The 2024 CCJ Technology and Maintenance Career Leadership Award is sponsored by Bendix, Mobil Delvac, Peterson, Travel Centers of America, and Utility Trailer Manufacturing.
When Bonne Karim joined United States Postal Service (USPS) in 1972, a first class stamp was just 8 cents. Over the course of a career that spanned nearly four decades with USPS, that increased 575%. While she's not responsible for climbing postage rates, USPS's standard of excellence for vehicle maintenance training can be laid squarely at her feet.
Before she was charged with the training of USPS maintenance professionals that service a truck count in the U.S. roughly the combined size of package rivals FedEx and UPS, Bonne was a little girl growing up on American Indian reservations in the Western U.S. Bonne's father, Bill, was forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and managed the Indian Timberlands. His job, she said, would move the family every few years.
She was born on a Klamath Indian Reservation in southern Oregon, just a few miles from the rim of Crater Lake on April Fool's Day.
"My mom said when she told my dad she needed to go to the hospital, he didn't believe her and thought it was an April Fool's joke and almost didn't take her."
"After a couple years there, we moved to North Dakota where there wasn't a tree in sight," Bonne recalled, "but the Texas cattlemen used to bring their cattle up on the train every year to graze on the Indian lands in North Dakota and then ship them back to Texas in the winter. We actually lived at Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which was in the news the last few years over the pipeline issue."
