Truckload Authority - April/May 2019

TCA HONORS 2018
HIGHWAY ANGEL
By Klint Lowry
For most people, there are only a handful of instances in their lives that call for an act of
heroism.
“We’d all like to believe that if the situation presented itself, each of us would be able to step
up and offer assistance to others in their time of need,” Truckload Carriers Association Chairman
Dan Doran said March 12 at the general session of the closing day of the Truckload Carriers Association’s
81st Annual Convention.
With as much time as professional truck drivers spend out on the open road, they are more
likely than most folks to come across fellow travelers who need help. And every year, the industry
produces several stories of drivers who step up to offer their assistance.
In 1997, TCA created the Highway Angels program “to improve the public’s image of the
trucking industry by highlighting positive stories of professional truck drivers who display exemplary
acts of kindness, courtesy, and courage while on the job,” Doran said. Thanks to the generosity
of EpicVue, TCA is able to show their appreciation to the recipients.
The Highway Angel program celebrates drivers and their stories of heroism throughout the
year. One of these drivers is then chosen for special recognition at TCA’s annual convention as the
Highway Angel of the Year.
“EpicVue is honored to recognize these incredible professional truck drivers, who put themselves
sometimes in great danger to help a fellow truck driver, a motorist, and even a small child
who may be wandering alone in the dark,” said EpicVue CEO Lance Platt at this year’s Highway
Angel of the Year presentation as he and recording artist Lindsay Lawler introduced this year’s
recipient, Brian Snell, a regional trainer with Bangor, Maine-based Pottle’s Transportation.
Lawler, the official spokesperson for the Highway Angel program, whose song “Highway
Angel” is a tribute to the spirit of the program and to the drivers who personify that spirit, said
Snell “is passionate about what he does, humble, and an overall brilliant example of what this
program aims to highlight.”
A brief video prior to the presentation described the early-morning rescue for which Snell
was being honored. After the ceremony, he recalled the incident in his own words.
Snell was driving on I-495 in Massachusetts at about 2:15 a.m. on June 8, 2018, when he
saw the headlights of a vehicle driving the wrong way up ahead before it hit something and spun
out to a stop. Snell stopped his truck in the middle of the road, blocking oncoming traffic from
the crashed car.
As other motorists stopped, Snell got out of his truck to assess the situation. The car’s front
end was mangled, and the woman behind the wheel was unconscious.
Snell is no stranger to emergency situations. He joined the Marines in 1989, but an injury
sustained in boot camp curtailed his military career. After his discharge in 1992, he spent nearly
five years as a paramedic in Nashua, New Hampshire, near his hometown of Merrimack, before
becoming a sheriff’s department rescue worker.
“I used to do a lot of high-angle rescue work,” Snell said. “It’s rope work. We were up on
ledges, mountain work and all that.”
Even in his spare time, Snell has done “a ton of volunteering,” he said, including rescue work
on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington. At 6,288 feet, Mount Washington is the highest peak in
the Northeast and part of the Appalachian Trail. It is popular with hikers, cyclists and gliders, but
weather conditions can turn treacherous quickly.
“And when the World Trade Center went down I wound up going to Ground Zero working
search and rescue down there,” Snell added.
Snell spent five days as a volunteer at Ground Zero “literally digging in the dirt and going
through the pile itself.” He was among the many rescue workers who became casualties of the
attack after the fact. Part of his diaphragm became paralyzed and he lost function in one lung due
to the prolonged exposure to the particulate matter in the air at Ground Zero.
“Obviously, after 911, law enforcement was out because of the disability with my lung,” Snell
said.
Snell was already on his way to becoming a full-time professional truck driver. “My grandfather
for years told me to get my truck license,” Snell said. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a truck
driver.’” But during an economic downturn he took his grandfather’s advice and started a gradual
transition from emergency work into trucking.
EpicVue CEO Lance Platt, left, and Highway Angel spokesperson and Nashville
recording artist Lindsay Lawler present Brian Snell of Pottle’s Transportation
with the Highway Angel of the Year award during the Truckload Carriers
Association’s 81st annual convention.
In those early morning hours last June, Snell’s professional worlds came together when he
came to the driver’s assistance.
“The car was on fire,” he said. “I put the flames out with the fire extinguisher. Then I started
working on her to make sure she was conscious and breathing and all that.”
While he was doing that, he heard one of the other motorists who had stopped to help
yelling some distance away that they “couldn’t get in.” That’s when Snell realized that another
vehicle had been involved in the crash.
“I thought she’d just bounced off the guardrail,” Snell said, but she had collided head-on
with another car. He went over to the second car and saw the driver, a 32-year-old man, was
dead inside.
There was a dog inside the car, and Snell had to smash a window to get to it. As it happened,
the first officer on the scene was a K-9 officer, so Snell left the dog in his care, then returned to the
first car to help rescue workers extract the woman.
He said when Highway Angel organizers first tried to contact him about honoring him for his
efforts, he didn’t return their phone calls.
“I don’t do what I do to be recognized, you know what I mean?” he said. “And finally my
company got involved and said, ‘You got to call back.’”
Barry Pottle, president of Pottle’s Transportation, said when he heard about the incident and
how Snell performed in the emergency, he was impressed, but he wasn’t a bit surprised.
“If you or I would have been in that situation, we would have been frantic,” Pottle said. But
with Snell’s background and training, he had the knowhow and the experience to take charge of
the scene. But even more so, Pottle said, this was a demonstration of character.
“Brian’s just a great, unique person,” Pottle said. “He’s just calm, and cool and collected and
he just has a way about him that he can just maintain himself and get the job done. He’s a great
driver, he’s a great family man, and I think what he did that morning was unbelievable.”
Being named a Highway Angel was an honor, Snell said. When he heard he had been named
Highway Angel of the Year, he was “ecstatic,” but he admitted he’s had mixed emotions because of
the circumstances around the incident.
The woman in the first car was intoxicated at the time of the crash. She has been charged
with vehicular homicide.
“It’s a very bittersweet award to accept,” Snell said. “I’m literally being honored for saving
someone who killed somebody.
“Hopefully, she changes her ways.” he said.
The Highway Angel of the Year was created to honor those drivers who best embody the
spirit of the Highway Angel program. Snell, 50, has been doing rescue work of one kind or another,
both professionally and as a volunteer, since he was on the American Red Cross Disaster Team
in high school. That’s roughly 35 years of putting himself on the line to help others. He’s even
delivered a baby along the roadside.
Putting yourself out there for your fellow human beings is simply part of the values by which
he was raised. “My whole family is community driven,” he said.
“The Lord has always told everybody he wants us to be the Good Samaritan, and I don’t pass
that up. Anybody I can help, I try to do anything I can for them.”
32 TRUCKLOAD AUTHORITY | www.Truckload.org TCA 2019