American truck driver Warren Greeno has driven, without a single accident, 5 million miles (more than 8 million kilometres). He’s been driving for more than 38 years now and this distance could even have been enough to travel to the Moon and back – 10 times.
Greeno is the first driver in Walmart’s history to achieve five million safe miles of driving.
Safety means to me, going to bed at night knowing that I’ve done the right thing,” he said. “And I may have saved somebody’s life that day or influenced someone into doing the right thing.”
38 years of safe driving doesn’t mean he hasn’t ever been in a dangerous situation. One snowy night, for example, he stopped his tractor-trailer in the middle of the road – a decision that turned out to be a life-saver. He was driving through a snowstorm and couldn’t see the road ahead of him. Warren had to make a decision. “Never before (or since) had I come to a complete stop in the middle of the interstate, because I couldn’t see,” he recalls.
Shortly thereafter, he heard a woman knocking on the door to his cab. The driver of the car had slid off into the ditch and was about to freeze to death when Greeno stopped his rig right in front of them.
I was put there for a reason,” he said.
After five million safe miles, some might think that Greeno would be ready to drive off into the sunset, but he reckons he has a few more miles left in him. He wants to work another 14 to 15 months, during he which figures he’ll drive another 170,000 miles.
Photo credit @ Walmart