By Al Muskewitz
 
The state and national Truck Driving Championships may have been canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but one Alabama carrier plans to conduct its own truck rodeo next month as part of a day of “company hoo-rah” to celebrate its drivers and give them a well-deserved day of fun after a particularly difficult spring.

LB3 will conduct its own TDC on June 6 in the shop yard off U.S. 431 outside Wedowee, Ala. The Alabama Trucking Association will be on hand to help set up the course.
 
“We’re going to do our own personal rodeo,” LB3 chief operating officer Brian Lindley announced during a recent interview with Wright Media. “One of the reasons is because our guys have been through so much with this pandemic. We want to cook for them, we wanted to celebrate just a little bit of ‘job well done, guys.’”
 
But there will be a trophy presented to the winner. Perhaps, with the other events canceled this year, the winner could lay claim to unofficial national champion.
 
“More than anything I just want it to be fun,” Lindley said.
 
LB3, which delivers refrigerated poultry and paper products primarily east of the Mississippi, won the President’s Award in this year’s Alabama Trucking Association Fleet Safety Awards as the state’s safest fleet. The six-year-old carrier participated in the Alabama Truck Driving Championship for the first time in 2019 and driver Nathan Heflin placed third in the Sleeper Berth division.
 
Al Muskewitz is the Editor of Wright Media. He can be reached at musky@wrightmediacorp.com