The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Christian truckers group lends a hand during pandemic
MILFORD — Howard Knapp says he is a lifer when it comes to the trucking industry.
“Once you’ve been on the road, your heart is there,” said Knapp, who began driving in his teens and now is head of Connecticut’s only chapter of the TFC Global foundation, which provides truckers with solace and hope in these times of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Once a trucker, you are always a trucker. You know what they go through,” Knapp said.
The TFC Global foundation is a nonprofit Christian-based charity that works to help commercial over-theroad/regional drivers and their families during times when an illness or injury has caused them to be out of work, according to the organization. The foundation also works to provide Christian chaplaincy support and programs to benefit professional drivers, their families and the trucking industry.
Toward that end, Knapp and his chapter mates are putting together their second goodie bag giveaway scheduled to take place near the Pilot Travel Center on Old Gate Lane Aug. 1. The chapter will hand out onegallon resealable bags with potato chips, juice bars and bottles of water. The first distribution came at the Milford rest stops on Interstate 95.
“Costco in Milford donated a $50 gift card for the last distribution and today Trader Joe’s donated 120 waters and 120 fruit bars for our next distribution, and BJ’s Wholesale Club in Derby is giving us $25 gift cards” said the 77-year-old Knapp, who, with Patricia, his 79-year-old wife of almost three years, started the chapter in 2013.
“The idea is to thank the truckers for being on the road during this whole (pandemic) time and also to give them a snack while they are traveling,” Knapp said. “We’ll be packing about 125 bags and distributing them at the exit behind Pilot, so we don’t take away from their business revenue. When the trucks come out, they stop there before the service road. We’ll have tables with a sign — ‘free snack bags, thank you truckers.’”
Finding sanctuary
Some truck stops were closed due to the pandemic; there were no showers and drivers couldn’t find a place to eat.
“Across the entire U.S., because of TFC Global, there are chapels that are reconverted trailers located in truck stops and areas,” Knapp said. “The chapels are open 24/7 and have chaplains inside where drivers can come in and talk at any time about their (particular) situation.
“It is place to go where they can vent, believe me that is important. When a car cuts you off, you try stopping with umpteenth thousand pounds behind you. You don’t stop that quick,” he said. “These times are really tough, but truckers have to go on or they don’t make their next truck payment.”
Knapp made use of those chapels when he was driving. In 1971, he joined the Transport for Christ ministry that began in 1951 in Canada.
“When I was truck driving, I’d hand out the Highway Evangelist (publication) that could help us all with anything that was bothering us,” Knapp said.
Each month, nearly 16,000 magazines are distributed by chaplains at truck stops and many volunteers take them to trucking companies or businesses used by truck drivers, he said.
“I started this chapter three years ago and it is all because Patricia asked at a rally in Pennsylvania (why) I couldn’t start a chapter here in Connecticut,” Knapp said. “They said OK, we did the paperwork and here we are.”
The Knapps meet with similarly minded people who are interested in helping truckers.
“I think it is very important,” Patricia Knapp said. “Families don’t like having someone gone months and months at a time. The drivers are very lonely, and during this pandemic they couldn’t even use bathrooms at service stations. With hours and hours on the road, they find it difficult to get the time to go to church.
“The chapter is growing through word of mouth,” she said. “When others hear about what it is really like to be a truck driver, it is like a light goes on.”
Whether they are union or nonunion drivers, it can be a tough road.
“There are a lot of (nonunion drivers) out there, I imagine three-quarter of some of the trucks are independents,” Knapp said. “Very few companies are unionized now. A lot of companies will give you x-amount of benefits and pay you this, so they don’t have to unionize.”
Long hauls
“Things aren’t as regional as you think,” Howard Knapp said. “There are a lot of cross-country men out there, usually with a three- to fourday turnaround. It is usually tag-team driving (two drivers in a truck taking 8-hour shifts). You rotate continually. One man is in the sleeper and the other man is driving. If it is one driver, the rules are he can drive eight hours and then he must have an eight-hour break. That is the reason you have the sleepers in the cabs.”
A Stamford native, Howard Knapp first began driving for Crystal Rock.
“At Crystal Rock, there were only four other drivers before me,” Knapp said of the company that began in 1914. “It started in an old house on Long Ridge Road down in Stamford.”
Knapp said he was one of first to drive into Danbury State Fair and John Leahy, then owner of the fair, had him drive around the “entire grounds pointing out every worker and making sure they got water.”
Knapp also said his family started Knapp Moving and Storage and worked for the family and became a mover. “I was a driver for North American Van Lines over the road for five years and a pedal runner (smaller trucks) down in Atlantic City for eight years. Those freight runners that are home every night,” he said.
Knapp stopped trucking in 1979 but stayed in the field in a variety of positions before he joined Transport for Christ full-time in 2006.
“My main goal is to get a chapel in one of these two truck stops in Milford,” Knapp said. “We are planning a fundraiser, maybe in February to send down to Pennsylvania so they can build more chapels.”
To learn more about the Milford chapter of TFC Global, email howardcpi7@hotmail.com.