Determined to Drive

Determined Alabama trucker overcomes obstacles to get CDL to continue family legacy

By Al Muskewitz

Mikey Ledford has wanted to be a truck driver for as long as he can remember. His father drove a truck, his grandfather drove a truck, his great-grandfather owned a trucking company and his great-great-grandfather used to haul goods by wagon. It’s just in his blood. Against the heaviest of odds, he was not going to be denied. 

Neither the loss of his legs or all the naysayers who ever doubted he could do it could keep him from getting his CDL-A.

Through dogged persistence and the help of several advocates, the 40-year-old owner-operator from Sand Rock, Ala., today is seated behind the wheel of a Dodge dually and 40-foot trailer hauling local hay and construction material until he can lease on with a bigger company.

“When I got hurt I always looked for something I might be able to do,” Ledford said. “Why can’t I drive a truck; I can drive a vehicle. Trucking’s always been in my blood. I’m a fifth-generation CDL holder. It’s in my blood. I’ve basically always wanted to drive a truck.”

But there were challenges. When Ledford talks about getting hurt, it wasn’t just something as temporary as breaking an arm or a couple ribs in a mishap on the job or around the house.

He’s been paralyzed from the chest down since he was 18, the result of an automobile wreck that claimed the life of his girlfriend. It took rescue workers 2½ hours to extricate him from the vehicle.

That didn’t deter him from continuing the family legacy. He had been a welder before the wreck, but trucking is something he thought he could do. He’d been in the truck before with his father, but in order to pursue his dream outright he needed the proper training.

There weren’t many driver training schools willing to take on a disabled student for such a physically demanding job. But he was accepted into a pilot program at Wallace State Community College set up by Craig Rogers, the coordinator of Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services’ Adaptive Driving Program, and after 3½ years of stops and starts finally earned his CDL.

“It took a lot of fighting,” Ledford said. “There were not a lot of CDL schools who would even think about taking me … I had to jump through a lot of hoops.”

Of course, with a program established, the process is a lot faster now. But there were many who worked with him who knew he could make it.

“You would think somebody with his health condition that he would run into barriers and he might give up,” said Susan Ferguson, Ledford’s rehab counselor at the DRS office in Fort Payne. “Once you meet him and talk to him and see how he is, his persistence, I don’t know anything that could stand in his way. He is the most persistent person I have ever met. He has tremendous faith in God and his abilities that he’s going to be able to do something. I don’t know that I’d have had the patience to go through all that he has gone through.”

To make the program viable, they had to have two students and together with Kenneth Gamble from the Dothan area they went about knocking out the curriculum. Because of COVID protocols and restrictions what normally is a four-week, 160-hour program took nearly four months. Ledford completed the program in February.

The school had to outfit the truck to accommodate him, modifying the hood so he could do his inspection, putting in a special lift to get him in and out of the cab and installing hand controls to operate the vehicle. Of course, the truck had to have an automatic transmission. With all that in place, it was time to get started.

Ledford took all the tests in a fully outfitted 18-wheeler – a Volvo tractor with Mercedes Benz diesel engine and 53-foot trailer – including inspections, backing, hooking and night driving.

“I had to do everything everybody else was doing, I just had to do it in a certain way,” he said.

Ledford called his trainer, Ben Matanane “an amazing instructor.” Matanane has trained disabled CDL students before, but this was his first experience with paraplegics.

The former military and civilian truck driver stepped right in and trained his charges with the same zeal and attention to detail and safety as he would with any able-bodied student.

“I knew they would (be successful), it was just going to be a little bit more time consuming and a little harder on their part because they had to do all the work,” Matanane said. “I knew they could start and complete the course. If they were bound and determined, so was I. The thing I learned from it was nothing is impossible; if you set your mind to it, it’l happen.”

Once Mikey received his CDL he was off to find a carrier to bring him aboard. That brought about another set of challenges.

It wasn’t so much with carriers as it was the insurance companies that made the carriers balk.

“There was one out of Texas and he was all gung-ho until his insurance company (balked),” Ledford said. “They’ll come up with some excuse.

“Insurance companies aren’t really too keen about it and I really don’t know why. They’ll insure my car; I can drive a car. I’m insured on my 3500 dually and my Hummer, but when you go talking about commercial insurance they get a little nervous.”

So for now he’s content on being an owner-operator doing business as Ledhead Transport, picking up local jobs hot-shotting “just trying to keep my truck moving” until something bigger comes along. The hot shot he said is easier to get in and out of, but the big rig is actually easier to handle.

He’s already riding a wave of confidence having accomplished something many said couldn’t be done.

“It makes me (feel) like no matter the circumstance put your faith in God and if it’s something He’s willing to allow you can do anything; there’s nothing can hold you back,” he said. “I just do everything different from everybody else.

“You just adapt and overcome. God gives you abilities and (if) you waste them, that’s like spitting in His face.”

Al Muskewitz is the Editor of Wright Media. He can be reached at musky@wrightmediacorp.com

Photo: Mikey Ledford (seated) proudly displays his CDL certificate. He’s pictured with his father, Mike, a fourth-generation trucker.