If you’re like most people, come January you’ll be thinking about tackling some new challenges – to work towards that job promotion perhaps or to spend more time with family, etc.

I hope you’ll add one more challenge to your list of New Year’s resolutions: to take better care of yourself by improving your physical fitness and losing weight.Let’s be honest, our industry is known for its long hours, stressful situations and time away from home – all of which can leave you eating unhealthy fast food.

When that’s combined with an inactive lifestyle it leads to significant weight gain, illness and premature death for too many of our friends and colleagues in this industry.

So let’s think of ourselves first next year and do something to reverse this horrible spiral. Join me in participating in the third official Healthy Fleet Challenge. It kicks off Jan. 1, just in time to help you do something about the weight gained over the holidays, and it will be the biggest one yet.

Truck News has partnered again with Healthy Trucker (a division of NAL Insurance) to put on the Challenge. This challenge will be much longer than the previous one-month challenges held earlier this year.

It will be a five-month challenge, running every other month, with breaks in between. January, March and May will be our three individual challenge months and the results tracking all companies, fleets and participants will be shown daily on the Healthy Fleet Challenge leader board and monthly in Truck News and Truck West. February and April will be fitness and nutrition education months where you can get helpful information from our magazines and Web site. At the end of the five months, the team with the highest average step count will be named the overall winner.

Carriers, associations and allied trades can form a team of five or more people by sending their information to info@healthytrucker.com. We had more than 30 teams in the last challenge across Canada. Let’s see if we can grow that.

As with past challenges, competitors will track their steps using a Fitbit device (a high-tech pedometer) or the MOVES application on their iPhone or Android device. Every step they take gets fed through to the online Healthy Fleet Challenge leader board so participants can track their performance, and that of their competitors. But that’s not all.

There is a new twist this time around and it’s an exciting one. The American Trucking Associations has jumped on as a partner allowing us to expand the competition into the US.  And now that the US is involved, we couldn’t resist a little friendly competition.  Our leader board will also track the steps of all participating Canadian carriers vs all American carriers to determine which country has bragging rights to the most active truckers. 

I don’t know about you but I’m planning to get in better shape come January and the competitor in me hopes we kick some Yankee butt while doing it!

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Mike Pennington: You set the standard for business communications and  our industry is all the better for it. You will always be in our hearts. Rest in peace my friend.