A few days ago, a meme posted on the Facebook page of Stevens Transport caused much outrage in the trucking community.
The meme, which can be seen below, said “Don’t stop when you are tired. Stop when you are done.”
The story spread on social media for obvious reasons — telling a professional drivers not to stop when they’re tired is one of the worst things you could say on your official company Facebook page.
The company took down the post from Facebook after it started to attract attention. Now they’ve issued a explanation, which was emailed to LiveTrucking.com and several other trucking publications.
Read the response from Stevens’ Senior Director of Driver Resources, John Frey, below:
The post that appeared on our Facebook page was uploaded by an intern who has been with Stevens Transport for only a few weeks and whose inexperience led him to include a message that was both tone deaf and wrong. We want to sincerely apologize to anyone who was rightly offended because we understand how this looks. Obviously, we have installed new policies and procedures to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The well-being of our drivers and other motorists is the number one goal of everyone who works at Stevens Transport, as evidenced by our safety record. We are proud to work with some of the best drivers in the world, and we in no way condone the notion that was communicated in the earlier post.
Anyone who’s been around for more than a few weeks (days?) knows the inappropriateness of the message, so their “intern” excuse seems pretty valid. Either way, it’s nice to see a big company owning up to their mistakes.