Eilers is 10th best truck driver in the country

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SPRING VALLEY -- A Spring Valley man was named the 10th best truck driver in his class in the country in Houston, Texas, last week.

Kerry Eilers, who drives for Con-way Freight in Peru, beat out drivers from 36 other states to receive the designation at the National Truck Driving Championships.

In order to go to the national competition, Eilers first had to beat out all the drivers in his class in the state competition, which was held in June at Joliet Junior College.

The state victory was a first for Eilers, who has been driving for 31 years. He said he’s been competing on the state level for 12 years and has come in second or third, but this was the first time for a first-place finish.

The national competition began on Wednesday, when Eilers got a first look at the obstacle course he would have to drive. First, they described the course to the drivers on a screen, and then they let the drivers walk through the course.

It was a quick walk.

“You can’t measure anything off; you can’t do anything; but you can walk through it,” Eilers said. “They give you about five minutes.”

Following the walk-through, the drivers were given an 80-question written test, with questions ranging from the handling of hazardous materials to the history of the trucking industry.

“It was a pretty brutal test,” Eilers said. “Very tough.”

Thursday was drive time. The drivers were called out, one at a time to drive the course they had briefly walked; they weren’t allowed to watch the other drivers take their turns.

The obstacle course consisted of an assortment of problems, including parallel park, alley dock, right turn, scale stop, grease pit and front line stop.

“Each one of these problems consists of to see how close you can get to the problem and not touch it,” Eilers said. “It’s different from day to day when we try to stay away from stuff.”

Another thing that was different for Eilers was the vehicle he competed in. Drivers compete in eight different classes, but in Illinois, each company is limited to two contestants in each class.

So Eilers, who normally drives a single axle truck that pulls double trailers, competed instead in the tanker category.

“I pulled a tanker years ago, so I had the endorsement to pull a tanker,” he said. “So in my competition, I drove a tandem axle truck that pulls a tanker.”

After the obstacle course, the drivers were given a personal interview with some thought-provoking questions.

“An example, ‘With the price of fuel being between $4 and $5 a gallon, what can you do to cut down your company’s cost of fuel?’” Eilers said. “Another one was, ‘You’re a professional driver; so what do you do in your daily life to help the public image of you as a professional driver?’”

On Friday, the drivers were tested on how well they did a pre-trip inspection.

“They cause some defects on the trailer, and you have eight minutes to find all the defects,” he said.

When the points were totaled, Eilers came in 10th out of the 46 drivers who competed in his class.

While generally pleased with his performance, Eilers keeps thinking about what he could have done differently.

“A front line stop is a pretty easy problem, and I didn’t score on it, and I’m wishing I could have done better on that,” he said. “That’s the problem that’s beating me up pretty bad.”

Eilers hopes to get another chance in the future to nail that stop.

“I’m going to try again, and hopefully some day, I get to make it back to the nationals again,” he said. “It was a great experience.”