The Safety & Security Division of Truckload Carriers Association has recognized Doug Cook, vice president of safety for Covenant Transport, as its Safety Professional of the Year. The award, known as the Clare C. Casey Award, was presented Tuesday, May 20, during TCA’s annual Safety & Security Division Meeting, held at the Westin Charlotte in North Carolina.
The Safety Professional of the Year award recognizes a person whose actions and achievements have had a profound and positive benefit or contribution to better safety on our highways. Nominees must exemplify leadership and demonstrate the goals of protecting lives and property in the motor transportation industry while serving their company, industry and the motoring public.
Cook, who has 30 years of transportation experience and 18 years as a safety professional, boasts an extensive list of achievements. While working for Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Covenant, he oversaw a 26 percent reduction in vehicular accidents and a 60 percent reduction in accident cost-per-mile during the period from 2003-2007.
He is a past recipient of the American Society of Safety Engineers’ Safety Professional of the Year award for the Transportation Division, as well as ASSE’s North American Occupational Safety and Health National Champion Award. He also has received numerous awards and certificates of appreciation from groups such as American Trucking Associations’ Safety & Loss Prevention Management Council, FedEx Corp. and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Cook’s list of memberships and community involvement are equally extensive. He is the current national chairman of ATA’s S&LPMC and a past chairman of that organization’s National Truck Driving Championships. His membership in ASSE includes seven years in the Transportation Specialty Advisory Group. He also spent a year serving as the national administrator for the Transportation Specialty Practice, during which time he chaired a task force that developed and presented the Improving Fleet Safety Transportation Symposium, which was attended by 150 safety professionals in September 2007.
At Covenant, Cook is responsible for driver qualification, driver training, Department of Transportation compliance and the reduction of vehicular accidents. He holds two professional certifications: Certified Director of Safety from the North American Transportation Management Institute, and Professional Member certification from ASSE.
The annual Clare C. Casey Award is named after a safety professional who actively served TCA from 1979 until 1989. He was devoted to ensuring that truckload’s safety professionals meet yearly to build the strong network that the Safety & Security Division provides today. His dedication to this goal was instrumental in the development of the division’s annual meeting, the first of which took place in 1982. Upon his death in 1989, the annual Safety Professional of the Year, the Clare C. Casey Award, was established; the first honoree was named in 1990.
