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A HALF-CENTURY OF DEDICATION
One UPS driver’s
50th year with the
company behind him
by TODD DILLS
C
an you imagine staying 50
years with the same trucking
company? We’ve heard no
shortage of stories about independents who’ve stayed active that long
leased to different carriers or on
their own, but as far as UPS knows,
Springboro, Ohio, resident Ron
“Big Dog” Sowder “may be the only
[company driver] in the trucking
industry to have ever done that,”
company reps say. He’s certainly
the longest-serving member of the
company’s elite “Circle of Honor”
all-safe-mile drivers with more than
14 | TRUCKERS NEWS | JULY 2012
25 years under their belts, by far.
Sowder started his career with the
company in 1962 after serving in
the Navy. “I was a boiler operator,”
he says of his armed forces responsibilities — “high-pressure boilers
on a destroyer.” When he saw a UPS
employment ad in the newspaper
shortly after returning from service,
“it was a slack season for jobs” and
“there were all kinds of people
there” making applications in
Cincinnati, he says. “I was one of the
very few who knew anything about
UPS at the time.”
He got one of the jobs, delivering locally before going over-theroad. A full half-century later,
he’s still working for the company
on a feeder run that starts every
workday morning at 8 a.m. at
UPS’ West Carrollton, Ohio,
center. “I go to Sharonville, then
to Cincinnati.” From there he’s
Louisville-bound, where he picks
up “second-day-air volume back”
toward where he started.
In January this year, UPS held
a big celebration for Sowder at
the West Carrollton operating
center to culminate his halfcentury of service. It started with
“a police escort by the state patrol
from Monroe all the way back to
Scan this QR for video of selections
from UPS’ celebration for 50-year
safe driver Ron Sowder earlier this
year. Or visit youtube.com, search
“Ron Sowder.”