Mack Trucks announced Monday, Oct. 22, that the company again will serve as a primary sponsor of the American Trucking Associations’ Share the Road program next year. Kevin Flaherty, Mack senior vice president of sales, made the announcement after receiving an award recognizing the company’s 2007 sponsorship of the highway safety initiative at the ATA’s Management Conference and Exhibition in Orlando.
Designed to enhance the safety of America’s roadways by teaching car drivers how to safely drive around large trucks, Share the Road delivers lifesaving messages to hundreds of U.S. cities and reaches millions of motorists annually. The program uses as spokespeople a group of professional truck drivers with exemplary safety records. These drivers conduct safety demonstrations for local media, students, community leaders and highway users in cities around the United States as a way to deliver the program’s lifesaving messages about potential blind spots, safe following distances, truck stopping distances and the like. 2008 will mark Mack’s eighth consecutive year as a Share the Road sponsor.
In 2005, Mack provided the ATA with a Vision model highway tractor that has served as the centerpiece of Share the Road events throughout the country. During his remarks at the event in Orlando, Flaherty also announced that the company is replacing this truck with its current highway flagship model — a Mack Pinnacle equipped with a variety of the latest safety technologies and spec’d to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s fuel-saving Smartway standards.
“Safety is one of our company’s core values, and the entire Mack family is very proud of our continued support of Share the Road,” says Paul Vikner, Mack president and chief executive officer. “By teaching motorists how to safely drive around large trucks, Share the Road is playing a key role in reducing the number of truck-related highway fatalities.”
“We are very grateful to everyone at Mack for their tremendous support,” says Bill Graves, ATA president and CEO. “As the founding sponsor, Mack was the first company to financially back Share the Road. Their decision in 2005 to also provide a truck took the program to another level. And now they’re stepping up again, not only by continuing to provide funding, but also in giving the program a beautiful new Mack Pinnacle model to use in spreading these lifesaving safety messages.”
