2010
Mark FarmerDSR, XCM
Driver Sales Representative Mark Farmer decided to become a professional truck driver 32 years ago. He started out by owning his own truck for more than a decade.
“I had friends in the trucking business and I was young and single,” he said. “Traveling has always appealed to me and it seemed like a good way to travel and make a bit of money.”
In 1989, after years as an owner-operator, Farmer took the recommendation of friends and joined Con-way Freight. Since then, he’s continued to enjoy driving, and even drove to Phoenix from his home in Indiana for a recent vacation. Not much bothers him when he’s on the road. There are challenges to highway driving, including heavy traffic and distracted drivers, but Farmer has an idea for how to make America’s roads safer. First, he’d make changes to driver’s education programs.
“I think every young person should have to do a full-week ride-along in an 18-wheeler with a professional driver,” he said. “They’d get a whole new perspective about driving near trucks and how to stay out of their blind sides. It would make the highways safer for all of us.”
Farmer knows a lot about safety, having just reached the milestone of two million accident-free miles. How did he do it? A combination of hard work, close attention to the road and defensive driving.
“You have to anticipate what other people on the road might do. I’ve always looked at it that way,” Farmer said. “You have to stay alert so that you’re ready for anything and able to react.”
As the two-million-mile mark got closer and closer, Farmer started feeling a bit of pressure, he admits.
“When you get close, it starts getting in your head — there’s some luck involved and you start thinking about it,” he said. “It was a relief when I actually did reach two million miles!”
Farmer currently lives in Columbus, Ind., and has been married for 32 years to his wife, Rhonda. They have two children, Andrea and Chesney, and a two-year-old granddaughter, Olivia. In his spare time, his hobbies include golf, woodworking and remote control airplanes.
