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Apr 1, 2011 12:00 PM

A&R TRANSPORT INC joined the ranks of fleets that have earned more than one Outstanding Performance Trophy in the National Tank Truck Carriers Tank Truck Safety Contest. The Joliet, Illinois-based carrier received its first Outstanding Performance Trophy in 2004.

The latest win in the 2010 NTTC Tank Truck Safety Contest was achieved with a frequency of .215 accidents per million miles. A&R Transport's achievement comes as the latest Department of Transportation (DOT) statistics show dramatic improvements across the board in reducing trucking industry accident rates.

A&R Transport ran 79.9 million miles in 2010, and it was selected from among 20 carriers that won the Grand Award for their respective mileage categories for the 2010 calendar year. The carrier also is taking home a grand award in the “63 to over 100 million miles class” in the Competitive Safety Contest and a merit award in the Personnel Safety Contest. A&R Transport also receives a third year improvement award.

The management team leading the winning company includes Jeff O'Connor, president, and Ken Pate, vice-president of safety and risk management.

The Outstanding Performance Trophy is awarded annually by Heil Trailer International of Athens, Tennessee, and is presented to the carrier judged to have had the best safety program in the tank truck industry during the previous year.

Contest judges this year were: Mike Mannikko, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration; Tom Moore, National Private Truck Council; Rex Railsback, Kansas Highway Patrol; and John Van Steenburg, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

NTTC conducts four annual safety contests. These include a Competitive Safety Contest in which carriers compete in separate mileage classes; the Safety Improvement Contest in which a carrier competes against its own record for the previous year; a Personnel Safety Contest that is based on injuries per hours worked; and the Outstanding Performance Contest.

For 2010, the cumulative DOT accident frequency for participants in the NTTC's Annual Safety Contest was 0.513. This represents a decrease in the average frequency of 0.529 accidents per million miles traveled in 2009. It is important to remember that these figures are for the NTTC member companies that participated in the safety contest, not for the tank truck industry overall.

For the 2010 contest year, NTTC had 104 entrants traveling 2.24 billion miles. In 2009, 106 contest entrants recorded 2.14 billion miles.

“The big picture continues to portray just how well tank truck drivers perform on North America's congested highways,” says John Conley, NTTC president. “Congratulations to the dedicated men and women who make our specialized sector of the trucking industry one of the safest mile-by-mile on a day-to-day basis.”

Awards to safety directors in charge of the winning programs were presented at the NTTC Tank Truck Safety & Security Council annual meeting in Austin, Texas, in April. Winning companies will be recognized at NTTC's 63rd Annual Conference & Tank Truck Equipment Show in Baltimore, Maryland, May 22-24.