I would have been the last,” he said. “If you can think of it, I’ve probably done it, or at least tried to.” In high school, athletics was his passion. “I enjoyed playing sports. I was just a sports guy — football, baseball, basketball. I had some all-division honors for playing football (he was an offensive tackle) so I could bring it a bit.” In fact, he was so enthralled with athletics that he didn’t give much thought to a career path as he neared graduation. But he says today that “the National Football League wasn’t calling so at that point, I was pretty wide open. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I didn’t necessarily have a life’s calling, if you will.” For sure, trucking wasn’t on his mind. “In high school and college, trucking was pretty far from any of my thought processes in my mind. If I saw a truck on the highway, I was the guy that put my hand out the window trying to get them to pull the air horn. That was how I related to trucks.” So he headed off to Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, known today as the birthplace of basketball, and decided to major in a field of therapy. “I was working with disabled children or people with handicaps and disabilities, helping them to improve on their life. But that philanthropic [interest] made it hard to go back to my regular life after sitting down with these folks so at that point I had to change direction and focus on more of a business type of mindset, which is obviously where I am today,” Dave said. So he transferred to Western Connecticut State University in Danbury and set his mind on earning a degree in business management. When he walked across the stage in 1995 to get his sheepskin, life after college as far as Dave was concerned involved going on a job search. “If you’re looking for something in my job search that inspired finding something to do, it wasn’t there,” Dave said. “It was the necessity to pay bills and fund my life. That was basically the thought process I had when I graduated.” Fortunately for Dave, he didn’t have to search for long. The reason he’d moved back home to attend Western Connecticut was so he could earn some money while in college. 36 <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> | www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org TCA <strong>2015</strong>
TCA <strong>2015</strong> www.<strong>Truckload</strong>.org | <strong>Truckload</strong> <strong>Authority</strong> 37
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