Dumps To Ground Zero
On Sept. 11, Leif Johansson, president of AB Volvo, happened to be in Volvo's Manhattan offices. That very day, he had a letter hand-delivered to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani offering Volvo and Mack heavy duty trucks and construction equipment to help in the search and recovery efforts.
In the Greensboro, N.C., headquarters of Volvo Trucks North America, employees were trying to figure out how to actually handle the paperwork behind Johansson's offer, and quickly. Two days after the attacks, Randy Bolinger, in the public relations department, hit upon the idea of sending four Volvo show trucks parked in Greensboro up to a local dealership so New York City would have them at hand. He wasn't even sure if they would meet New York State bridge formula requirements — but each one was a fully functional dump truck.
By Friday morning, the four dump trucks were ready to roll for the 10-hour drive to New York, with commercially licensed Volvo employees at the wheels and flags flying. Bolinger drove the chase vehicle. The Virginia Highway Patrol gave the convoy the green light to breeze by the scales and permission to break the speed limit, provided they didn't get carried away.
In constant contact with FEMA and New York's emergency management officials, Bolinger got word along the way to bring the trucks on down to City Hall and sign them over instead of taking them to the dealership. As they got closer, the directions changed again. The trucks were needed at "Ground Zero," as it was being called, right away. They had a police escort from about 30 miles out. The trucks were loaded up as soon as they got there.
"As much as we've all seen on TV, what makes it real when you're standing there at Ground Zero, in addition to the scope of the devastation, is the smells and the sounds," Bolinger says.
The sight of the donated dump trucks was a poignant contrast, he said in a personal journal he wrote after he returned to Greensboro. "This imagery was in stark contrast — shiny new show trucks in the foreground of one of mankind's greatest accomplishments reduced to a smoldering scrap heap."
The four drivers who went up in the trucks stayed a couple of days each and operated the trucks, then headed home to Greensboro, leaving the dump trucks in New York City's care. At press time in early October, they had been joined by four huge articulated haulers from Volvo Construction Equipment.
Bolinger wrote about the feelings he had just before the convoy left for New York. "A sense of pride rushed in as I thought about what these show trucks were built for versus the noble cause they would be christened for. I realized that the offer made by our chairman was a truly sincere offer — these show trucks could have been individually crafted from solid bars of gold and it would have made no difference.
"This was not about Volvo, it was not about being a good corporate citizen, it was not about public relations or selling trucks — it was about being American."
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