ATA Comp Fund's Coaker wins Webb Award
The Alabama Trucking Association has awarded ATA Comp Fund CEO and Fund Administrator Kimble Coaker with its 2019 H. Chester Webb Award for Distinguished Service, a distinction that recognizes trucking professionals for service and leadership to the state’s trucking industry.
Mr. Coaker received the honor at the Association’s 81st Annual Convention and Meeting held April 25-27, 2019 at the Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa in Destin, Fla.
When he started with the Fund in 1995, it had $2 million annually in written contributions; today, it has more than $70 million, encompassing 41 states with $97 million of dividends returned to Fund members and accumulating assets of $160 million.
Under his leadership, the Fund has contributed more than $8.8 million to the Alabama Trucking Association in royalty fees, while providing thousands of Alabama business owners with stable workers’ compensation coverage for their employees.
According to ATA President and CEO Frank Filgo, the Association owes much of its own success to the Fund. “Kimble’s contributions to this Association and Alabama’s business community are so many,” Filgo said. “He and his staff have built the best and most respected workers’ comp self-insurance funds in the nation and have helped lower operational costs for thousands of trucking businesses.”
During the award presentation, 2018 Webb Award recipient Greg Brown, President of B.R. Williams Trucking, described how Mr. Coaker’s views about workers’ compensation were shaped by his own family’s struggles after his brother, Stewart, was injured in an industrial accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
“Watching his (family) deal with the emotional, physical and financial trauma of that accident greatly impacted him, affording him personal insight into the importance of workers’ compensation,” said Brown. “His experience shaped his desire to improve workers’ compensation from both the employer and the employee’s perspectives.”
A native of Monroeville, Ala., Mr. Coaker is a graduate of Auburn University with a degree in Accounting and earned his CPA distinction in 1992. He serves on the Board of Directors for Rotary, Project Share, Trucking Association Insurance Council, and the Self-Insurance Institute of America, currently serving as that organization’s CFO.
About Alabama Trucking Association
Founded in 1938, the Alabama Trucking Association is a non-profit trade association, representing state motor carriers for the advancement of highway transportation and serving as the voice of trucking in Alabama. It conducts activities for the improvement of trucking service to the public and sponsors programs for the trucking industry in the public interest and industry betterment. The Association’s membership consists of nearly 700 trucking related firms, including for-hire and private truck operations and allied businesses (those that equip and service the industry). For more information, visit www.alabamatrucking.org.
