“It’s a bit of a funny story how Dupré was founded,” said LMTA Safety Management Council Chairman and Field Safety Rep at Dupré Logistics, Scott Reynolds.
Reggie Dupré and his family owned a gas station near Opelousas and they were having difficulty getting gasoline delivered to their station. So, they decided to buy their own truck and deliver their own gas. Eventually, that truck needed parts, so they bought a second truck.
Today, Dupré is running nearly 600 trucks across the country with over 1,000 drivers.
Reynolds joined Dupré in 2006 after earning his CDL in 2002 and driving for a couple of Over the Road fleets. “I really enjoyed seeing the country,” said Reynolds. “I was able to travel to 46 states and 3 Canadian provinces within my first year of driving.”
But as much as Reynold’s loved the freedom of driving, he missed home. “I have had the heart of a teacher my entire life and I wasn’t able to teach behind the wheel of a truck,” he said. So, in 2012 when a position opened in the Safety Department at Dupré, Reynolds applied and was accepted.
“This has been an absolute calling from God to put me in this position,” said Reynolds. “I’m able to get out in the field, reach drivers, and share good information with them. My goal is for a driver to hesitate, just for a second, and remember a conversation or some training they’ve had with me. Maybe that information will keep them from being involved in an accident or getting hurt.”
Reynolds and Dupré as a whole understand the value of their membership and leadership position in the LMTA Safety Management Council (SMC).
“It is so important to be involved with the SMC,” Reynolds said. “It’s an easy thing to bury your head in the sand and deal with your day-to-day duties. But being a member of the SMC, you’re able to share and team build, then you’re able to bounce ideas off of one another.”
At the end of the day, all the members of the SMC have the same goal: make sure that all of the drivers get home safe.
“I tell my drivers that I am responsible for them all the time,” said Reynolds. “All ten fingers and ten toes need to get home safe.”
As Chairman of the LMTA Safety Management Council, Reynolds has a strong vision for the Council over the next few years. “We certainly need to increase membership and participation. I love seeing the same safety people showing up at events — but I love even more seeing people that I don’t recognize.”
Reynolds concludes with, “We, as safety people, need to keep things in perspective and make things personal. Numbers can be dry and boring, but mostly impersonal. We need to bring that back into focus and realize that there is a driver and a family behind every single number that is in a statistic.”
