TT_090118_AllPages

16
AT
THE TRUCK STOP
PRESENTED BY CAT SCALE, VISIT WEIGHMYTRUCK.COM
Citizen Driver Award honoree Ingrid Brown:
People in trucking have to help each other
Courtesy: TA/PETRO
Growing up in a family that ran a road construction company and had a farm, Citizen Driver Award honoree Ingrid Brown came by her love of heavy equipment and 18-wheelers naturally.
Dorothy Cox
dlcox@thetrucker.com
When Ingrid Brown was about 14, she said,
“Someday I’ll have a red Peterbilt.” And, added
the 56-year-old Citizen Driver Award honoree,
“I have had a red Peterbilt.”
For her 18th birthday, Brown’s dad bought
her a 1979 Needle-nose Diamond Reo tri-axle
dump truck.
You might think Brown has a thing about
heavy equipment, and you’d be right. But she
came by it honestly, as they say, since her dad
had a large road construction company and asphalt
plant and heavy equipment was in abundance.
“I was the frilly girl who went out and ran
a dump truck and dozer” and numerous other
pieces of heavy machinery. “Whatever it was,
I’ve been on it once or twice,” she said.
And since this 38-year career driver has been
powering 18-wheelers, she’s hauled “everything
except cars.”
She fondly remembers that her dad had a
1966 Peterbilt and at age 5, “I stood by my father
and we rode for hours.”
Brown also grew up with horses and cows
and as an adult bought her family farm in
Boone, North Carolina, “on top of the mountain”
and not far from the eastern Tennessee
state line.
An independent owner-operator, Brown owns
her own company, Rollin’ B LLC, and has
hauled a little bit of everything, from produce
to livestock, and if you guessed she has another
red Pete, you’d be close. It’s a 2017 Peterbilt in
white and a custom blue created by her.
Brown said she remains “awestruck” by being
named a 2018 Citizen Driver Award honoree.
“I still stand with my mouth open about the
Citizen Driver Award,” she said. “It’s a huge
honor in my life.”
She’s also very appreciative to the folks at the
Iowa 80 TravelCenters of America in Walcott,
Iowa, where the 2018 Citizen Driver Award honorees
were publicly named in an awards ceremony
May 8.
The crew went out of their way to see that
Brown had soft foods to eat (macaroni-andcheese,
mashed potatoes and cheesecake), since
she had only been without a feeding tube for a
few weeks and couldn’t swallow very well.
She was diagnosed with 2B melanoma cancer
in June 2017 and underwent surgery April 16 of
this year to remove cancer in her throat and at the
base of her tongue.
The disease, she said, runs in her family, and
took the lives of both an aunt and a grandfather.
She has resigned herself to the fact that biopsies,
and sometimes surgeries, are just a part of
her life now. But Brown isn’t letting any grass
grow under her feet in the meantime.
When The Trucker caught up with her by
phone August 21, she was already at the Great
American Trucking Show in Dallas before
it opened, and was buzzing with the success
of “18 Wheels for Bubba,” a birthday party
which was held the previous Sunday (August
18) in Milton, Wisconsin, for 16-year-old Dakota,
nicknamed Bubba. He has Dandy-Walker
Syndrome, a congenital condition of the brain
that effects muscles and coordination, cerebral
palsy, and seizures. Truck drivers in the area
know him because he sits in a wheelchair in his
front yard and pumps his arm as the trucks go
by, something he’s been doing since he was a
toddler to feed his fascination with big trucks.
One trucker started a Facebook page for the
boy and his birthday celebration last month was
attended by more than 1,000 truckers across the
country, who came and brought gifts. Those who
couldn’t come physically sent gifts to the astonished
young man.
Brown was a part of the whole thing and
couldn’t stop talking about it. The trucking industry,
she said, is full of amazing people, people
who love to give back.
She sees the other Citizen Driver Award honorees
“as the example. They’re what we used to
be [known as], the Knights of the Road. That’s
how I look at them and I hope people see me the
same way; I struggle with seeing myself the same
way.”
She probably doesn’t see herself that way
because she’s focused on giving to people and
spends a lot of time searching out those she can
help.
She’s a board member and lifetime member
of the Pure Country Livestock Association,
an organization comprising drivers who help
carry the financial burden put on families who
have lost a loved one in the trucking industry.
Last year alone, according to TA/Petro, Brown
was part of 11 fundraising efforts, helping net
more than $100,000 to help others.
A charter member of Women In Trucking,
Brown was the only owner-operator among five
women who were selected for the first Women
In Trucking Image Team and has been a member
of the WIT Advisory Team for several years.
She mentors both women and men on being a
profitable owner-operator. But, she said, “Anybody
can do what I do; I’m not anything special,
whatsoever. You just put in the work and find the
knowledge because it’s out there.”
She chose the TA/Petro in Oklahoma City to
be renamed in her honor as a Citizen Driver
Award winner. It’s now the Ingrid R. Brown
Oklahoma City Stopping Center.
She knows that truck stop well because she had
been active in relief efforts for areas in Oklahoma
hit hard by wind-driven wildfires in April.
Brown was amazed by the wildfire victims,
many of them ranchers and farmers, who never
complained about what they lost but were
thankful about what they still had. It was very
eye-opening, “the compassion and humanity
these people have,” she said of the wildfire victims
and the various state, local, legislative and
federal government representatives who “were
all out there on the ground” with the people
who had lost livelihoods and more. She still
keeps in touch with many of the people impacted
by those fires.
When a reporter called her, Brown was waiting
on her truck to be polished; she was having
it shined and spiffed up because the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration had asked
her to be in a public service video being filmed
by the agency during GATS titled, “Voices of
Safety.”
Brown is part of TruckerNation, a trucker
advocacy association of professional drivers
who are in contact with FMCSA once a
month or more to tell them what’s happening
on the road, how the current Hours of Service
are working or not working, and “what is going
on” that needs to be addressed. They also
send in their logs so the agency can see data
first-hand backing up their concerns, and they
travel to Washington now and then to talk faceto-face
with agency representatives.
The group’s petition on proposed changes to
HOS was accepted by FMCSA recently.
Brown said she’s humbled by it all, especially
the Citizen Driver Award. “I’ve realized that if
being me has helped put a smile on somebody’s
face … if being an owner-operator and passing
on what was passed to me” has helped someone,
it just means everything has “come full circle. We
have to give to each other in this industry.” 8