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    Southsider honors father at 2024 National Truck Driving Championships

    Caradoc Wyn Posted on

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    The nights behind the wheel of a semi-truck are long, but the cab is quiet, just Brian Walker and his music. He sings along to whatever is on the radio – ’80s or gospel, country or metal – but sometimes a man reflects on his life, the places he’s been, the people who matter most to him. He thinks about his father, and then Brian Walker turns off the music.

    “If something isn’t going well,” he says, “I talk to him.”

    Harold Walker knew what to say, and when necessary, he said it loudly. He was a drill sergeant in the U.S. Army, a giant of a man, and not just because he was 6’3″. He had never met a stranger – that kind of guy. He was also generous and a proud provider, which is why what happened next was so hard for him: After leaving the Army, he went into construction, working on a three-story log cabin, and fell. He broke his back and a knee. Just so disabled.

    Had to file for bankruptcy.

    Brian Walker was in his early 20s when his father died. He was in the process of retiring from the U.S. Air Force. He was his father’s son through and through – he had enlisted after high school at 17 and had to wait until he was 18 to report to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio – and his parents needed his help. His father was disabled and his mother, never afraid of hard work, had worked for BF Goodrich for 14 years and now sold life insurance. But that wasn’t enough. They lost their home.

    Brian got a job driving a truck. He didn’t mind the night shift and the money was good. He earned more than enough to pay his bills and sent the rest home to his parents.

    Thirty years later, he’s still driving. Brian has been in every contiguous state in the union, on nearly every highway you can name, and some alleys you can’t, like the one in Chicago where… well, we’ll get there. But first, there’s a competition in Indianapolis, the National Truck Driving Championships, taking place this week at the Indiana Convention Center, a home game for the New Whiteland, Indiana, resident.

    Brian Walker, who drives for FedEx Freight, has already accomplished something no other truck driver in Indiana has ever accomplished, and now he will try to add another chapter to his story. He will be alone in this cab, as always, but he has had a spiritual companion since 2011, when William Harold Walker died at the age of 74.

    Brian has his dog tag.

    He wears it around his neck. They’ll be at the Convention Center together, Brian and his dad, trying to win a national title.

    Renaissance man meets “Super Bowl of Safety”

    They call it the Super Bowl of safety because the best truck drivers in the world are not the fastest – but they are the safest.

    Brian Walker has been driving trucks for 30 years, has put more than 3 million miles on the same roads as you and I, and has never had an accident. It’s a true story. The Department of Transportation can attest to that. You can’t survive in this business, figuratively or otherwise, if your top priority isn’t everyone around you – and every year the American Trucking Associations (ATA) recognizes that commitment with state competitions that crown winners and send the best of the 10,000 or so competitors to the National Truck Driving Championships (NTDC).

    Head to the Convention Center to see for yourself – the driving events take place Thursday through Saturday – but don’t come looking for speed. First, the event is held at the Convention Center. It’s huge, but not The huge. Drivers may reach speeds of 5 miles per hour to get from here to there and must navigate obstacle courses whose limits are limited only by the imagination of the judges who create them. The competition actually begins on Wednesday, but you won’t see much of it. Drivers must take a written exam behind closed doors that includes 40 questions on the history of truck driving, safety regulations, hazardous materials and first aid.

    This competition is about precision, not speed, and no truck driver in Indiana was as precise as Brian Walker in June at Lincoln College of Technology in the city’s northwest corner.

    It’s possible that no driver in Indiana has ever been as precise as Brian Walker was on June 7-8, but we do know one thing: No driver in the state’s history – and this race has been held since 1937 – has ever won his individual category (Walker races in the Sleeper Berth class), been named Rookie of the Year (this was his first year in competition) And was named Indiana Grand Champion (best driver in all eight categories).

    “It was overwhelming,” Walker says of this historic breakthrough. And although this was his first attempt at a competition, he had been preparing for this moment for 30 years.

    Walker has always driven at night, even when he was in the senior ranks and had his pick of assignments, because he prefers the solitude of empty roads. He’s soft-spoken, which isn’t necessarily unusual for a truck driver – they come in all shapes and sizes – but he’s an unusual man, period. In that respect, he’s similar to his father, a giant of a man (Brian is 6’6″), but not what you’d expect from a 6’3″ “instructor” or a 6’6″ “trucker” in real life.

