Ramon Guzman sat in the Atlanta airport last Saturday with the kind of anticipation most people reserve for Christmas morning. A two-time California state truck driving champion, Guzman was one flight away from something no American driver had ever done: competing for the United States at the UICR Professional Driver World Championships in Germany.
A year earlier, Guzman had gone to an exhibition event in Ireland mostly alone, watched Finland take the trophy, and came home with a promise. “I told the people there that I would be back,” he said, “and that I would be bringing a team with me.”
This week, he made good on it.
From a Solo Trip to Ireland to a Fifteen-Driver Team
Getting Team USA off the ground took more than one man’s word. Guzman reached out to Jacob Pierce, who runs the American Trucking Associations’ National Truck Driving and National Step Van Driving Championships program, and together they cleared the paperwork hurdle: ATA had to join the Europe-based UICR before American drivers could even enter the competition.
Then came the harder part. Sponsor dollars were scarce, travel is expensive, and every driver on the roster had to find the vacation time and cover their own costs just for the privilege of representing the country. Nobody backed out. “None of us said, ‘I can’t do it because I can’t pay for it,'” said team captain Diethild Holbein, a retired Maine driver fluent in German.
“We looked at this opportunity, and we just said, ‘Fine, we’ll find the money.'”
Who’s Wearing the Colors in Germany
The final roster reads like a who’s-who of American driving talent: twelve state championship titleholders, four America’s Road Team captains, two TA Citizen Drivers and NTDC legend Roland Bolduc, a two-time National Grand Champion with 21 state titles to his name. Fifteen drivers in all, competing across divisions from tractor-trailer to passenger bus, a category Road Team Captain Ron Round admitted he’d never actually driven before this week.
What Team USA Faces This Week
Competition runs through the week in Heidelberg, with a written exam, a vehicle inspection phase and the driving course itself on Friday. Jim Kohr, the 2024 Straight Truck National Champion, put it plainly:
