Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85423
roadside attractions I 'just tried to speak from my heart' Glenn Keller will compete with a celeb- rity in CNN's Triathlon Challenge. When Roadrunner Transportation Services contractor Glenn Keller, 51, decided to try out for CNN's 2012 Fit Nation Triathlon Challenge, he was just one day away from the entries deadline but lacked a camera to make the required video entry. "I pulled off the interstate, went into a Walmart and bought what I figured would be my last bucket of chicken wings and a webcam. I sat there in the seat of my truck and just tried to speak from my heart." Follow Keller's progress on his goal to lose 100 pounds at cnn.com/fitnation. The program culminates in September at the 2012 Nautica Malibu Triathlon, where he'll compete alongside CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta and six teammates. Shoot the QR to pull up Keller's winning video on your smartphone, and follow his progress via cnn.com/fitnation. BEATING THE ODDS BY FOUR MILLION MILES After driving farm tractors, Jimmy Ardis of Sumter, S.C., learned to drive professionally in a 1971 International cabover running to the West Coast. His story might be emblematic of so many operators' but for the fact Ardis lost his left arm to cancer at age 6. At 19, he discovered the limitations of the federal waiver program for drivers missing limbs after "they caught me driving," he says. He then graduated tops from a driving school and bought his first truck and trailer. "It was a Catch-22 situation," he notes of his subsequent search for a lease. "To get a waiver you had to have a driving job, and to get a job you had to have a waiver." He wrote then-Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole. Her husband, Bob, Ardis knew, had one of his arms crippled in World War II. Dole's staff arranged "to have a field tester to come to our house and test me and give me my waiver," Ardis says. 8 OVERDRIVE MARCH 2012 This month at the Louisville truck show, the Owner- Operator Independent Drivers Association plans to honor Jimmy Ardis for his 4 million miles of safe driving. Transport had also received a letter from Ardis and contact from Dole. Ardis visited the Atlanta fleet, where the Refrigerated drive tester told him, "You're a natural born truck driver." He joined Refrigerated in 1982. Two Richard Beauchamp of Refrigerated – Todd Dills 'REAL STEEL' DEAL This 1994 Freightliner cabover was an extra in the opening scene of last summer's blockbuster film "Real Steel." The rig sold Dec. 8 in an auction hosted by Joyce Smith, co-owner of now-defunct Ron Smith Trucking of Breckenridge, Mich. Smith took five trailers and three tractors to Detroit, where the film about a boxer (Hugh Jackman) turned robot fight promoter was made. "The trucks are set up as an arena around some wrestling robots," Smith says. The film was due out on DVD last month. years later, Ardis was the carrier's top earning owner-operator. He's now leased to Sapp Trucking. James Jaillet Courtesy of Joyce Smith