Alexandria, Virginia – The Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) is pleased to announce that one of its Highway Angels will once again be honored during Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl, a post-season, NCAA-sanctioned Division I FBS college football bowl game that is scheduled for 2:30 MT on December 30, 2009, at Boise State University’s Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. The event will attract massive publicity for the Highway Angel program since it will be broadcast to millions on ESPN.

            To determine the Angel who will be honored, TCA staff will examine all Angel nominations that were awarded in 2009 and cull the entries down to a short list of the four with the most heroic stories. These four Angels will then be judged by the TCA Communications & Image Policy Committee, which oversees the Highway Angel program. Each good deed will be judged based on a scorecard of criteria, including how many other motorists stopped to help, the degree of difficulty for the good deed performed, information provided by highway officials and incident bystanders, etc. The Angel who is selected will be crowned “2009 Highway Angel of the Year” and will receive a trophy in front of the 30,000-person audience and millions of viewers watching from home on ESPN.

During last year’s game, Highway Angel Leonard T. "Lenny" Roach, a professional truck driver for Unisource of Addison, Illinois, was honored. He was selected for braving a wind chill factor of -20º F and plunging into icy water up to his neck to extract a motorist who had lost control on the ice and landed upside down in a water-filled ditch.

The name of the Angel who is selected for 2009 will be announced on or about November 15. “I have no doubt it will be difficult to select the winner,” said Virginia Parker, co-chair of the TCA Communications & Image Policy Committee and director of marketing for Flying J, Inc. “Angel incidents for 2009 have already included some really dramatic stories, including someone who damaged his own truck to push another vehicle (and driver) away from flames, a driver who recognized and led authorities to a missing teenager based on an Amber Alert he had heard, and a man who positioned his truck to block traffic from hitting a suicidal woman.”

TCA’s Highway Angel program was established in 1997 as a positive trucking image campaign targeted at the general public. Over the past 12 years, the program has recognized and publicized the good deeds of hundreds of professional truck drivers to a general audience who might not otherwise be familiar with the trucking industry.

            “TCA is grateful to Roady’s Truck Stops for again providing this unprecedented exposure opportunity for our Highway Angel program,” said Kevin Burch, president of Jet Express, Inc., of Dayton, Ohio, and 2009-2010 TCA chairman. “There’s no better way to reach the general public and tell them about all the wonderful unsung heroes we have in our trucking family.”

To learn more about the program or nominate a driver, go to www.truckload.org. For additional information, contact TCA at (703) 838-1950 or angel@truckload.org.

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TCA is the only national trade association whose collective sole focus is the truckload segment of the motor carrier industry.  The association represents dry van, refrigerated, flatbed, and intermodal container carriers operating in the 48 contiguous states, as well as Alaska, Mexico, and Canada.  Representing operators of more than 200,000 trucks, which collectively produce annual revenue of more than $20 billion, TCA is an organization tailored to specific truckload carrier needs.