About a year ago, Charlie Salter stood in front of a class of driver’s ed students at Prattville High School in Prattville, Ala. He had made hundreds of presentations like this to other classrooms in his decade as an Alabama Road Team member, but this one was special.
Among the students was 16-year-old daughter, Maddie, now 17, a rising senior at the school, who had a front-row seat as her dad told her classmates about the importance of driving around large commercial vehicles and the many job opportunities the industry offers young people just like them.
Afterwards, Maddie hugged her dad and told him how proud she was of him for doing something so important for the industry that has supported their family for generations. As a father, there is no higher praise.
“It was probably the proudest moment I’ve had as a trucker and a dad,” Salter says. “She’s heard these lessons from me for years, probably all her life, but when she told me how proud she was of what I was doing and how interesting she thought my presentation was – that was a gift I wasn’t expecting.”
“It was probably the proudest moment I’ve had as a trucker and a dad.”
For many reasons, Charlie is a credit to the trucking industry. With over 36 years of accident-free driving, his commitment to public safety is unparalleled. Formerly a FedEx Freight driver and now an independent contractor with LB3 Inc. based in his home in Prattville, he earned a coveted spot as an Alabama Road Team Captain in 2018. He’s also a two-time Grand Champion of the Alabama Truck Driving Championship and was the runner-up for Driver of the Year in 2024.
Driver of the Year
In March, Alabama Trucking’s safety and maintenance community gathered at Renaissance Birmingham Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa for the SMMC Fleet Safety Awards, celebrating the drivers, managers, technicians, and companies who represent the best of trucking in the state.
The annual event honors member fleets, their drivers, employees and managers for data-driven results and excellence in fleet safety and accident reduction. Charlie was the evening’s big winner as the group’s Professional Driver of the Year, sponsored by Southland Transportation Group. More than anything, Salter was tapped to honor his incredible 3.6 million miles of accident-free driving, his commitment to sharing the industry’s many career opportunities and pathways for young people, and, of course, his work with the Road Team.
Alabama Trucking’s Senior Director for Safety Intelligence and Regulatory Affairs, Clinton Seymour, says Charlie is one of the most deserving candidates for the award he’s seen in a while. He said the judges were obviously impressed by his extensive driving career, but the deciding factors were his personal achievements and leadership.
“His record speaks volumes about his dedication to safety and the passion he possesses for the profession itself,” Seymour says. “He’s a trucker’s trucker. His involvement with industry activities, civic responsibilities, and especially his career longevity and entrepreneurial spirit were definitely major factors in the judge’s decision.”
Seymour adds that Salter’s legacy extends far beyond the driver’s seat. “Through years of service to local schools, this Association, the industry and his community, he has shown what it means to be a man of character,” he says. “Those who know always describe him as professional, dependable, selfless and full of integrity – but above all, they call him a friend.”
“His record speaks volumes about his dedication to safety and the passion he possesses for the profession itself.”
LB3 co-owners Brian and Val Lindley nominated Salter for the award because they believe in everything he stands for: professionalism, hard work, honesty and commitment to his career.
“He’s a committed driver who knows the business top to bottom,” Brian says. “He does everything the right way and is respected by all of our drivers for his attention to detail and professionalism. We were proud to nominate and even prouder that he’s LB3’s second (Alabama) Driver of the Year winner.”
“He does everything the right way and is respected by all of our drivers for his attention to detail and professionalism.”
Fellow LB3 driver, Nathan Heflin, won the award in 2021, and Charlie says he is proud to be a part of the proud tradition of seasoned trucking pros at LB3.
“It’s an honor to stand before this group tonight to accept this award,” he told the audience during his acceptance speech at the SMMC Fleet Safety Awards. “But, as you all know, trucking is a team effort. There are so many folks who make my job easier, and many of them are here tonight. I appreciate everything you’ve all done for me, especially the Alabama Trucking Association, the great folks at LB3, and, of course, my wife Amy. I couldn’t do what I do without your support.”
Born a Trucker
Salter didn’t choose trucking; it chose him – just like it chose his father, Cecil, and Cecil’s father Clyde before him, and Clyde’s father before that, who hauled logs out of the Florida panhandle to a sawmill before the interstate highway system even existed.
Clyde Salter turned one flatbed into a leasing company in Eufaula, Ala., building a customer base that included American Buildings, Bushog, and many others. His son Cecil eventually split off to serve Montgomery-area markets, and that’s where Charlie grew up – not so much in a house as in a trucking operation, spending weekends and summers washing rigs, pulling trailers to the wash bay, learning the rhythms of the business before he could articulate what the business was.
He was sixteen when his father put him behind the wheel for the first time, riding with a more experienced driver named Charles Gibson on a Winn-Dixie delivery in Montgomery, and picking up another load on the way back. There was no ceremony to it. It was just what came next.
By twenty-one, he was running his own trucks. By his mid-twenties, he had seven of them, going all over the country, including a South Texas run hauling fresh poultry that put 2,100 miles on equipment twice a week.
It was a young man’s operation held together by long hours, hustle and determination, but eventually the pressures of business ownership drove him out as drivers quit, equipment aged and his parents’ health demanded attention. He decided to sell his trucks and step back a bit.
In July 1998, he took a job with American Freightways. “I was just ready to come off the road,” he says, “and actually have my life.” When FedEx absorbed American Freightways in 2002, Charlie stayed on, trading independence for stability and logging another two decades behind the wheel for one of the nation’s largest carriers.
Working with FedEx was great, with a six-figure salary, good hours, and even better benefits, and he stayed until he got his twenty-five-year bonus from the company (his years with American Freightway counting toward that mark), and retired from FedEx.
“I left college with only a class or two left on my degree because this is all I have ever wanted to do.”
Today, he loves being an independent contractor for LB3, driving day routes from Montgomery to North Alabama and back to Prattville by 3 p.m.
He and his wife Amy have built their life together around the rhythms of the road. Their family, along with Maddie and sons, Braden, 21, and Brody, 19, have watched Charlie live out the same calling that shaped him and his dad and grandfather. They understand, the way trucking families do, that the work is never just a job, but a way of life.
“I’m still an old trucker at heart,” he laughs. “I still get up early, usually by 4 a.m. I get out and pre-trip my truck, then run to Montgomery to pick up my trailer, and get on the road. I like to start my day early so I can get home early, which is great because Maddie plays softball, and I don’t like to miss a game if I can help it.”
It’s that kind of flexibility that has always made Charlie happy with his chosen career. “I don’t know that I could do anything else, to be honest,” he says. “I left college with only a class or two left on my degree because this is all I have ever wanted to do. It’s all my family has ever done. Trucking chose me whether I wanted it to or not. There have been ups and downs, and times when I have thought about doing something else, but trucking is in my blood. My grandfather and father are both gone now, but I’m sure they’re looking down, grinning on all this and are tickled that I made it this far.”
