Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/70194
Diversions Profi le » Ron Sowder A HALF-CENTURY OF DEDICATION year with the One UPS driver's 50th C 25 years under their belts, by far. Sowder started his career with the company behind him by TODD DILLS an you imagine staying 50 years with the same trucking company? We've heard no shortage of stories about indepen- dents who've stayed active that long leased to different carriers or on their own, but as far as UPS knows, Springboro, Ohio, resident Ron "Big Dog" Sowder "may be the only [company driver] in the trucking industry to have ever done that," company reps say. He's certainly the longest-serving member of the company's elite "Circle of Honor" all-safe-mile drivers with more than 14 | TRUCKERS NEWS | JULY 2012 company in 1962 after serving in the Navy. "I was a boiler operator, " he says of his armed forces respon- sibilities — "high-pressure boilers on a destroyer. " When he saw a UPS employment ad in the newspaper shortly after returning from service, "it was a slack season for jobs" and "there were all kinds of people there" making applications in Cincinnati, he says. "I was one of the very few who knew anything about UPS at the time." He got one of the jobs, deliver- ing locally before going over-the- road. A full half-century later, he's still working for the company on a feeder run that starts every workday morning at 8 a.m. at UPS' West Carrollton, Ohio, center. "I go to Sharonville, then to Cincinnati." From there he's Louisville-bound, where he picks up "second-day-air volume back" toward where he started. In January this year, UPS held a big celebration for Sowder at the West Carrollton operating center to culminate his half- century of service. It started with "a police escort by the state patrol from Monroe all the way back to Scan this QR for video of selections from UPS' celebration for 50-year safe driver Ron Sowder earlier this year. Or visit youtube.com, search "Ron Sowder."