During National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, FRA is proud to recognize the professional drivers who keep the wood supply chain moving every day. This year, we’re highlighting FRA member Reed’s Fuel & Trucking, a fourth-generation family trucking company with more than 85 years of history serving the wood products industry.

Reed’s story began in 1940, when William Reed and his son Alvin started the company with two trucks, hauling firewood and household goods in Oregon. Over the decades, the company grew alongside the region’s wood products industry, expanding its fleet and services to haul sawdust, hogged fuel, chips, lumber, veneer and plywood.

Today, Reed’s continues to play an important role in moving wood products and residuals throughout the Pacific Northwest. The company transports materials from sawmills to facilities where they can become everything from tissue and linerboard to particleboard, wood pellets and energy.

At the center of that operation are the professional drivers behind the wheel.

Few people understand that role better than Reed’s President and CEO Jason Reed. A fourth-generation member of the family business, Jason has spent more than 43 years in the trucking industry and worked his way through nearly every part of the operation.

He started in the truck shop before spending summers and holidays driving while attending college. After college, he drove full time for five years to better understand the business firsthand. From there, he worked as a relief dispatcher and safety director before becoming vice president in 1999 and president in 2009.

And despite now leading the company, Jason still maintains his CDL and gets behind the wheel when needed to serve customers.

That firsthand experience also gives him a unique perspective on one of trucking’s ongoing challenges: finding and keeping good drivers. Jason shared that perspective with fellow FRA members at the 2025 Western Region Fall Meeting, where he presented “Trucking Recruitment Strategies” and discussed approaches to attracting and retaining the workforce needed to keep trucks, and the supply chain, moving.

Reed’s commitment to its drivers can also be seen in the way the company approaches safety and its equipment. The company describes its employees as its “most valuable assets” and has invested in technologies such as automatic tarping systems designed to reduce physical strain and shoulder injuries for drivers.

For more than eight decades, trucks and drivers have connected Reed’s customers across the wood products industry. While the equipment and technology have changed considerably since those first two trucks hit the road in 1940, the people behind the wheel remain essential.

During National Truck Driver Appreciation Week, FRA is proud to recognize the drivers at Reed’s Fuel & Trucking and professional truck drivers throughout the wood supply chain for the work they do every day to safely keep our industry moving.