    First, Brian is a reader. A speed reader, to be exact, who rips through an eclectic group of authors like techno-espionage specialist Tom Clancy, Star Wars novelist Timothy Zahn, and South Korean manhwa (similar to Japanese manga) by Chugong. Walker was a longtime comic book collector — “a kid at heart,” he says — who uses social media to share uplifting memes.

    He is now a 52-year-old college student studying business at IU on FedEx’s tuition-paying plan and plans to pursue his master’s degree. With his higher education and track record in safety – on the road, as an instructor and on accident investigation boards – Brian hopes to one day take the wheel of FedEx Freight versus an office.

    It’s not hard to imagine this man making it to the top of FedEx Freight. He’s not just a little bit successful – he’s very successful, including in the classroom. With his 4.0 grade point average, he consistently secures a spot on IU’s Dean’s List.

    About fries, dark alleys and love for his parents

    That load of fries changed his life.

    It was 1999, and Walker was a driver for Willis Shaw Express, delivering 42,000 pounds of frozen French fries to national grocer PYA/Monarch (now US Foods). He slowly backs up to the loading dock, just touches it with the bed of his truck, and then begins unloading the 21 tons. Most places that receive a shipment hire someone called a “bundler” to unload the truck.

    Walker did it himself.

    The manager at PYA/Monarch liked what he saw and invited Walker in for an impromptu interview. Psychological evaluation, drug test, the whole thing. The man offers Walker a job on the spot. A nice raise. He accepts, comes outside and sees that PYA/Monarch has unloaded the truck for him.

    With that, Walker is embarking on a new path that is taking him to new parts of the country: fewer long-distance trips, more local deliveries. He came to that narrow little alley off I-90 in Chicago, near Halstead Street, where he was supposed to deliver to a downtown grocery store. It was so tight that the store had to get city approval and hope the driver could make it work. Walker made it, although traffic had to be blocked off in both directions as he approached the alley and then backed down. It was so tight that he couldn’t open the driver’s door—the wall was right there.

    “I had to get out on the passenger side,” he says. “It looked like a long, creepy alley from a 1920s movie.”

    Walker took a photo of the alley just to show his wife and kids what was possible with a 53-foot truck. Because it didn’t look possible. But that’s what his father was loved. In the days before everyone had GPS on their phones, Harold Walker tracked his son across the country. He pulled out a Rand McNally atlas and ran his finger along the routes to figure out where his son would call from next.

    “It became a game for us,” says Brian. “Are you Here? I bet you are There.’”

    Brian falls silent. He becomes emotional.

    “Dad would have liked that,” he says of the National Truck Driving Championships taking place this week at the Convention Center.

    Harold Walker would no doubt have been there to watch. He loved his boy, and the feeling was mutual. Brian used his VA benefits to buy his parents a house and wasn’t afraid to tease his father, a drill sergeant, from time to time.

    “He was so strict when I was growing up,” says Brian. “I liked to tell my father, ‘Not while you’re under My Roof, you won’t.'”

    Brian has to smile at that, but he couldn’t keep his father annoyed like that for long. Harold Walker got pancreatic cancer in 2011, and it came very quickly. Brian moved to the south side with his mother, Mildred, where she retired and impressed her friends with homemade home decor and beautifully wrapped gifts. Towards the end, Mildred was battling Alzheimer’s. She saw her big-hearted giant son Brian and mistook him for her late husband.

    “Harold…” she said.

    Brian talks about it and then falls silent again.

    Mildred died on May 23. Two weeks later, Brian competed in the Indiana Truck Driving Championships and made history by honoring his mother’s memory and sharing the cab with his father, something he will do again this week at the NTDC. Brian will get behind the wheel at the convention center with two dog tags around his neck, his and his father’s, and overcome more of life’s obstacles.

    Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.

    More: Join the text conversation with sports columnist Gregg Doyel to hear readers’ questions and Doyel’s behind-the-scenes insights.

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    Caradoc Wyn
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