DON DEMPSEY REMEMBERED
Over my years of associating with the staff of Anderson Trucking, I have had the privilege of meeting many fine people. One of the finest was Don Dempsey. Don served as a flatbed driver from 1981until he passed away after a battle with cancer on December 13, 2004.

Don was a kind considerate gentleman truck driver. While I had little opportunity to spend time with Don, I knew him through the comments of others. Just mention the name "Don Dempsey" and those who knew him well will stop what they are doing to tell an interesting story about him. I thought it would be appropriate to share some of those comments with our readers.

From Kevin Huhne, Flatbed Dispatcher:
I knew Don for close to 23 years. He started at ATS about 6 months before me. He would remind me that he had seniority. I never had a customer complaint about Don. He was late once on a load, but come to find out, he was going by the date on his watch. The month had 30 days, not 31. He did not adjust his watch. When we called the customer the morning he was supposed to deliver and explained what happened, the customer laughed and said he had missed some appointments for the same reason a couple months earlier. One of the things that amazed me about Don Dempsey was he could tarp the dirtiest, ugly load. When he was done he'd take off his gloves, run a comb through his hair, and look like he had just come out of the shower. I always considered Don a professional’s professional. He was top of the line. When he passed away, the number of calls I got from people that he touched over the years was amazing. He will be missed.

From Doug Milroy, Operations Manager in ATS, Inc.
When I first started as a driver here at ATS, I was sent to our yard in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I was told to pick up an RGN (removable goose neck) trailer from there. Well, I had no clue how to do that. I arrived in the yard around 2:00 AM, dropped my old trailer and tried to hook up to this RGN trailer. Well, I dropped the neck on the ground!! At that point Don came up to me, laughing very loudly. He was the only truck in the yard and it was now 2:30AM. Don spent 3 hours with me getting the gooseneck off the ground and then showed me the right way to do it. In those 3 hours he never had a bad word towards ATS or myself. The only thing he said was “this will make you a better driver.” Well, I never did drop an RGN again! I always will remember Don wasting 3 hours of his sleep to help the new guy out!!

From Pat Anderson, Area Coordinator/Planner, ATS Specialized
In my 20 plus years of working in an operations room, I have had personal dealings with thousands of drivers. Very few have left the type of impression on me that Don Dempsey did. Class and professionalism are the two words that first come to mind when I think of Don.

Although several stories come to mind when I was asked to talk about Don, I settled on talking about Don’s relationship with the Walt Disney organization.

In early spring of 1999, I received a call from a gentleman name Jamie Jones who was a Walt Disney representative from Orlando, Florida. He explained a project that they had coming up for that summer and asked us to bid on it if we were interested. They were going to do a series of parades across the United States in June and July. There would be a parade in a different city for 8 or 9 weeks. He was asking us to dedicate 6 drivers to this project. They would transport different floats and displays from parade to parade, and also participate in setting up before hand and tearing down afterwards. We put in our bid and received the job.

Don was the first driver that I asked to participate in this high profile project. We knew that there would be a lot of media attention at each event and I knew that Don was the perfect choice to be our lead man. No matter what the circumstances might have been earlier in the day, Don always looked like he had just stepped out of the shower and put on clean clothes. Although I knew that several situations he encountered during his time on the road must have frustrated and even angered him, he never let it show. This brings me back to my original two words to describe Don, Class and Professionalism.

By the second or third parade, Don was leading the parade, driving a golf card decorated with several Disney icons. Donald Duck and Goofy rode with him and tossed out candy and trinkets for the children. The yearlong project was a huge success for Disney and ATS. The next spring Jamie Jones called again. He did not ask if we wanted to participate again. He simply said that the job was ours, only if we sent Don Dempsey on it to take care of the details as he had the previous year.
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