C. Felix Harvey started his trucking company in 1956 out of a cow barn on N.C. 11 with one truck and one driver.
For the first time in its history, that company, Tidewater Transit, has won the highest national trucking award — the National Tank Truck Carrier’s Grand Award — for safely driving its fleet about 32 million miles in 2012.
The company competed with some of the largest trucking companies, including Kenan Advantage Group’s Merchant Gas Group, which states on its website it’s the “largest transporter of industrial gases in the U.S.”
“We’ve received state awards,” Harvey said at The Free Press this week, “but never the national.”
The company also received the South Carolina Trucking Association’s Tank Truck Combined grand award for driving 5-10 million miles in South Carolina in 2012.
The awards were part of the NTTC’s 2012 Competitive Safety Contest.
Harvey founded the original Tidewater Transit with two partners in 1949. Later, the three owners separated and started their own trucking companies, with Harvey keeping the name.
His one employee, Charles Smith, ran the operation as general manager, truck driver and mechanic, increasing the number of trucks to more than 60.
Harvey’s son-in-law, John McNairy, was named CEO and grew the fleet to its current 383 trucks, Harvey said.
In 1980, the company outgrew the cow barn and moved to U.S. 70 in Falling Creek. It operates 13 terminals in eight states and employs 380 drivers transporting chemical and dry bulk freight throughout the 48 states and Canada.
Frank Famularo has been president for the last three years. Its safety operations are handled by David Edgerton.
“You can’t operate a trucking business without safety,” Harvey said, “and David has done such a good job. … We’re very proud he has done what he has.”
Along with the Grand Award, Tidewater Transit received a Safety Improvement Award from NTTC for the sixth year.
“It just shows continuous improvement from year to year,” Edgerton said. “… The No. 1 thing they look at is the DOT reportable accident rate.”
Edgerton said teamwork — from the drivers to the terminal managers to the support staff — is one of the reasons for the company’s consistent safety record.
Tidewater uses state-of-the-art technology, such as rollover prevention.
“Its technology that will warn the driver if he’s going too fast for a curve,” Edgerton said.
To prevent a rollover, it warns in stages, and if it gets to the third stage will “actually apply the brakes for the driver,” he said.
“The trucks are set at 68 miles per hour,” he said about the maximum speed.
They are equipped with GPS tracking and electronic logs, which calculate driving time and when drivers must take a break, Edgerton said.
The federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations are strictly enforced, he said.
“The training program is very extensive,” he said.
It runs 30 to 60 days, depending on previous experience. New drivers have to be approved to drive by “top gun” drivers before they can hit the road, Edgerton said.
Third-party vendors monitor drivers on the road, and an 800 number is posted on the trucks for anyone who wishes to express a concern about a particular driver.
Harvey said he never imagined his transport business would drive this far. His hope, he said, was to “keep 60 trucks and make some money.”
It’s been a long haul since the old cow barn, but for Tidewater Transit, the pinnacle has been reached.
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.