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After 55 years, MTA Driver of the Year
Art Stoen retired but not slowing down
Dorothy Cox
dlcox@thetrucker.com
Art Stoen, 74, only takes one medication. It’s
for cholesterol, and he had to be talked into that.
To hear him tell it, sounds like the doctor may
have had to twist his arm a little.
After all, said the 55-year career truck driver,
“I feel fine, energetic.”
When The Trucker caught up with him, Stoen
[pronounced Stone] had just shoveled snow in
front of his home in Austin, where a couple of
days before the wind chill had been 60 below. By
the way, that’s Austin, Minnesota, not Texas.
Just about cold enough to go ice fishing, now,
said Stoen, who January 24 received the Minnesota
Trucking Association’s (MTA) Driver of the
Year award.
Besides deer hunting, fishing is one of Stoen’s
passions. He just recently retired from Kane
Transport Inc., and he’s learned a man needs stuff
to do in retirement.
The first time he retired, when he was a young
63, things just got too boring, so he went back to
the job he’s always known: driving a truck.
“This award is a great way to honor the
best in our industry; driving is no easy task, especially
when you take into consideration his
daily driving conditions like congestion, driver
distractions and Minnesota winters,” said MTA
President John Hausladen in presenting Stoen
with the award.
Stoen remembers many days of getting up at
3 or 4 a.m. to pick up his load by 6. Most of the
time the road crews “hadn’t sanded the roads” at
that hour.
Dorothy Cox
dlcox@thetrucker.com
Around
the Bend
Driverless trucks? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Platooning trucks? Ain’t happenin’.
Here, boys and girls, come the Jetsons.
For real. If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’. No kiddin’.
When I was a kid, two of the most popular
cartoon sitcoms were Hanna-Barbera’s “The
Flintstones,” set in the Stone Age, and its
counterpart “The Jetsons,” set in the future.
I would think four-wheel motorists who
have to travel around the Atlanta area and
other heavily congested areas like Chicago
and Los Angeles would like to get their hands
on a flying car like ones on the “Jetsons.” The
cartoon also featured robotic maids, aliens,
holograms and all sorts of electronic gizmos.
The Jetsons (parents George and Jane;
children Judy and Elroy; and Astro the dog)
Features
Hausladen said Stoen’s more than 4.4 million
safe driving miles are “an astonishing accomplishment,
especially given the unique challenge
of safely delivering and unloading diesel and
gasoline without incident.”
Stoen told The Trucker it would be more
miles by now if so much of it hadn’t been regional
and local runs when he started driving a truck
in August 1963.
He grew up on a farm in Brownsdale in southeast
Minnesota. His family raised dairy cattle,
hogs and crops and before school each day it was
Stoen’s job to milk the cows. He also hauled grain
in the family farm truck to the elevator, so after
high school graduation in 1962 he answered an
ad in the local paper to drive dump trucks full of
powdered cement to road crews helping build Interstate
90 in southern Minnesota.
After that, the 18-year-old Stoen worked for
a mining company, then a construction company,
for which he pulled a gravel truck.
About 1972 he began hauling oil into Wisconsin,
then worked hauling black top material to
road pavers and later road-building materials to
“hot-mix outfits” which prepared gravel and oils
to go on new roads.
He also hauled heavy equipment down to
Texas and for four years drove regionally for a
cabinet company.
Later he did OTR hauling for Kane, a premier
Minnesota transporter of petroleum, asphalt, biodiesel
and ethanol based in Sauk Centre.
In those days, Stoen did most of his work in a
day cab; if he had to stay overnight his employer
gave him money for a motel. He didn’t drive a
lived in Orbit City in the Skypad Apartments.
George was always shown whizzing
around in his flying car, and never seemed
to get in any traffic jams or fender-benders.
There’s a flying three-wheeled car called
the Samson Switchblade that just recently
introduced its automated tail, which — like
its wings — pop up or stow away at the push
of a button, according to a news release titled
“Flying sports car achieves major milestone.”
“In only 2 minutes, the flying car’s tail
transforms from driving to flying mode or
vice versa, under its own power,” the news
release announced.
The wings, which were introduced two
years ago, “swing out” and this sky-ready
transformation takes about 3 minutes. So
that’s a total of around 5 minutes for this
“car” to turn itself into a plane.
It can fly at up to 200 mph at 13,000 feet,
the news release says. (Sorry truckers, this
thing is too small to haul anything.)
The tail and wings are stowed and safely
protected when the craft is ready to drive
See Bend on p28 m
truck with a sleeper berth in it until the ’80s.
To say that Stoen has seen a lot of changes
in trucking over the years is an understatement.
At one time, he was hauling a lot of heavy
equipment which had been repossessed, and
when he went to pick it up, the former owners
didn’t always want to give it up.
“I’d get chased off the property and had to
get the sheriff to help,” Stoen said.
February 15-28, 2019 • 27
Courtesy: MINNESOTA TRUCKING ASSOCIATION
The first time Art Stoen retired, when he was a young 63, things just got too boring, so he
went back to the job he’s always known: driving a truck.
He has driven “just about everything” and
said they’re making trucks “so much better”
now. It used to take two hands to shift, he
said. “It’s a lot safer nowadays.”
He’s noticed more people in a hurry today.
They go flying by, he said, when he’s doing the
speed limit. But there are “a lot of good people
on the road, too,” he said, adding that usually
See Stoen on p28 m
Doh! Those darned three-wheelers in their flying cars — here come the Jetsons for real
Courtesy: SAMSON SKY
Pictured is a three-wheeled flying “sports car” called the Switchblade. When being driven
as a car, the wings retract and the tail folds into the back of the vehicle. It’s enough to make
George Jetson proud.